California has long boasted one of the most “generous” public welfare systems in the nation. Now they’re talking about doing away with it completely for lack of funds. The horrible irony is that the one thing led to the other.
~~~
There are some conservatives who don’t think society should have any safety net at all for the truly indigent. I’m not one of them, and I think the vast majority of right-leaning people in this country agree with me. The purpose of government is to protect and promote individual liberty, and in the same way that crime prevention (and prosecution) and keeping the streets clean and inviting (a la Giuliani’s “Broken Windows” policies do that, so too does not just leaving the impoverished to die in the streets, or leaving their children to be unable to break the cycles that got their parents there in the first place.
But while such a net is important, it should be substantially limited in time and scope, and must provide incentives for people to leave the program rather than stay indefinitely. Once the purpose of welfare goes beyond protecting the other members of society and strays into State Parenting of competent adults, it starts to do harm to individual liberty rather than enhance it. Such programs dig ever deeper into the pockets of productive members of society, and ensnare the supposed beneficiaries into a life of dependence and governmental control.
And what’s worse, in the end, it is the truly indigent, the people who really do need society’s help, who suffer the most. Because when you spend more than you can afford, eventually the bills come due, and future spending gets cut off for everyone.
We don’t have to speculate about this outcome. As with so many other dark harbingers of Liberalism Yet To Come, this is exactly what’s happening in California.
~~~
I’ve met a lot of liberals who say, with all the best of intentions, “I’m willing to pay more taxes to help people out in society.” That’s fine and dandy. So am I, although to a far lesser extent than they. But what they don’t know is the bigger the government largess grows, the more likely they will, in the end, leave the people they have so much compassion for in far worse shape than before the “generosity” of government was quite so expansive.
It’s another demonstration of the lie that Conservatives “don’t care” about the poor. Indeed, it’s just the opposite. We care enough not to join our neighbors to the west in setting struggling people up for such a spectacular failure.
OJ,
This article misses the point entirely. You wrote:
California has long boasted one of the most “generous” public welfare systems in the nation. Now they’re talking about doing away with it completely for lack of funds. The horrible irony is that the one thing led to the other.
This statement suggests that CA’s welfare system caused the financial problems that CA is having right now. Please tell me if I misunderstand what you are writing.
Actually, I don’t misunderstand.
Please do some more reading. Suggesting that CA’s finanical troubles are caused by the welfare system are sophistical, at best.
CA’s financial problems are caused by the very nature of the state’s constitution–not by welfare. This is a problem that is so frequently raised by conservatives–you try to blame macro-financial problems on the poor. So silly.
CA’s constitution creates the (realized) possibility of spectacular gerrymandering. Consequently, the state is polarized, which makes any budget fight in the state house or senate particularly bloody, which results in an inability to pass laws to fix the state’s problems.
This is exacerbated by the incredibly strict rules under the CA constitution, which make it even harder to get things done.
You conservatives are so quick to blame the poor in the liberal states for the problems in those states.
You are utterly wrong. You are overlooking a complex problem by blaming the poor while somehow trying to make an argument that you are for the poor, as a conservative.
Honestly, it’s laughable if you understand what is really going on. I would say it is shameless, but I actually don’t think you really know what is going on, so I guess it can’t be shameless.
Heath
“You conservatives?”
I’m not blaming the poor for California’s problems. Where do I blame the poor? It’s the most ridiculous of strawmen to suggest that any criticism of an unaffordable and poorly designed tax funded welfare program is “blaming the poor,” and more than a little offensive besides. I work exclusively with the indigent. I grew up in a frickin’ trailer park. I know a thing or two about the poor.
The whole point is that the “generosity” of California’s rich liberals (with other people’s money, of course) has wound up HURTING the poor. I’m lamenting that the TRULY needy are going to suffer because those who didn’t actually need government entitlements have sucked the well dry.
I’m blaming people who (in the name of compassion) spend too much money on entitlement programs for the poor – programs which didn’t exist just a few years ago – eventually leading to their collapse, which means the actual poor get NO help.
Of course this isn’t CA’s only problem. I never said it was. But it is emblematic of the larger problem – that the whole state just plain spends too damn much money, that increases in government spending have vastly outstripped inflation or population increases, and that despite the “polarization,” they’ve been collaborating well enough to agree on cooked books that have masked the problem for years until it’s too late and the whole Ponzi scheme falls apart. Which is, of course, right about now. If ONLY they’d been “polarized” such that their government was finding it “hard to get things done”!
California has been run at every level by liberals, implementing across-the-board liberal economic policies, for many, many years now, Arnold sadly included. Now the poor (along with everyone else in the state) are suffering mightily, and facing the collapse of ACTUAL essential services. This is not a coincidence.
But now, we have people (and we have them here in Nevada, too) who say the problems are because we haven’t had enough unfettered government spending and taxing and regulating and power and control! Poppycock. It’s kind of like the ridiculous old meme that Communism just hasn’t been tried right yet, as if Communism itself wasn’t fatally flawed as a concept.
~~~
I will say, though, that plenty of poor people have contributed greatly to their own financial condition. To deny this is not only dishonest, but it denies them their very humanity, as if they are mere animals or children without free will or the mental capacity to take control of their own lives.
To deny this fact as a policy maker is to encourage more dependence, promoting and hastening the collapse of important safety nets that help people who legitimately cannot help themselves without a boost – that minority who really do find themselves up the creek through little or no fault of their own.
So there is “blame”, I suppose, for their OWN money problems, just as I “blame” the successful for their own successes. That’s what liberty is all about!
But for the state’s financial mess? No. That falls firmly at the feet of rich liberals and “intellectuals” with irrational guilt complexes and access to billions of other peoples’ dollars.
As a former “resident” of CA, I can assure you that the Liberal Junta of Gray Davis and his state treasurer created this modern day melt-down. Watching this take place from the trenches, more and more programs were enacted in the six years I lived in the state. To pay for the social “generosity” / cool ideas, the Liberal Treasurer decide to move state investments from solid reliable funds (established originally under the Reagan era) to “ride the wave .com” high rate of return, no responsibility funds. Well, we all know where that went… The well ran dry in 2004 and 2005, and the Conservstive “I told you so” crowd fired Gray Davis, but the damage was already done. Endless entitlements for the poor poured from the State House in Sacramento and the “sure thing” Bernie Madhof funds that CA bought into crashed, but the laws were the laws and teachers, firefighters, police took the brunt of the initial cuts. Three years later, the “help to poor” programs, the endless amount of them, are the only ones left to cut. Taxes have been raised in Sacramento…another cool Liberal idea that seems to always “promise” revenue, and the tax base responds through emigration to other semi-solvent states like NV and AK. I applaud Obama for denying CA requests for loan guarantees. Perhaps this is one of the few things I do agree with him on…as it would send a horrible message to responsible states like mine. Overextend yourself by “thinking” endless entitlements for the poor will cure all societal ills and lack the way to fund it – and bear the burden yourself. CA offered no balance…no incentive to buy into this “morale rightness.” Even if you hate free markets, you can’t piggyback Socialism onto the 8th largest economy in the world… See! The Conservatives were right. Long gone are the glory days of CA. Instead of a Utopian Equal State that actually epitomized free markets, the Social Spider Web of free shit buried the state. Even the liberal screw up of a State Treasurer knew that traditional and reliable investment could not shoulder the entitlement burden. Thus, he sought more money…and not only did the poor lose, nearly ALL state pensions are lost. Teachers don’t pay Social Security in CA…they rely on CALSTRS…the state pension plan (more reliance on the state) – and they lose as well. So…show me how CA made the right move by devoting itself to the “honorable cause” of endless free money? CA is getting ready to reap the last harvest of the bullshit it sewed during my tenure their…and as a good Conservative, I saw it coming and avoided and permanent attachment to the cancerous Republic that it is. The poor lose, and ultimately, the entire US will suffer as CA goes belly up. China shold be happy though…they own quite a bit of the state…
Peace my Liberal CA / free money for everyone fellow…enjoy bankruptcy and no chance for welfare in “The Late Great Golden State.”