year for the next 75 years.
Issues like these are predictably portrayed as contests between generous souls who want to provide for their fellow men on the one hand, and misers and misanthropes who care nothing for the suffering of their fellow citizens on the other. I should not have to point out that this is an absurd caricature. The fact is,
we do not have the resources to sustain these programs in the long run
. There is no way around this simple fact, a fact politicians consistently ignore or conceal in order to tell Americans what they think their fellow countrymen want to hear.
In the short run, in order to provide for those we have taught to be dependent, such programs could survive. My own suggestion is to fund this transition period by scaling back our unsustainable overseas commitments, saving hundreds of billions from the nearly one trillion dollars our empire is costing us every year, and in the process streamlining our overstretched military and making it more efficient and effective. That is the only place where we can easily save money, applying some of the savings to these domestic programs and the rest to debt reduction.
Our out-of-control welfare state also helps account for the scope of our illegal immigration problem. When you subsidize something, you get more of it, and by offering free medical care and other services, as well as the prospect of amnesty, we get more illegal immigration. Meanwhile, hospitals have begun closing as our states and localities struggle to pay the bills. That is one reason that the libertarian economist Milton Friedman once said, “You cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state.” John Hospers, the Libertarian Party’s first presidential candidate and the author of its Statement of Principles, has taken the same position.
And once again, the state divides rather than unifies. There would be far less hostility toward immigrants if the perception did not exist that they were getting something for nothing, while the rest of America struggles to make ends meet. There would likewise be less hostility if we had a more robust economy—which we absolutely would if we followed the advice in this book. When, thanks to government policy, the economy is shaky, as it is now with the housing bubble bursting and inflation on the rise, it is all the easier to hold up immigrants as the scapegoats for people’s economic woes, thereby letting the incompetents and shysters who make our economic policy off the hook.
Excessive government spending has done more than just put us in debt. Charles Murray offers us a useful thought experiment that illustrates the welfare state’s enervating effects on our communities and our character. Imagine that the programs that constituted the federal “safety net” were all of a sudden abolished, and for whatever reason could not be revived. And pretend also that the states chose not to replace them with programs of their own, which they almost certainly would. The questions Murray wants us to focus on are these: How would you respond? Would you be more or less likely to volunteer at a food bank? Would you be more or less likely to volunteer at a literacy center? If you were a lawyer or physician, would you be more or less likely to offer pro bono services?
We would all answer yes to these questions, wouldn’t we? But then we need to ask ourselves: why aren’t we doing these things already? And the answer is that we have bought into the soul-killing logic of the welfare state: somebody else is doing it for me. I don’t need to give of myself, since a few scribbles on a tax form fulfill my responsibility toward my fellow man. Do our responsibilities as human beings really extend no farther than this?
In the days before Medicare and Medicaid, for instance, the poor and elderly were admitted to hospitals at about the same rate they are now, and received good care. As a physician I never accepted Medicare or Medicaid money from the
Issues like these are predictably portrayed as contests between generous souls who want to provide for their fellow men on the one hand, and misers and misanthropes who care nothing for the suffering of their fellow citizens on the other. I should not have to point out that this is an absurd caricature. The fact is,
we do not have the resources to sustain these programs in the long run
. There is no way around this simple fact, a fact politicians consistently ignore or conceal in order to tell Americans what they think their fellow countrymen want to hear.
In the short run, in order to provide for those we have taught to be dependent, such programs could survive. My own suggestion is to fund this transition period by scaling back our unsustainable overseas commitments, saving hundreds of billions from the nearly one trillion dollars our empire is costing us every year, and in the process streamlining our overstretched military and making it more efficient and effective. That is the only place where we can easily save money, applying some of the savings to these domestic programs and the rest to debt reduction.
Our out-of-control welfare state also helps account for the scope of our illegal immigration problem. When you subsidize something, you get more of it, and by offering free medical care and other services, as well as the prospect of amnesty, we get more illegal immigration. Meanwhile, hospitals have begun closing as our states and localities struggle to pay the bills. That is one reason that the libertarian economist Milton Friedman once said, “You cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state.” John Hospers, the Libertarian Party’s first presidential candidate and the author of its Statement of Principles, has taken the same position.
And once again, the state divides rather than unifies. There would be far less hostility toward immigrants if the perception did not exist that they were getting something for nothing, while the rest of America struggles to make ends meet. There would likewise be less hostility if we had a more robust economy—which we absolutely would if we followed the advice in this book. When, thanks to government policy, the economy is shaky, as it is now with the housing bubble bursting and inflation on the rise, it is all the easier to hold up immigrants as the scapegoats for people’s economic woes, thereby letting the incompetents and shysters who make our economic policy off the hook.
Excessive government spending has done more than just put us in debt. Charles Murray offers us a useful thought experiment that illustrates the welfare state’s enervating effects on our communities and our character. Imagine that the programs that constituted the federal “safety net” were all of a sudden abolished, and for whatever reason could not be revived. And pretend also that the states chose not to replace them with programs of their own, which they almost certainly would. The questions Murray wants us to focus on are these: How would you respond? Would you be more or less likely to volunteer at a food bank? Would you be more or less likely to volunteer at a literacy center? If you were a lawyer or physician, would you be more or less likely to offer pro bono services?
We would all answer yes to these questions, wouldn’t we? But then we need to ask ourselves: why aren’t we doing these things already? And the answer is that we have bought into the soul-killing logic of the welfare state: somebody else is doing it for me. I don’t need to give of myself, since a few scribbles on a tax form fulfill my responsibility toward my fellow man. Do our responsibilities as human beings really extend no farther than this?
In the days before Medicare and Medicaid, for instance, the poor and elderly were admitted to hospitals at about the same rate they are now, and received good care. As a physician I never accepted Medicare or Medicaid money from the
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