7 March 2010
By Jacob G. Hornberger The statist reaction to Republican Sen. Jim
Bunning’s temporary block of a welfare bill shows what
the welfare state has done to the American people. Everyone knows that federal spending is out of
control. The feds are spending $1.4 trillion more than
what they’re collecting in taxes. And that’s just for
this year. Where are they getting the difference? They’re
borrowing it, adding to the massive and ever-growing
debt of the federal government. How is that debt going
to be paid off? By U.S. taxpayers. Your individual,
average share as of right now is about $40,000. It’s
growing every day because the feds are running up your
credit card, which has no limit. So, Bunning blocks a welfare bill on the ground
that the federal government shouldn’t be borrowing any
more money. If it can’t afford to be providing the
welfare, Bunning said, then it shouldn’t be spending
more money. The statist crowd went ballistic. The attacks were
the standard ones whenever anyone objects to any
welfare-state scheme: “He’s selfish, self-centered,
and greedy. He hates the poor and loves the rich. He’s
just grandstanding. The bill is only a small
percentage of total spending and so it doesn’t make
any difference in the larger scheme of things.” But the statist reaction to Bunning’s move goes
much deeper than that and is a perfect reflection of
what the socialistic welfare state has done to the
American people. Having been born and raised under the
welfare state, American recipients of welfare largess,
including those on Social Security, Medicare,
Medicaid, unemployment, education grants, mortgage
guarantees, and bailout and stimulus monies, honestly
believe that they are entitled to continue receiving
it for as long as they “need” the money. That’s why they call much of this junk an
“entitlement.” What the entitlement crowd is saying
is: “I am entitled to your money because I want it and
I need it. If you object, my statist associates and I
will go on the attack against you and expose you for
being a vicious, no-good, selfish hater of the poor
and lover of the rich.” This is what the welfare state has done to America.
It has produced a real war among the American people —
between those who produce and own their wealth and
those who are trying to get their hands on other
people’s money through the force of the state. The
19th-century French legislator Frederic Bastiat put it
well when he indicated that under the welfare state,
the government becomes a great fiction by which some
people try to live at the expense of other people. Almost as bad has been what the welfare state has
done to the mindsets of the American people. It has
made so many Americans dependent on the government,
not just financially but also emotionally and
psychologically. People are on the dole have convinced
themselves that they could never survive without their
dole. And they absolutely freak out whenever someone
talks about ending their dole. Even worse, they look
upon the government as their daddy or, even worse, as
a beloved deity. What is happening, not only here in the United
States but in Greece, Portugal, Spain, England, and
other welfare-state countries, is that there isn’t
enough wealth among the taxpayers to plunder to fund
the massive, ever-growing number of people on the
dole. Meanwhile, panicky over the potential crack up of
the welfare state, liberals are blaming the economic
woes on “freedom, deregulation, greed, the bankers,
and free enterprise,” and they’re proposing their
standard statist solution — more socialism and
Keynesianism. They’re saying that the feds should just
keep spending, spending, and spending, no matter how
much they have to borrow or inflate to do so. The
notion is that more spending will put unemployed
people back to work, whose taxes can then fund the
voracious and ever-growing wants of the parasitic
sector of society. But as we libertarians have been saying for
decades, ultimately the welfare-state house of cards
is going to crack apart, just as it did in Cuba and
the Soviet Union. God has created a consistent
universe, one in which immoral means will beget bad
ends. The crack up has obviously already begun in such
heavy-duty welfare-state countries as Greece,
Portugal, Spain, and England, where the base of wealth
to plunder and loot is more limited than it is in the
United States. But even here in the United States there is a limit
to how much socialism the private sector can bear. And
don’t forget: there is always the possibility that
those who are being plundered and looted might just
decide to go on strike, refusing to produce any more
wealth and just “shrugging.” Jacob
Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of
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