Two weeks ago I wrote about socialist thought creeping into our American life and psyche. One gentleman took my point about unconstitutional actions, like President Biden’s foolhardy and self-serving attempts to forgive everyone’s student loans, as a sign I disapprove of poor people. He proceeded to give me examples of well-meaning, hardworking people who, for diverse reasons, need help from his Church and other charities.
I think by telling me about all the great charitable acts he and others are doing, he actually proves my point rather than the opposite. Since 1964 when President Johnson announced his War on Poverty in his State of the Union address, we, through our federal government, have thrown about $22T into this war. This is the 60th Anniversary of our declaration of war.
I would submit that the primary beneficiaries of this have been the army of civil employees whose living is distributing the money and benefits or checking up on the poor people to try to get them to change their behaviors. Did you know there are over 100 interrelated welfare programs spread across 14 federal departments and agencies? The current spending is in excess of $1T. www.budget.house.gov
Are we winning? Latest figures from 2022 show that 37.9 million Americans are living in poverty, still over 10 percent of our people. President Johnson had emphasized that better education, healthcare and job training would be the key. Yet, the most important indicator of student success is still parental priority and attention to their children’s educational behavior. I am not sure how many different government job training and unemployment agencies there are. But I am sure of one thing—there has never been one that has been eliminated since it began.
If one searches for the number of federal and state employees who work in the welfare system, they will be unable to find any answer quickly. But what does this have to do with Socialism? The fact that we still have a fairly dynamic system of capitalism, warts and all, means that most of us have extra money to share with the people around us. If you do not choose to share, that is your failure.
Another point of which I am sure is that Socialist leaders have better things to do (in their own opinions) than worry about the true welfare of their citizens. How can our children not know that in the last century, governments killed over 200 million of their own citizens? Are we teaching history? https://reason.com/volokh/2022/11/09 When Joe Stalin decided to collectivize agriculture, he did not worry a bit about the millions of farmers who died as a result.
I think that Winston Churchill said it best in a 1945 speech to the House of Commons, “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”
This is not a perfect world and ours is not a perfect country or government. However, each of us has the choice to use the 60 or 70 or 80 plus percent of our income to spend on most anything we wish. If we insist on electing people who promise to take more from everyone else but you in order to give to you, we will deserve what continues to develop.
“A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take everything you have”, President Gerald R. Ford at his swearing in ceremony in August, 1974. And no, he was not a radical conservative.
(Past performance is no guarantee of future results. The advice is general in nature and not intended for specific situations)