My Thoughts on Welfare

I will start with the writings of Ayn Rand. While I don't ascribe to absolutely everything Rand believes, I find her reasoning most profound and balanced.

Morally and economically, the welfare state creates an ever accelerating downward pull. Morally, the chance to satisfy demands by force spreads the demands wider and wider, with less and less pretense at justification. Economically, the forced demands of one group create hardships for all others, thus producing an inextricable mixture of actual victims and plain parasites. Since need, not an achievement, is held as the criterion of rewards, the government necessarily keeps sacrificing the more productive groups to the less productive, gradually chaining the top level of the economy, then the next level, then the next. (How else are unachieved rewards to be provided?)

There are two kinds of need involved in this process: the need of the group making demands, which is openly proclaimed and serves as a cover for another need, which is never mentioned—the need of the power-seekers, who require a group of dependent favor-recipients in order to rise to power. Altruism feeds the first need, statism feeds the second, Pragmatism blinds everyone—including victims and profiteers—not merely to the deadly nature of the process, but even to the fact that a process is going on. - “A Preview,” The Ayn Rand Letter, I, 23, 1.

Our country will continue in its ever downward spiral until we wake up and realize the flawed nature of a welfare system of government. Many in our society have come to believe that government-sponsored welfare is the fairest, just, and kind way to help raise up those less fortunate than others. Herein is the major problem. When we continue to believe that the achievements and results of hard work, sound fiscal management, wise decision-making, and productive endeavors are somehow fortuitous, in other words, a matter of luck, it is only a small step to view the opposites of these qualities as a simple case of misfortune. Only those who received wealth by lottery or inheritance could be considered fortunate. It's a stretch to call those who inherit wealth as fortunate as it discounts the efforts of their predecessors. Only those in poverty through their inability to take advantage of even the smallest opportunities in life could truly be considered unfortunate. Those are the citizens we need to help. The level at which we are forced to meet the demands of those who consider themselves less fortunate will continue to increase at exponential levels and those who need this to happen in order to preserve their power will relentlessly promote the notion that welfare is the fair thing to do.