The Founders’ Model of Welfare Was Better at Fighting Poverty than Modern Liberalism
If both the left and the right want to take seriously the problem of poverty in America, they should read this highly useful and informative piece out today from The Heritage Foundation.
Professor Tom West argues that the Founders’ approach to welfare was far more effective at fighting poverty than the burgeoning welfare state under post-1960s liberalism. The Founders, he says, still have a great deal to teach us. But are we still listening?
From Professor Tom West at The Daily Signal:
Which approach to welfare policy is better for the poor: that of the Founders or that of today’s welfare state?
The more we spend on the poor, the harder it seems for them to attain decent, productive lives in loving families. The federal government has spent $22 trillion on anti-poverty programs since the beginning of the War on Poverty in 1965, but the poverty rate is nearly the same today as in 1969, fluctuating between roughly 11 and 15 percent over that time period.
As I argue in a new essay on “Poverty and Welfare in the American Founding,” these results are bound to continue unless we rethink welfare policy from the perspective of our Founders. Neither the contemporary left nor right in America properly understands their approach.
The left often claims the Founders were indifferent to the poor—suggesting that New Deal America ended callousness and indifference. Indeed, high school and college textbooks frequently espouse this narrative. Many on the right think the Founders advocated only for charitable donations as the means of poverty relief.
Neither is correct. America always has had laws providing for the poor. The real difference between the Founders’ welfare policies and today’s is over how, not whether, government should help those in need.
The Founders
Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin believed government has an obligation to help the poor. Both thought welfare policies should support children, the disabled, widows and others who could not work. But any aid policy, they insisted, would include work-requirements for the able-bodied.
Rather than making welfare a generational inheritance, Franklin thought it should assist the poor in overcoming poverty as expediently as possible: “I am for doing good to the poor.…I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.”
Moreover, local, rather than federal, officials administered this welfare, since they were more likely to know the particular needs of recipients and could distinguish between the deserving poor (the disabled and involuntarily unemployed) and the undeserving poor (those capable of work but preferring not to).
The Founders sought to provide aid in a way that would help the deserving poor but minimize incentives for recipients to act irresponsibly. They wanted to protect the rights of taxpayers by preventing corruption and abuses in welfare aid.
Above all, the Founders saw the family and life-long marriage as the primary means of support for everyone, rich and poor alike.
NEW YORK, NY – SEPTEMBER 10: A homeless man sleeps under an American Flag blanket on a park bench on September 10, 2013 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. As of June 2013, there were an all-time record of 50,900 homeless people, including 12,100 homeless families with 21,300 homeless children homeless in New York City. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images) *** BESTPIX ***
I wrote here and here about the American Founders’ approach to government-funded welfare.
The Founders’ welfare system had three basic principles:
1. It should only be for those who truly need it.
The Founders believed government had an obligation to the governed to provide a safety net, but only for those individuals incapable of providing for themselves, like widows, orphans, the elderly, and the mentally and physically handicapped. If you were capable of working, and refused, government owed you nothing.
2. It should be the bare minimum.
The Founders believed that government should provide the basic necessities of life for those who were incapable of providing for themselves, but it would only be the bare minimum. This meant that you would have food to eat and a place to sleep free of charge, but nothing much beyond that. In other words, welfare was not meant to be comfortable.
3. It should be done at the state and local level, NEVER the national.
The Founders believed that the form of government closest to the individual could best take care of the individual if necessary. This meant all welfare would come from the local and state authorities. The national government was too remote and too general to ever be suited to providing welfare. As a result, poor houses, orphanages, and insane asylums were built by local authorities, at public expense. Churches and neighborhoods also gave some relief.
Today, we have completely abandoned the Founders’ system.
Professor West continues:
Modern Welfare
By the mid-20th century, intellectual opinion began to peel away the stigma attached to the behavioral aspects of poverty, and progressive politicians increased the benefits and number of welfare recipients. …
Until the mid-1960s, free markets, secure property rights, strong family policy and minimal taxation and regulation supported a culture of work and entrepreneurship. But through the rise of modern liberalism’s redefinition of rights and justice, welfare was officially reconceived as a right that could be demanded by anyone in need, regardless of conduct or circumstances.
Among the most destructive features of the post-1965 welfare regime has been its unintentional dismantling of the family. By making welfare wages higher than working wages, the government essentially replaced fathers with a government check. The state became many families’ primary provider.
Even more perverse, for many single mothers, marrying a working man may actually be a financial burden rather than a support because the marriage can diminish government benefits.
Though modern welfare programs grant more benefits to a greater number of individuals than the Founders ever fathomed, the Founders’ approach to welfare policy was effective in providing for the minimal needs of the poor and dramatically reducing poverty over time. Based on today’s living standards, the poverty rate fell from something like 90 percent in the Founding era to 12 percent by 1969. …
What do you think of this?
from The Federalist Papers http://bitly.com/2q7bCYy
via IFTTT HILARIOUS Meme About Social Security That’s Guaranteed To Infuriate Liberals http://bitly.com/2q7bCYy