Critics of welfare generally miss the most damning criticism in their attacks. This failure frequently allows the debate to mistakenly focus on how to improve welfare or make it work better or keep those who "do not deserve it" from drawing benefits.As soon as critics allow debate to take such a track, the critics of welfare have lost the debate. (fn1)
Critics who appropriately call for welfare's abolition.** sometimes attack the very morality of a system which forcibly takes from some in order to give to others, or they attack welfare as creating economic distortions by discouraging productive efforts and encouraging or at least facilitating the very behavior or lifestyle which lead to poverty. (fn2)
As intellectually compelling as it may be to address the morality or economic effects of welfare, both criticisms lack a powerful political punch. (fn3)
The most effective rhetorical attack on welfare would wed it to the eternal hot button issue of crime; the best way to tie welfare and crime is to show that welfare is a government legitimation of theft, as discussed below as the "Robin Hood factor". (fn4)
Welfare fosters crime in a multitude of ways:
1) As chronicled by Senator Pat Moynihan in 1965 (fn5) and again nearly 20 years later by Charles Murray, (fn6) welfare actually results in a breakdown of the two parent family, leaving children in the home without adequate supervision, without the resource contributions of a second parent, (fn7) without role models of working parents bearing their responsibilities, frequently leaving the children with no male role model in the home, leading children to accept lives of transient personal relationships with live-in lovers floating in and out of homes with disturbing frequency. Children in such homes are deprived exposure to the kind of long-term commitment and sacrifice which are two of the cornerstones of marriage (fn8)... nor do they see the kind of deep love and desire to foster growth (either of family or at least of the marriage partner) which are the other two cornerstones of marriage. Absent the moral compass and guidance coming from family, children in welfare families are left to drift. But the breakdown of the two parent family harms society far beyond its impact on children; studies show one of the most important factors in setting a criminal straight is the responsibility of caring for a family, (fn9) presumably this is equally true in keeping those tempted to become criminals from committing crime in the first place.
2) Work schedules impose a certain discipline upon those who work. Getting up at 6am five days a week, for example, requires the person also be off of the street and in bed before midnight. Working for an employer who imposes performance requirements discourages excessive drug or alcohol consumption which would interfere with that performance. The reason the old saw that "idle hands are the devil's workshop" is an undeniable truth is that people expending energy and time on productive work have far less time or energy available for destructive criminal behavior. (fn10)
3) Welfare (fn11) allows people to avoid the consequences of their actions, and in the process encourages them to engage in increasingly risky behavior. It discourages thrift or investment or preparing for the future by assuring that government will take care of anyone who "needs help." "If the old American culture and the old American character were rational responses to the riskiness of life, you cannot alleviate that riskiness and expect the culture to persist." (fn12)
4) Welfare strips a person of any sense of pride or self worth. For the person who already sees himself or herself as worthless, it is no great distance to move into criminal behavior. (fn13)
5) Welfare requirements generally prohibit recipients from having anything in the way of assets while drawing benefits, meaning the virtues of thrift and savings are not only discouraged by welfare, those virtues are expressly forbidden. The person with literally "nothing to lose" is far more likely to engage in criminal behavior than the person with a great deal of personal investment which would be lost on criminal prosecution.
6) Welfare often essentially encourages applicants to lie and commit fraud in order to qualify or to remain on the system; once such an applicant has lied and committed fraud it makes the progression to other crime that much easier.
7) Welfare benefits, drawn from no particular individual, and received only after dealing with an impersonal bureaucracy, both dehumanize recipients and cause recipients to view the rest of society in an impersonal manner. It is, after all, not an individual human with a face giving the welfare check or subsidized housing; it is instead a bureaucratic "system." If others are viewed not as individual human beings, but instead as "part of the system," then it is far easier to inflict violence or fraud or theft upon them. (fn14)
8) Welfare programs, through housing projects, segregate people both racially and according to their efforts to remove themselves from poverty, far more rigidly than economic forces or racism ever could have. Those who save their money in order to buy their own home, or those who find and hold a job are forced out of subsidized housing. This denies the young of the positive role models they might otherwise find in their neighbors, even when not present in their home. (fn15) This also amplifies the "us" and "them" attitude which heightens racial tension and racial violence.
9) Welfare locks recipients out of the capitalist system; benefits go only to those with no meaningful property or resources or savings... in other words, with no capital. The true tragedy of this is that many of the values society has long held most dear are fostered most certainly by home ownership... and welfare discourages or even prevents home ownership instead of fostering it. By preventing welfare recipients from owning their own homes and are instead "renters", welfare creates entire communities of people who do not own their homes, and the absence of home ownership also means the absence of the positive attitudes such ownership fosters. (fn16)
10) Welfare shreds the social network that creates our system of moral values. Absent welfare, a person in great economic need turns to family or friends for help. Most often it is family: parents, siblings, aunts, uncles or grandparents. Traditionally these relatives require some conformity to their moral values in order to continue receiving help. (fn17) Welfare eliminates the economic power family members have to influence behavior and replaces it with no moral scheme whatsoever. By allowing those living on the economic margins to be less financially dependant on family and friends, welfare also increases the mobility of the poor, further weakening the role of family and community in the morality of the poor. (fn18) (It should be noted that moves in pursuit of jobs have a similar social cost, but that the person making such a move is far more likely to have the kind of strong moral underpinning to survive a move without the harmful effects seen in those who are not in pursuit of work and a chance to better their lives through their own efforts.)
11) But perhaps the most important way welfare leads to crime is virtually never addressed: the "Robin Hood" factor. By forcibly taking (through taxes) from those who are productive, and giving that which they produce to those who did not produce it, the government is playing Robin Hood, and telling welfare recipients it is perfectly acceptable to forcibly take from those who have earned what they have and to give to those who have earned nothing. (fn19)
It is the last of these that can be the most potent political tool in opposing welfare. Most potent by attacking welfare at its very core, not around the edges, and further through playing directly to the average person's resentments about welfare -- that money is being taken forcibly from their wallets and given to people they do not know and who they believe frequently use it in unacceptable ways. Those paying the bill essentially view welfare as a form of theft, and rightly or wrongly they intuitively believe that those receiving their tax dollars are responsible for most criminal behavior. (fn20)
The Robin Hood nature of welfare (forcibly taking from the productive to give to the unproductive) unequivocally communicates the message that it is acceptable to take from the productive and to give to the unproductive. Society may SAY theft is unacceptable, and it may even pass laws that define forcibly taking property from one to give to another as illegal, but when society very openly and with great fanfare does through government that which it with a wink and a nod defines as illegal for the individual, the actions indeed speak louder than words.
In imitation of the government, individuals take it upon themselves to take from the productive and to give to the unproductive -- in other words to steal things for themselves. This is NOT to say that most criminals are welfare recipients or that most recipients are thieves. Many criminals would never even qualify for welfare, but they see government forcibly take from some to give to others and they follow that lead themselves, perhaps concluding that government directed redistribution of wealth is not happening rapidly (or broadly) enough. (fn21)
The losers are not simply the honest, hard-working people who are direct victims of crime. The losers are also all of those sucked into the web of welfare and never allowed to escape.
How to present this message? It would be most effective in Reaganesque style stories, not George Wallace-style bombast. It should be without any tone that could be taken as condemnation of the recipients. The attack should be on the SYSTEM of welfare and not on those drawing it, because the SYSTEM is intangible and impersonal while those drawing welfare are flesh and blood, frequently sympathetic figures when considered as individuals. Those who have Wallace style hatred in their heart will have those sentiments adequately stirred by a gentle message, and it is only a gentle message which will stir the support of the non bigot.
Through all of this, it is crucial to control the rhetoric. It is important both to avoid allowing the matter to be framed as a conflict between the "haves" and "have nots", and to instead frame it as the "productive" and the "unproductive;"(fn22) and to also avoid allowing the question of funding welfare or continuing welfare being framed as that of "giving benefits to" or "helping" the "needy"(fn23); we must instead at every turn frame the issue as subsidizing crime or fostering crime. A vote to increase welfare spending must not be allowed to be portrayed as a vote on whether to help the needy -- it must instead be painted as vote on increasing crime. (fn24)
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Footnotes **
Even those refusing to take the step of calling for abolishment of welfare would do well to shape their rhetoric as suggested here.Footnote 1:
The welfare system ought not be improved, made work better, or tightened to eliminate the undeserving; it must be abolished. The failure of marginalized opposition to welfare and other issues dealing with expansion of government is forcefully set out by David Frum in his book Dead Right, 1994.Footnote 2:
In his August 1994 Congressional testimony on "entitlement programs," Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation pointed out that welfare operates just as other areas of the economy, in that when you pay for something you get more of it; what welfare pays for is non-work, non-marriage, and illegitimacy.Footnote 3:
The general category of economic criticism takes at least three general strains:
A) That welfare results in lower productivity overall by reducing incentives for the poor to find jobs (low paying though they might be), and by reducing incentives for the most productive to continue to putting their energies into work which government decides through taxation shall be for the benefit of someone else (a welfare recipient). Welfare programs further take surplus capital (essential for economic expansion) from the most productive members of society, denying them the chance to invest in order to increase overall productive capacity.
B) That it distorts economic decision-making by making leisure time more attractive to both the poor and the wealthy than it would be absent welfare, while simultaneously making work or investment less attractive to both the poor and the wealthy than they would be absent welfare. (Hence the truth of Rector's observation noted above.)
C) A less often voiced, economic criticism is perhaps best presented by Milton Friedman.
Friedman illustrates that four different levels of benefits come from different kinds of spending: 1) money of one's own which is controled and spent on oneself produces maximum utility per dollar spent because the person spending the money both has a tremendous incentive to see that the money is well spent (it is after all that person's money) and also knows quite well how to spend it to get a great bang for the buck (because they know what they want and what expenditures will benefit them); 2) money Person A gets from Person B to spend for Person A's own benefit produces considerable utility, but often less than the maximum benefit to society the money could have brought (the spender will see that they enjoy the expenditure and the the money is spent on them in a way that produces the maximum benefit possible for them, but this results in money spent on Person A's consumption which should actually go elsewhere, because the money comes from the wallet of someone else the person doing the spending is not very careful in husbanding the funds and far less of it is invested than should be); 3) money of one's own spent for the benefit of a second person, such as the money a person spends from their wallet on a friend (you carefully watch what you spend, and you will make an effort to see that you buy something appreciated, but you still do not know what your beneficiary will enjoy as well as your beneficiary knows); 4) most inefficient of all is spending Person A does with the money of unknown Person B on a further unknown Person C -- the spender has no real incentive to carefully watch the spending and has no clue whatsoever what will benefit the unknown third person (it is this most inefficient spending which characterizes nearly all social welfare spending).
Important as it is to keep Friedman's analysis in mind, these are economists' arguments and NOT arguments to advance in trying to generate and organize public opposition of welfare. The electorate at large is not moved through logic as easily as through emotion, particularly when the logic of an argument is subtle and theoretical.
(One reason Friedman's observations are seldom voiced to critize welfare may well come from the unfortunate general acceptance of a perversion of economics found in John Rawls' 1971 book Social Justice. Rawls presented the idea that a person with only $100 would get more utility [translated as "benefit" or "pleasure" or "enjoyment"] from an additional $10 made available for his spending than would a person with $100,000 to start. Rawls' arguments may sound good... they simply do not consider the real world. A very big part of Rawls' error comes from a failure to recognize that wealth and poverty in this country are generally a result of individual effort [or lack thereof], and that the reason one person has $100,000 and another has $100 is often a result of the first person being motivated by earning and doing, while the second person sees greater personal benefit from leisure time and immediate consumption instead of investment and delayed gratification. In other words the fact that the person with $100,000 generally continues to work hard to earn even more is very powerful evidence that such person does in fact get more utility from an additional $10 than does the person with $100 who continues to sit on his ass and do nothing to earn anything more. Rawls' approach is nothing but a streetwalker in an evening gown -- perhaps dressed up, but still doing the same thing at the end of the evening as communist systems do.)Footnote 4:
Again, see Frum which covers most of the ways this happens.Footnote 5:
The Negro Family, The Case For National Action, 1965, Office of Policy Planning and Research United States Department of Labor; presented in full with abundant commentary and text of public responses in The Moynihan Report and the Politics of Controversy, 1967, by Lee Rainwater and William Yancy, published by The M.I.T. Press.Footnote 6:
Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950-1980, Charles Murray, 1984.Footnote 7:
See Robert Wright's 1994 book The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and EveryDay Life (significant excerpts of which appear in the August 15, 1994, issue of Time magazine at page 44), and Helen Fischer's The Sex Contract for how humans and human culture evolved with two parents as the base.Footnote 8:
Ever since Marx and Engles, Communists have condemned marriage both as a Bourgious idea and as crucial to Bourgious life. They are right on target. What is upsetting is how little capitalist societies openly recognize this fact. Capitalist societies should hold marriage up as the virtual sacrament it is to capitalism. The investment and sacrifice and commitment essential to the success of capitalism are fostered by marriage and are far more likely to be widely embraced by the society at large if most adults in that society either are married or aspire toward marriage. Writings of Marx and Engles attacking marriage can be found in their joint 1844 work Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, as translated by Martin Milligan, and edited by Lawrence & Wishart, 1961; in their The German Ideology at page 192, 1845-1846; at pages 46-50 and 77- 79 in their Manifesto of the Communist Party written in 1848, as translated by Samuel More, published by the Foreign Languages Publishing House; in Marx's The Class Struggles in France, 1848- 1850 written in 1850; in Karl Marx and Frederich Engles, Selected Works, Vol. 1, London, 1962, edited by Lawrence & Wishart; and see Marxism: The View From America, by Clinton Rossiter, 1960.)Footnote 9:
See Staying Safe: Prison Fellowship's Guide to Crime Prevention, Beth Spring, 1994.Footnote 10:
A regular paycheck might be thought to also reduce the likelihood of criminal behavior, however this is clearly wrong for two reasons. First, such an idea is based on the erroneous assumption that poverty leads to crime, when in fact it is often crime that leads to poverty -- the poverty of the Great Depression led to no significant crime increase, if at all (arguably in large part because government had not yet begun insulating people from the consequences of their irresponsible behavior). Second, welfare recipients often receive enough financial benefit from welfare programs that they are getting every penny as much as they would earn through a job, but the responsibility of work, the feeling of self-worth it creates, and the fact that one does appreciate more what is earned than what is given is far more responsible for behavioral differences than is the level of income.Footnote 11:
For purposes of this paragraph, "welfare" should be considered to include almost any social-welfare program of wealth redistribution or risk spreading by the government, including programs paying for the health care of the poor.Footnote 12:
David Frum Dead Right, 1994. Frum's book forcefully underscores many of the arguments and inherent assumptions made in this suggestion on the rhetorical posture of opposing welfare.Footnote 13:
Welfare denies those on the dole from building the sense of self worth and pride in accomplishment coming from even the most menial of honest work and from supporting oneself, and it denies them from developing an appreciation for personal property which comes from acquiring things by virtue of one's own effort. It should not be surprising for those on welfare to show little respect for others, for life itself, or for authority in general when they are unable to feel any respect for themselves.Footnote 14:
True charity -- such as is offered by local churches -- does exactly the opposite, drawing the giver(s) and recipient closer together, and with both sides knowing the other.Footnote 15:
A friend trying to save money by living near a housing project in a very low income neighborhood tells of going to his car early one morning on the way to work when a seven or eight year old child who lived across the street in the housing project asked him what he was doing so early in the morning. He answered that he was heading to work. The boy asked why. He answered it was to keep his job. The boy asked why. He answered "To earn money." The boy asked why. He answered "To pay my rent, buy food, pay my bills." The boy again asked why.
As they continued to talk, the friend realized the boy was a little old to be a child's typical "Why" stage of questioning everything. The boy simply had never before seen someone go to work, and lived in a home where food stamps, welfare checks, and free housing were the only way of life.Footnote 16:
Once again referring to the work of David Frum in Dead Right, there is ample room to question the assumption of home ownership fostering thrift/investment/responsible behavior or whether it is actually the latter which fosters the former, perhaps it has been socially valuable behavior that lead to home ownership. If positive behavior is actually a mere side effect of pursuing home ownership (that the hard realities of acquiring enough capital to make a down payment and then to maintain monthly mortgage payments requires good behavior), then the cause and effect of home ownership and responsible citizenship may be the opposite of what is normally believed. However, while determining which assumption is right has tremendous importance in determining whether to subsidize home ownership, either assumption is consistent with the arguments presented here: even if it is the difficulty of the process of becoming a home owner which fosters positive behavior and that such positive behavior would not result if homes ownership were made markedly easier, this does not alter one whit the negative effect of government housing projects or other seriously subsidized housing which provide housing to those who have done nothing to earn it.Footnote 17:
See David Frum, Dead Right, 1994.Footnote 18:
Poverty is far more often the result of immoral behavior than immoral behavior is the result of poverty. And by breaking up the family, government operated welfare frequently actually hurts the financial status of those it purportedly helps; by facilitating irresponsible behavior the government is doing on a grand scale the same as a parent who shields a child from any punishment for bad behavior or a family member who covers for a drunk relative and thereby facilitates the alcoholism. ("Tough love" came to be widely accepted in the 1980's as the way for parents to assure that their children became responsible adults. It is no less sound an approach for government in assuring a responsible citizenry at large.) By allowing people to avoid concerns about being fed, clothed and housed if they fail to invest in themselves, government insures that growing numbers will fail to invest in themselves, and in the process lock themselves into both a financial and moral/spiritual poverty which they are unlikely to leave until forced to do so by the economic necessity of termination of subsistence benefits.Footnote 19:
It is crucial to control the rhetoric of the issue by framing it as "those who are productive" or "those who have earned" on one side versus those who are "takers" or "who are not producing" on the other. By allowing welfare advocates to frame the issue as being merely one of the "haves" versus the "have nots" ignores the manner in which those who "have" came to "have" -- they earned it, they produced something. Welfare advocates are intellectually trapped in the economic perversity common to communists and liberal outcome oriented "egalitarians," that wealth is finite and that all society can do is to evenly divide it.Footnote 20:
On this point it is important to understand public perception, but NEVER to openly voice it. It is also of no importance at all, either intellectually or politically, whether this perception is accurate. It is of no importance politically so long as this perception is not actually voiced. It is of no importance intellectually because the operative effect of what does in fact happen ends up the same as if the perception were truth.
One way to effectively voice this is by using very accurate language: tax payers vs. tax takers. This might be one of the most effective rhetorical tools for welfare opponents, simply making very clear that benefits are not manna from heaven given to the deserving unfortunate but are instead transfers of wealth taken from those who earn it and given to those who do not.Footnote 21:
Beyond the benefit of wedding welfare to crime, using this rhetorical attack on welfare has the added advantage of playing into the general anger and bitterness most have toward government itself. Those who do not like government will be heartened to hear anyone refer to government as a thief.Footnote 22:
Liberals and actual communists have for far too long been allowed to frame the issues with language creating the image of an economy made up of a single pie of limited size, which must be evenly divided in order to achieve "equality" and "justice." The truth is that a free market economy allows for infinate number of pies, all of unlimited size. Under a free market system the quantity of pie one enjoys depends principally upon the success of one's efforts to expand it -- in other words we enjoy the pie we produce, and assuring a social and government system which precisely divides the pie is far less important that creating a social and government system conducive to baking. (It is important to point out, however, that even use of the term "pie" plays into the hands of liberals and communists. This is so because pie is only of value when consumed, while the fruits of a real economy may either be consumed or planted to produce more apples for more pies and increasing overall productivity. This point can not be emphasized too strongly; the fruits of the labors of productive members of society can be either consumed at the time or held back and invested to further increase productivity.)
While on the topic of rhetorical choices, some might cringe at the use of the word "communist." And it may be wise to avoid using the term in general public debate, but those supporting this nation's present welfare system ARE communists, regardless what verbal cloak they might wear. Communists deny the value of private property, feel resources should be allocated on the basis of majoritarian whims regarding maximizing social benefit (or most often on the whims of some core group of elite decision makers), and so do liberal. Those supporting welfare cling to the Marxian maxim that assets should be taken by force and then allocated "from each according to his abilities to each according to his needs." The quote comes from Marx's Critique of the Gotha Program, written in 1875, and it is the very core belief of both Communism... and our nation's welfare policy.Footnote 23:
Those still concerned about what would happen to children on the elimination of AFDC and other social welfare programs ostensibly helping children are missing the entire point here. The over-riding purpose of ending welfare is to improve the future for our nation's children. The social course we now hurtle down as a result of welfare is bankrupting the nation morally and spiritually every bit as much as much as it does financially, but it is beyond the mission assumed by this paper to argue that in the absence of welfare children from poor families and their parents would have their basic needs met and could quite conceivably actually be happier than they are with welfare. Those need to be so convinced should read the Charles Murray book, In Pursuit of Happiness and Good Government, 1988, particularly his chapter on material Resources at pages 61-85. Murray quite eloquently points out that if we were to know of our own impending early death and had only two choices of where our children would life after our death, few of us would hesitate choosing between our children living in one of the following: 1) in poverty but learning values and virtuous behavior in a loving home with ample educational opportunity; or 2) living in an affluent home with uncaring adults providing no positive role models or supervision and who would teach the children to accept immorality. This is something we need to consider in dealing with our nation's "social welfare policy." If easing financial poverty for our nation's children increases their moral and spiritual poverty, we have done a dis-service, however well-intentioned it might have been.Footnote 24:
The need for intellectual honesty (and for being prepared for liberal responses) requires recognition of the fact that actual crime rates have either fallen or seen rates of increase slow dramatically in recent years. (See Scott Boggess and John Bound, Did Criminal Activity Increase During the 1980's? Comparisons Across Data Sources, University of Michigan Population Studies Center, 1993; and Marianne W. Zawitz, Patsy A. Klaus, Ronet Bachman and others, Highlights from 20 years of Surveying Crime Victims; the National Crime Victimization Survey, 1973-92, U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1993.) But the perception of crime rates on the rise is so strong that the perception has a life of its own. Crime rates have either fallen or begun to grow more slowly because of the nation's changing demographics and the aging of the Baby Boom. Age reduces criminal activity; as the percentage of the population 15-35 years old becomes smaller, so too does overall criminal activity, for which they as a group are disproportionaly responsible. None of this alters the argument that welfare increases crime, and in fact the extent to which crime rates have failed to fall at a rate remotely as close to the rate predicted from the populations' demographic shift argues something else certainly is at play. That something else is welfare. (It would be most interesting to see a study compare the probability of children from welfare families later engaging in crime as adults versus the probability of such adult criminal behavior by children from similarly situated families which never went on welfare. Such a study would need to look at the adult behavior of those similarly situated as children except for the source of the family income, instead of looking at whether the adults drawing welfare engage in more crimes than adults who have not drawn welfare. The need to so control the study is not because those on welfare are poor and the poor are more likely to be criminals, but is instead because adults on welfare are largely women and women are far less likely than men to be criminals. In other words, without so controlling the makeup of those studied, we would be looking at the wrong universe from which to draw a valid sample. Somehow, in the days of "political correctness," it would seem unlikely we will soon see such a study.)
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