First Principles

The problem with living off of other people’s money is not just that you eventually run out of it – it’s that in the meantime you also wind up having to play by other people’s rules.

Well, unless you’re so self absorbed that you think you have a “right” to that money, indefinitely.  Or if you think that conditions on welfare, or some expectation that you use heavily subsidized higher education to actually get a job, all amount to slavery.

Such is the tale of one of my fellow classmates at the University of Washington School of Law.  Christal Wood, who graduated a year after I did in 2008, has spent her post-law school years on welfare, and is now suing the State of Washington claiming work requirements to get benefits amount to “involuntary servitude.”

The out-of-work, single mom and law school graduate is representing herself against the state and its team of three attorneys. Wood accuses Washington of engaging in involuntary servitude. She says the government’s Work First program violates the 13th amendment because in order to get her welfare benefits she has to work at a non-profit, or look for work 35 hours a week.

“You either work or you don’t get this money,” she said.

You have to work or you don’t get money?  How utterly draconian!

If only she’d had the opportunity to go to college, maybe she could have broken this cycle.  After all, poverty never involves personal choices, only lack of opportunity!

Oh, except she DID go to college, and she graduated.

Well, then, if only she was able to go to a top tier law school with some of the lowest tuition rates in the nation (which means other people subsidized the bejeezus out of her graduate degree), THEN she could break the cycle of poverty.

Oh, wait.  She had that opportunity, too.

At what point is enough enough?  At what point to we acknowledge that in a free society, you must be free to choose failure?

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The real problem for Christal is that she has yet to actually pass the bar exam.  I don’t know how many times she’s made the attempt, but since her graduation in 2008, there have been 7 opportunities to take it.  Now, I know a lot of great attorneys who didn’t pass it the first time, but 7?  It’s not an easy test, but it’s also not rocket science.  The reality is that it’s not a knowledge exam, but a performance exam – so long as you put the work into preparing for it, you WILL pass.  At some point, continued failure indicates you just aren’t willing to put the effort in.  But even if you never pass it, the degree itself should still be sufficient to get some sort of job, even if it’s not in law.  Plenty of law school grads eventually seek careers in other areas.

But what’s really obnoxious is that if she’d spent as much time preparing for the bar or looking for honest work as she has coming up with creative ways to keep her welfare checks coming without inconvenient strings attached, she’d have probably been practicing law for a couple of years now.

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The real kicker is that in the off chance this lawsuit is successful, she will have actually taken away the benefits for thousands of legitimately needy Washingtonians.

The bigger issue is if Wood wins her case and Work First is deemed unconstitutional, the state would likely lose $360 million in federal welfare funding — impacting some 70,000 Washington families.

Christal’s response is that Washington should then just sue the other Washington, or try to get a waiver from the feds.  Great – I’m sure all the families on welfare will be happy to eat dirt for the several years that process would take.

But even if that was successful (or fair, for that matter), it still would bring great harm to those legitimately in need.  Lavish benefit schemes like this are, in the end, unsustainable.  And what happens when the money runs out, as it inevitably will?  Then you get real benefit cuts.  Entire programs go away.  And truly needy people are literally left out in the cold.  Liberals like this who want no limits on welfare are the most dangerous enemies on the planet of a legitimate and sustainable social safety net.

Christal is not just selfish and shameless.  She is actively harming her fellow citizens.

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One of the ironies here is that Christal (and Washington State taxpayers) would have been far better off had she never gone to college at all – certainly if she’d never gone to law school.  Not only are the taxpayers out her tuition subsidies, but they’ll also wind up eating her student loans, and years of welfare benefits – with nothing to show for it.

The whole idea behind huge tax subsidies for higher education is that educated people benefit society by eventually earning more, hiring more, and ultimately paying more taxes.  Increasingly, this cost-benefit simply isn’t adding up, either for the student or for society.  I hope as states like Nevada struggle with their budgets, they acknowledge this fact and plan accordingly.  Politicians love to talk about education as an investment, and they’re partially right – some education programs do produce a positive return on investment for the subsidizing taxpayers.  But some don’t.

And even where degree programs are important, over-saturating them is also wasteful.  Civil engineers are great, but if we paid to train every college grad in Nevada to be a civil engineer, we’d be wasting a ton of money.  Same goes for lawyers – it’s worth being a bit pickier about who we admit to publicly subsidized law schools.

All of this needs to be part of the budget debate, instead of treating every single degree program as if it has equal value to every other degree program.

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Something tells me she was a big fan of ObamaCare.  Talk about the ultimate in having to play by the King’s rules if you take the King’s money.  I do wonder – if she thinks that having to work certain hours to qualify for a voluntary welfare program is akin to slavery, what does she think of the federal government requiring every living human being to purchase a product whether they want it or not?

And if having to work for money is “involuntary servitude,” what does she think of the nameless taxpayers who are forced to pay for her welfare benefits?  Wouldn’t that also make them slaves, too?  After all, they can’t opt out of paying taxes like she can opt out of Washington’s welfare program.

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Most of all, I find this episode incredibly embarrassing as a UW Law grad.  As the faculty repeatedly told us, we were “privileged” to be there, and had a responsibility to society when we graduated.  I don’t even necessarily disagree with that, although I have a much different view of what our responsibilities to society are than those faculty members probably did.  But if nothing else, that responsibility includes using your taxpayer subsidized education to get a job.  Which means putting in the work necessary to get that job.

Christal failed in that responsibility, and diminishes my own degree when she waives around her University of Washington juris doctor while throwing a temper tantrum over having to actually contribute back to the society that has given her so much.  Not only is her legal analysis absurd, but her unfettered sense of entitlement is shameful.  I expect more out of my daughter, and she’s not even 2.

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I sincerely hope she loses her case, and that at some point very soon, the State of Washington tells her that she’s spent enough of other people’s money without giving anything in return.  If not, this opens a Pandora’s Box that will speed the entire state of Washington on to a very quick financial doom.