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Those who regard government "entitlement" programs as sacrosanct, and regard those who want to cut them back as calloused or cruel, picture a world very different from the world of reality.
To listen to some of the defenders of entitlement programs, which are at the heart of the present financial crisis, you might think that anything the government fails to provide is something that people will be deprived of.
In other words, if you cut spending on school lunches, children will go hungry. If you fail to subsidize housing, people will be homeless. If you fail to subsidize prescription drugs, old people will have to eat dog food in order to be able to afford their meds.
This is the vision promoted by many politicians and much of the media. But, in the world of reality, it is not even true for most people who are living below the official poverty line.
Most Americans living below the official poverty line own a car or truck-- and government entitlement programs seldom provide cars and trucks. Most people living below the official poverty line also have air conditioning, color television and a microwave oven--and these too are not usually handed out by government entitlement programs.
Cell phones and other electronic devices are by no means unheard of in low-income neighborhoods, where children would supposedly go hungry if there were no school lunch programs. In reality, low-income people are overweight even more often than other Americans.
As for housing and homelessness, housing prices are higher and homelessness a bigger problem in places where there has been massive government intervention, such as liberal bastions like New York City and San Francisco. As for the elderly, 80 percent are homeowners. whose monthly housing costs are less than $400, including property taxes, utilities, and maintenance.
The desperately poor elderly conjured up in political and media rhetoric are-- in the world of reality-- the wealthiest segment of the American population. The average wealth of older households is nearly three times the wealth of households headed by people in the 35 to 44-year-old bracket, and more than 15 times the wealth of households headed by someone under 35 years of age.
If the wealthiest segment of the population cannot pay their own medical bills, who can? The country as a whole is not any richer because the government pays our medical bills-- with money that it takes from us.
What about the truly poor, in whatever age brackets? First of all, even in low-income and high-crime neighborhoods, people are not stealing bread to feed their children. The fraction of the people in such neighborhoods who commit most of the crimes are far more likely to steal luxury products that they can either use or sell to get money to support their parasitic lifestyle.
As for the rest of the poor, Professor Walter Williams of George Mason University long ago showed that you could give the poor enough money to lift them all above the official poverty line for a fraction of what it costs to support a massive welfare state bureaucracy.
We don't need to send the country into bankruptcy, in the name of the poor, by spending trillions of dollars on people who are not poor, and who could take care of themselves. The poor have been used as human shields behind which the expanding welfare state can advance.
The goal is not to keep the poor from starving but to create dependency, because dependency translates into votes for politicians who play Santa Claus.
We have all heard the old saying about how giving a man a fish feeds him for a day, while teaching him to fish feeds him for a lifetime. Independence makes for a healthier society, but dependency is what gets votes for politicians.
For politicians, giving a man a fish every day of his life is the way to keep getting his vote. "Entitlement" is just a fancy word for dependency.
As for the scary stories politicians tell, in order to keep the entitlement programs going, as long as we keep buying it, they will keep selling it.
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Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His Web site is www.tsowell.com.
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May 24, 2011 @ 7:26 am
In terms of the reality of the quality of life the poor face in America, the socialist Mind Manipulators of public opinion would have us believe that the American poor are ragged, starving and two steps away from storming the Bastille, and they have their collective Union minions trained and all lined up to do just that if needed to deceive the real people. The truth is that with Cell Phones, HD TV, Internet access, free school lunches, Automobiles with highways paved from sea to shining sea, free access to modern medicine, in America the poor do not live those quite lives of desperation the Democrats portray. They live better than King Henry the VII. They make Henry the VIII look like a vagabond.
Liberalism is indeed a form of insanity. It is the propagation of the Liberal Delusion of minion mind control, to manipulate the wealth and strength of the masses for their own Socialist edification and power to their mindless Socialist Collectives, while individual rights and freedom diminish under their leadership. It is Leadership of the shepherd’s crook by crooks, of sheep raised fit and bred for fleecing and for the slaughter.
May 24, 2011 @ 8:17 am
We have a moral obligation to provide food, clothing, & shelter to those, who thru no fault of their own, cannot provide those necessities for themselves. We do NOT owe them a standard of living equal to our own.
Outstanding article by Mr Sowell.
May 24, 2011 @ 8:43 am
The moral obligation turns immoral once the Government takes control of the dispensing of the stewardship of the wealth and earthly sustanance away from the Creator to assume the power of the dispensing to their Self-Proclaimed Socialist God=Selves. When the Governement which was designed for the Justice Business takes control of the Mercy business which was designed for the Church to handle, We get neither Justice nor Mercy. No Justice in the redistribution of honest wealth,,,,no Mercy in the enablement of dependency of human beings desgned to create, not just consume. That is what Locusts and cockraches were designed for.
May 24, 2011 @ 9:53 am
Inluminatuo, The liberals saw that Church had too much influence over people simply because the helped without expecting anything in return. I’m not saying that traded votes for help but that people respected them for their kindness. Some even converted and that to the liberals is unacceptable. Sure liberals claim to be christian but only to get votes. The truth is that they are lying to us and themselves because they support things that are utterly unchristian.
Liberals knew that if they could use taxpayer dollars to help they could garner control over these people once they had them hook like a drug addict on government assistance. They at every election cycle they use fear tactics to get votes by saying that the Republicans are going to take this and that, all the while the rob the taxpayer blind.
IMPEACH OBAMA NOP! ! ! ! !
May 24, 2011 @ 10:42 am
I agree completely, Inluminatuo & onewildman.
May 24, 2011 @ 10:00 am
Given how government has rewarded the export of US jobs and capital, I think it owes the citizens everything it has prevented US from obtaining for ourselves through the channels now absent.
May 24, 2011 @ 10:11 am
Very well written Mr Sowell, thank you.
I have read the constitution and the Declaration of Independence and have yet to find a clause that says it is the goverments responsibility to make sure we are fed, clothed, have medical attention, a job, and education, or any of the things the gov is providing now.
As for the “moral obligation” I dont think anyone minds helping those who CANT help themselves, we are all just upset at the MILLIONS who CAN help themselves but are too lazy to get off the public dole.
May 24, 2011 @ 10:11 am
The Founders believed in “noblise oblige”, the obligation of those better off to see to the needs of those worse off. But nowhere can you find support in any of their writings for doing through the government, certainly not at the federal level. Their comments made it clear that the general welfare clause was not to be used in this manner. Madison gets the final word when as a Congressman he voted against a bill for providing relief for French refugees fleeing the revolution there. He made it clear he could not find that article of the Constitution that allowed him to spend his constituents money on behalf of benevolence. As the father of the document, if he couldn’t find it, it’s not there. What this means is that welfare spending, in any form, at the federal level is unconstitutional. What states and cities do is subject to their laws and regulations, the Constitution in this case refers only to the federal gonverment.
Again, this does not relieve us of a personal obligation to see to the needs of the truly destitute, those who are infirm, those who have legitimate claims on our funds. For the Christians here, the money you have is not yours and does not belong to you, it’s a gift from God. You’re obligated to be good stewards of it. But in the Good Samaritan story, Jesus told us to go and do likewise. That was an individual command, not a command to go to the Rabbis or to the Roman authorities and tell them to play Robin Hood and raise out taxes. Each of us must “go and do likewise”.
May 24, 2011 @ 4:14 pm
To quote James Madison; ”
“I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.’
“The government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.”
“The class of citizens who provide at once their own food and their own raiment, may be viewed as the most truly independent and happy.’
“All that seems indispensible in stating the account between the dead and the living, is to see that the debts against the latter do not exceed the advances made by the former.”
“By rendering the labor of one, the property of the other, they cherish pride, luxury, and vanity on one side; on the other, vice and servility, or hatred and revolt.”
“I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”
This is the frog in the slowly boiling Pot. We can thank Obama for greedily turning up the heat too fast, which caused the Conservative Frogs to Jump out of the Pot and the sleeping American Giant to awaken.
May 24, 2011 @ 12:23 pm
Another well written piece by Mr Sowell. I love his honesty. Over the course of time the governments of the States, federal, local and municipal and county have through taxation removed all excess money from our pockets before we get a chance to help the real needy these days. All of this in the name of we know better than you so shut up and pay up or we will take your property(local taxes) and throw you in jail(federal). We of course opened the doors over time to this and now the only difference between us and any third world dictatorship is all just semantics. I am a business man and and at times over the last 25 years my taxes exceeded my income(over 100%) . You may ask how this occurs and is ignored by all tax jurisdictions. Real Estate taxes in NJ are not linked at all to your income.
May 24, 2011 @ 12:26 pm
You once again nailed it, Dr. Sowell!
Suddenly, healthcare somehow became a “fundamental right” from a “basic necessity”.
How did we make the huge leap from “basic necessity” to “fundamental right”? Aren’t food, clothing and shelter basic necessities? Are Liberals trying to make the argument they are also fundamental rights? Sure, they are!
So therefore, who provides these “necessities” as rights? The government? And where do they get the resources? Taxes? Confiscation? From the producers and contributors of society? (Assuming any remains after the hard earned products of their efforts is seized).
And this now all-powerful government who provides for all basic necessities will do so fairly, equally and without corruption? Without threat or intimidation? Within some fiscal constraints of affordability? In your dreams!
And the government becomes responsible for providing for all the people who do not have to do anything on their own in order to acquire “basic necessities” which are now their “fundamental rights”. And what kind of people will result when they are not motivated to take responsibility for their own lives and aspire to greater things because they have “fundamental rights” to their basic necessities?
“A government powerful enough to provide for all the people’s needs is strong enough to take away their liberties.” – Thomas Jefferson
Americans! You give away your liberty too cheaply, my friends!
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May 24, 2011 @ 12:27 pm
No mention of the thousands of government agencies, trillions going to foreign central banks, foreign aid to almost every country on earth, and billions being spent in foreign wars.
Current situation, 1 out of every 4 Americans were looted/financially destroyed during current depression (some call it recession). Due to jobs going overseas and immigration policies flooding the drying up job market, the jobs are not there for US citizens.
If you want to end so-called entitlements (help for those who have worked all their lives just like you and lost all), then the time to do it is during better times…when ample employment is available.
Can’t you see you are being played like a fool. The current politicians don’t want to cut back the monster government, so to divert attention they pit groups of people against other groups of people. Cutting back entitlements though will serve the globalists because starvation fuels chaos, crime, and revolution….and it can come to this country.
May 24, 2011 @ 2:02 pm
“Most Americans living below the official poverty line own a car … are not usually handed out by government entitlement programs.” This paragraph gives me little heartburn, Dr. Sowell. Let’s not be suggesting additional “entitlements”, please.
May 24, 2011 @ 3:33 pm
Dr Sowell noted”As for the rest of the poor, Professor Walter Williams of George Mason University long ago showed that you could give the poor enough money to lift them all above the official poverty line for a fraction of what it costs to support a massive welfare state bureaucracy. ”
I’ve argued all along that it would be far cheaper for the government to pay off the poor’s actual medical expenses rather than insuring them. I’m not advocating either.
For most , people pay more for health insurance insurance than for medical expenses.
May 25, 2011 @ 2:06 am
Another word for it is slavery. Which was never something the government ever really had a problem with.