The Welfare

By Patrick Hall

The vast majority of current programs focus on alleviating the effects of poverty—providing poor people with more food, better shelter, and healthcare —rather than equipping them with the tools to escape it.  Economist, Milton Friedman, 1912-2006

Jesus-Mary-Joseph! What in the world has materialized among many Americans when it comes to accepting welfare and other forms of public assistance without batting an eyelash? Not so long ago, before the grip of the welfare state hatched during the Great Society Programs of the 1960s, one would be embarrassed or hesitant to admit that one was on “The Welfare.”

Now, don’t get me wrong. There are times and circumstances where families might need public assistance to get through some of life’s rough patches.  But beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the acculturation surrounding accepting welfare, or being on the dole, no longer carried the same stigma.  A stigma or imputation that acted as an effective social control or deterrent. Where individuals and groups were more apt to take responsibility for themselves and their families. The late economist Walter Williams once said that receiving public assistance or welfare went from a temporary crutch to a full-blown hammock.

A while back, I was in the check-out line of a local Wal-Mart and found myself behind a young woman with several small children. A clash ensued between her and the Wal-Mart associate concerning why she could use a portion of her public assistance allocations (i.e., her EBT card) to purchase a pack of cigarettes.  After leaning on my shopping for a while, I decided to use the adjacent self-checkout.  At the same time, the conflict between the woman and the associate had degenerated into a full-blown shouting match, turning more than a few heads in the store.

To the very end, as I left the store, the young welfare mother was still screaming that the store should take her public assistance.  At the time of this incident, I just shrugged and filed it away under similar confrontations that have occurred in my neighborhood over the years, where questionable behavior among individuals who felt entitled has become an unfortunate norm. Civil behavior, values, social mores, and moral guidelines have all but eroded.

Subjective Observation #1
The more people who are dependent on government handouts, the more votes the left and the Democratic Party can depend on for an ever-expanding welfare state.

Of course, the political and especially poverty entrepreneurs like the Rev Al Sharpton and others have long ago weaponized poverty for their own purposes. They have skillfully created an entire generation of individuals who have incubated, nurtured, and passed on the “wards of the state” disposition in themselves and their children. It is a peculiar, if not tragic, lineage of the welfare state. Regrettably, newly arriving immigrants, both legal and illegal, from places like Somalia, the Congo, and Latin America, also replicate this behavior, which often leads to a culture of poverty and/or government dependence.

Subjective Observation #2
To quote economist Thomas Sowell: "Mystical references to society and its programs to help may warm the hearts of the gullible, but what it really amounts to is putting more power in the hands of bureaucrats."

In the upcoming Congressional Elections, Democrats are savants at leveraging the “food stamps” generation.  They predictably keep their constituents in a permanent stasis of dependency.  At the same time, many within the underclass will continue to accept the cultural-political heresy that racism, sexism, and capitalism are at the root of their lack of social mobility. They have been skillfully engineered over the past sixty years to mimic various manifestations of the secular catechesis of income inequality, when the true problem is more in line with “outcome inequality.”

Subjective Observation #3
When Congress votes for all sorts of benefits, without voting for enough taxes to pay
for them, they get the support of those who have been promised the benefits,
without getting grief from the taxpayers. It's strictly win-win as far as the welfare-
state politicians are concerned. But it is strictly lose-lose, big time, for the country
as deficits skyrocket.

Reflecting back over sixty years ago, during my obnoxious, if not totally capricious, adolescent years, my friends and I would often tease one another about seeing “government welfare cheese or some silver/gold can product” in one another's home.  At times we would out the person (no matter whether it was true or not) about seeing their mama walking down the street with a block of government cheese under her arm.

This was obviously cruel, and we were being a bunch of first-class A-holes. The sense of shame and guilt we were trying to elicit was farcical and misplaced at best. But the fact is, in the late fifties and early sixties, we still felt embarrassed by this, along with many other societal ills that are commonplace today.  It spoke volumes about our enculturation at the time. We had a sense of moral limits, social guardrails, if you will.   We operated with an internal spiritual and social catechesis.  A sense of guilt, shame, and yes, “stigma” that was more helpful in maintaining the civility and social cohesion of the neighborhood than the cultural-political anomie that now exists.

Subjective Observation #4
 The black family survived centuries of slavery and generations of Jim Crow, but a
large portion has disintegrated in the wake of the Liberal/Democrat expansion of
the welfare state.