Back in the day, before political correctness and the emergence of women as college administrators, liberals liked to lecture us against "legislating morality."
I agree. So that means no welfare state. Because the welfare state is all about the moral imperative to help those caught in poverty through no fault of their own.
And as liberals tell us, government shouldn't legislate morality.
I was inspired to write this because of a minor point in Andrew Roberts' massive biography Salisbury: Victorian Titan about the life of Queen Victoria's last Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury. Around 1899, a minister in Salisbury's conservative government proposed pensions for elderly poor people. Well, why not? It's the right thing to do.
As it happened, there was no money for pensions because the government spent all its money and then some on the Boer War. So it was left to the great Liberal government of 1906 to propose National Insurance and old-age pensions as government programs.
But like the liberals said: government shouldn't be legislating (and taxing) morality.
What should the government be doing? It should be protecting us from existential perils. Like invasion, like urban gangs. Like murderers and rapists.
But what about aliens? Ronald Reagan asked Gorbachev about that.
That is why liberals have come up with climate change as a new way to spend money and feel good about themselves. Climate change is presented as an existential peril, and it is no accident that our liberal friends present hurricanes as evidence of the existential peril of climate change that only government can save us from. Of course, climate change is also about "saving the planet" which is a moral, as well as existential, imperative.
Liberals do the existential peril thing on climate change because they instinctively understand that existential peril is the only real warrant for government action.
But what about the Elizabethan Poor Law? What about welfare? What about wage and hour laws?
Really, I don't think that they were about legislating morality.
The Elizabethan Poor Law, on my view, was a response to the flood of vagrants, "hurled" off the land by their improving landlords. They were becoming an existential threat to the Elizabethan regime, and needed to be neutralized. And the same applied to all the social legislation that began in the late 19th century. The working class wanted stuff, especially free education, and they were going to rip the place up if they didn't get it. So Bismarck enacted the first social insurance legislation, to bring the working class into the system. And others followed. The socialists put a shiny veneer on this response to an existential peril by making a moral imperative out of helping the poor and the oppressed.
The trouble is that when the whole system matures you get what we have today. You have universal pension and health care programs that mainly benefit the middle class wage earner. And you have welfare for the poor that results in social disintegration with men that don't work and women that don't marry. And you have an inflexible system that cannot be reformed in the light of changing life expectancies because nobody will accept a reduction in the benefits that "they paid for."
Nothing will happen to middle-class entitlements until they run out of other peoples' money. And you know what comes next. It's the evergreen headline: "World Ends; Women and Minorities Hardest Hit."
So that is why I demand a separation of existential peril and moral imperative. The government's job is to deal with existential perils, real and imagined. Society's job is to deal with moral imperatives, such as looking after grandma and relieving the poor.
Actually, society does a pretty good job of cleaning up after existential perils like hurricanes. But government does a lousy job of responding to moral imperatives.
Yes but what about education? Good question, senator. In the first place we are doing a lousy job of educating the children of the poor. In the second place the Third World already does a pretty good job with "informal" urban schools that outperform the government schools and provide financial aid for the children of widows and abandoned women. In the third place, the current system of student debt is mad and bad and unjust. In the fourth place a lot of the education of teenagers could be replaced with corporate-sponsored apprenticeships and internships. Teenage kids could go to work and continue their learning, subsidized by the business system and saving the cost of government teachers and bureaucrats. And student debt.
What about pensions? Exactly. On my plan everyone would be encouraged to save at Fidelity and Vanguard for all the risks of life, from unemployment to end of life health care. And it would all be "their" money. One of the great injustices of the modern era is the sequestration of middle-class savings into government "insurance funds." But the problem is that the average punter can't access their own money, not as collateral, not as a rainy-day fund, not for nothing unless approved by the local government bureaucrat. So the whole thing becomes nothing but politicians buying votes with other peoples' money.
But what about the poor? Exactly. People thrown into poverty "through no fault of their own" would be succored by left-wing tech billionaires, on a completely voluntary basis, except that any tech billionaire that did not relieve the poor would be banished from polite society.
But I have a bigger point. It is about what government can do, and what it cannot do.
My point is that when government cranks up spending to meet an existential peril, like the Nazis or the Commies, it is perfectly capable of cranking down the spending when the peril is over.
But when government spends money on moral imperatives, it seems to be impossible ever to reduce spending. And while the reason given is usually moral, as in "the children," the real reason is almost always free stuff. When government goes on a moral crusade, it usually hands out lots of lovely free stuff, and finds it impossible ever to take that free stuff away.
And that, if you ask me, is a crying shame.
I agree. So that means no welfare state. Because the welfare state is all about the moral imperative to help those caught in poverty through no fault of their own.
And as liberals tell us, government shouldn't legislate morality.
I was inspired to write this because of a minor point in Andrew Roberts' massive biography Salisbury: Victorian Titan about the life of Queen Victoria's last Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury. Around 1899, a minister in Salisbury's conservative government proposed pensions for elderly poor people. Well, why not? It's the right thing to do.
As it happened, there was no money for pensions because the government spent all its money and then some on the Boer War. So it was left to the great Liberal government of 1906 to propose National Insurance and old-age pensions as government programs.
But like the liberals said: government shouldn't be legislating (and taxing) morality.
What should the government be doing? It should be protecting us from existential perils. Like invasion, like urban gangs. Like murderers and rapists.
But what about aliens? Ronald Reagan asked Gorbachev about that.
“‘What would you do if the United States were suddenly attacked by someone from outer space? Would you help us?’”
“I said, ‘No doubt about it.’”
“He said, ‘We too.’”Who knew?In other words, everyone understands about existential peril, and an alien invasion would unify the nations of the earth to fight the alien peril.
That is why liberals have come up with climate change as a new way to spend money and feel good about themselves. Climate change is presented as an existential peril, and it is no accident that our liberal friends present hurricanes as evidence of the existential peril of climate change that only government can save us from. Of course, climate change is also about "saving the planet" which is a moral, as well as existential, imperative.
Liberals do the existential peril thing on climate change because they instinctively understand that existential peril is the only real warrant for government action.
But what about the Elizabethan Poor Law? What about welfare? What about wage and hour laws?
Really, I don't think that they were about legislating morality.
The Elizabethan Poor Law, on my view, was a response to the flood of vagrants, "hurled" off the land by their improving landlords. They were becoming an existential threat to the Elizabethan regime, and needed to be neutralized. And the same applied to all the social legislation that began in the late 19th century. The working class wanted stuff, especially free education, and they were going to rip the place up if they didn't get it. So Bismarck enacted the first social insurance legislation, to bring the working class into the system. And others followed. The socialists put a shiny veneer on this response to an existential peril by making a moral imperative out of helping the poor and the oppressed.
The trouble is that when the whole system matures you get what we have today. You have universal pension and health care programs that mainly benefit the middle class wage earner. And you have welfare for the poor that results in social disintegration with men that don't work and women that don't marry. And you have an inflexible system that cannot be reformed in the light of changing life expectancies because nobody will accept a reduction in the benefits that "they paid for."
Nothing will happen to middle-class entitlements until they run out of other peoples' money. And you know what comes next. It's the evergreen headline: "World Ends; Women and Minorities Hardest Hit."
So that is why I demand a separation of existential peril and moral imperative. The government's job is to deal with existential perils, real and imagined. Society's job is to deal with moral imperatives, such as looking after grandma and relieving the poor.
Actually, society does a pretty good job of cleaning up after existential perils like hurricanes. But government does a lousy job of responding to moral imperatives.
Yes but what about education? Good question, senator. In the first place we are doing a lousy job of educating the children of the poor. In the second place the Third World already does a pretty good job with "informal" urban schools that outperform the government schools and provide financial aid for the children of widows and abandoned women. In the third place, the current system of student debt is mad and bad and unjust. In the fourth place a lot of the education of teenagers could be replaced with corporate-sponsored apprenticeships and internships. Teenage kids could go to work and continue their learning, subsidized by the business system and saving the cost of government teachers and bureaucrats. And student debt.
What about pensions? Exactly. On my plan everyone would be encouraged to save at Fidelity and Vanguard for all the risks of life, from unemployment to end of life health care. And it would all be "their" money. One of the great injustices of the modern era is the sequestration of middle-class savings into government "insurance funds." But the problem is that the average punter can't access their own money, not as collateral, not as a rainy-day fund, not for nothing unless approved by the local government bureaucrat. So the whole thing becomes nothing but politicians buying votes with other peoples' money.
But what about the poor? Exactly. People thrown into poverty "through no fault of their own" would be succored by left-wing tech billionaires, on a completely voluntary basis, except that any tech billionaire that did not relieve the poor would be banished from polite society.
But I have a bigger point. It is about what government can do, and what it cannot do.
My point is that when government cranks up spending to meet an existential peril, like the Nazis or the Commies, it is perfectly capable of cranking down the spending when the peril is over.
But when government spends money on moral imperatives, it seems to be impossible ever to reduce spending. And while the reason given is usually moral, as in "the children," the real reason is almost always free stuff. When government goes on a moral crusade, it usually hands out lots of lovely free stuff, and finds it impossible ever to take that free stuff away.
And that, if you ask me, is a crying shame.
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