First Principles

In search of the Unified Theory of Conservatism

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The Bitter Irony of Too Much Government Help

June 9th, 2009 · 3 Comments

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.

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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.

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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.

Tags: Big Government · Welfare