| theprof00 said: But yes, perhaps welfare etc type programs havegone too far, but i owe a lot to social programs. Inner cityyouth programs, library access with internet in early90s, summer jobs provided by government, allowance to be on my parents medical for as long as i was, scholarship programs, extracurricular programs, etc etc. |
It's not that I think that no good can come of any government program. They can do some good, of course, but I do think that they are generally not cost effective. More importantly, the overall practice of allowing the government to address anything it identifies as an ill with money taken from the citizenry leads to (as Madison predicted) the end of the concept of a government of enumerated powers and (as predicted by de Tocqueville) the eventual death of the republic when Congress figures out it can bribe the public with the public's own money.
Just like with abortion, these discussions tend to run off the rails very quickly into a shoutfest pitting stereotypical welfare queens against stereotypical Nazi Objectivist social Darwinists. That kind of stuff generates a lot more heat than light, and it doesn't really do anything to further a discussion of the pros and cons of different ways the government can address poverty (or even if it should). But I'm far from convinced that reforming or even dismantling such programs is ever as ruinous as predicted. About 20 years ago when Canada could no longer sustain its spendthrift ways and had to undertake a program of austerity, all the usual suspects were prophesying a doom that never materialized. And nobody has written more about the ruinous effects of welfare, particularly on the black community, than Daniel Patrick Moynihan. He was a famously serious and sober guy, and I doubt there is a single modern politician more venerated on both the right and left as a teller of hard truths than he. Yet, when Clinton signed welfare reform into law, he voted against it and predicted nothing short of the end of the world and cannibalism in the streets. Nothing of the sort happened, of course, and it's all very laughable in retrospect. It's as good an illustration as I've ever seen of how even a smart man who knew a lot about the subject was still ultimately paralyzed by fear about what would happen if the government actually made a fairly modest change to a welfare program.
