We should measure welfare’s success by how many people leave welfare, not by how many are added. — Ronald Reagan
Back in my salad days, fresh out of college, a wealthy liberal workmate said he was happy to pay for welfare to keep the restless natives pacified. In other words, if it cost him (and me) an extra few percentage points in taxes, he would trade this for social tranquility. I was taken aback ... for I thought that this attitude was paternalistic and undemocratic. In the modern vernacular, he was suggesting keeping our lower class “on the plantation,” black or white.
So, his being satisfied to “pay off” the poor to keep them from rioting ... was rewarding bad behavior, lassitude and irresponsibility. It typified the start of the downward spiral of family formations and the upward spiral of our drug culture ... exemplified by Woodstock and the anti-Vietnam-war demonstrations. As such, rioting didn’t go away ... it intensified. Lyndon Johnson’s Great Soviety and War on Poverty had the unintended consequences of introducing more slothful rot nto our society. The homelessness and social unrest that we see intensifying today is nothing but a continuation of the paternalism that I first experienced way back then
The West Coast billionaire oligarchy is content to pay more to keep the underclass there from up and derailing their gravy train. To them, it is a very small price to pay. This increasingly bifurcated society is the modern-day consequence of that liberal foolishness I saw all those many years ago. Human nature is such that free stuff only increases the appetite for more free stuff. Am I being cold-hearted to say that welfare should be a temporary hand up for the down-and-out? Making it wide-spread and permanent is economic insanity.
Pacifiers are for babies ... bit, they don’t work so well for adults.
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