The Injustice of the Welfare State

There seems to be a rising tide of outrage sweeping the nation. It is directed at the unjust plan of President Obama and the Democrats in Congress to nationalize health care.

Whatever the merits of the plan, it will clearly not let Americans alone in their current health arrangements. It will nudge them, and pretty soon shove them, into a one-size-fits-all government program.

There are no doubt many reasons inspiring the Democrats towards this goal. Let us at least acknowledge the idealism behind the politics: the desire to give to every person, regardless of means, a decent health care free of financial worry.

We may perhaps be excused for thinking our liberal friends rather like Dorothea Brooke, for whom "every [notion] is apt to conjure up wonder, hope, belief, vast as a sky, and colored by a diffused thimbleful of matter in the shape of knowledge." It's a wonderful thing to imagine life freed of its fears and its dangers: but is it possible? Would it even be life?

The problem is that between the wish and the result is a monstrous injustice. And it is an injustice that lays heavily upon every one of us.

The welfare state is an injustice that is forced upon the rich, the middle class, and the poor.

For the rich, who shoulder most of the tax burden in these modern times--both as a fraction of their income and as an overall fraction of the taxes collected--the injustice is simple. Their money is taken away from them and spent by the political system. That means they have less money for houses, movables, objets d'art and investing in their businesses. Perhaps we should not care too much about all that. But it is true that all that money would go into jobs of one kind or another. And maybe it would be better spent by the rich than by the politicians.

The welfare state is also unjust to the middle class. It forces them to buy education from the government, and it shoves them into the health-care options, retirement provisions, and insurance subsidized or compelled by the political system. A mother might want to send her child to a special school adapted to the special needs of her child. That is hard to do when you are paying school taxes. A family might want to save up to buy a business. That is hard to do when you are forced to save for retirement using the government's Social Security system, and forced to provide for unemployment using the government's unemployment taxes. Saving up to buy a business is no different from any other saving. But the government says no. First you must pay into our system. Then, if you have anything left over, you can contribute to your own plans for the future.

But this is mere bagatelle. For the rich and the middle class, the welfare state's injustices are light to moderate. It is the poor that really suffer from the welfare state.

Perhaps the most significant burden on the poor is the one-two combination of compulsory education and child-labor laws. If we really cared about the poor we would provide simple schools that provided basic literacy and numeracy, and then we would let the kids start work at ten or twelve. And the terms of work would be simple. No complicated taxes and requirements. Just work compensated by payment in cash or in kind.

Yes but what about the poor getting into college and becoming doctors and lawyers. If they leave school at ten, they will never get to college! Look nobody is forbidding the poor from getting an education. All we are saying is that the poor shouldn't be forced to go to school, and shouldn't be prevented from working.

The poor are not like you and me. They live by informal exchange of favors and labor. Maybe this month a family has a crisis, so the kid must be pulled out of school to help his parents. But the formal economy works with rigid rules and substantial taxes. No way can an employer afford all the taxes and employment rules when operating a small business in the inner city.

But right now the poor are screwed every which way. The police don't police; the garbage isn't picked up; there are street people hustling illegal businesses all over. Businesses have to pay off the politicians to get any services at all. And people with connections get all the money for grants and subsidized loans.

There's a word to describe how we got into this frightful mess. Liberals. Liberals wrote all the laws to create social benefits that all have their unintended consequences. The trouble is that when the economy has to pay for an expensive health sector and an expensive education sector then the taxes that go to pay for it crowd out the marginal businessman and worker. You end up with an economy that works pretty well for the middle-class worker with a half-decent education. But everyone below that level finds themselves struggling, forced to live and work in the informal economy, and they can't figure out why.

This is the great Question of our age. We want everyone to enjoy the benefits of material prosperity and the health and freedom from want and fear that it provides. But surely there is a better way than the bossy, interfering way of our liberal masters.

Yet here we are, about to ratchet up the bossiness index with a huge, central, bureaucratic mess of a health program that will put the government's nose even further into our lives. It will increase the marginal tax rate on all Americans and push the poor further into the informal, underground economy.

There's got to be a better way.

"What's In It for Me"

Did you know that the insurance companies are to blame? That's the current tactic for President Obama and Nancy Pelosi as they try to rescue their floundering plan for a government takeover of health care.

According to Sheryl Gay Stolberg and David M. Herszenhorn at The New York Times:

Congressional Democrats and leading advocacy groups are laying the groundwork for an August offensive against the insurance industry as part of a coordinated campaign to sell the public on the need for reform.

It's a cunning ploy. Having got the insurance companies more or less on board, now the politicians decide to box them in on the last lap.

The administration's problem is that there is nothing in the current plan for the average American. Almost all Americans have health insurance. So the Dems are going to insist that the evil insurance companies remove their limitations on pre-existing conditions. Says David Axelrod: "Our job is to help folks understand how this will help them." As the Times as it:

With Republicans making headway by casting the legislation as a costly government takeover, Democrats have decided they must answer the question on the minds of those now insured: “What’s in it for me?”

The joke is: How can it possibly be the fault of the insurance companies? They are just about the most regulated industry in the United States. Whatever they do must already have the imprimatur of government.

Still, I heard from two different people over the last week about the perfidy of the insurance companies, so the Democrats must be on to something.

But hey! If we want to stop the insurance companies from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions, let's do it!

But here's another idea. Let's do the opposite. Let us permit the insurance companies to offer any kind of policy they want, without the inclusions that politicians force them to include. Then people could buy simple insurance against big, but unusual, risks, and pay for day-to-day care out of pocket.

I know. Dream on.

Yes, a Teachable Moment, Mr. President

Everyone knows what a "teachable moment" is. It's when the liberal brings down the hammer and you are supposed to admit that you were wrong about some arcane point of liberal theology.

So when President Obama mumbled something about a teachable moment with respect to the arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., ordinary Americans were ready to upchuck

But the racial incident now known as Gates-gate is showing signs of breaking the mold. Because the rules have changed.

No doubt Harvard scholar "Skip" Gates thought he was onto a sure thing when he railed against the white cop called out to investigate a reported burglary at his house in Cambridge, MA. After all, when you are a famous black-studies professor you can't turn down an opportunity for publicity. Publicity is the name of the game.

And no doubt President Obama thought he was onto a sure thing when he injected the Gates incident into an awkward press conference about his awkward health policies.

And no doubt New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd just thought it was a cheap opportunity to say something clever about "the arc of civil rights dramas from Jim Crow to Jim Crowley." What a humiliation for a man like Gates who summers on Martha's Vineyard, darling!

But it didn't turn out that way, because the rules have changed.

For years and years, liberals have been telling us that blacks can't be racist because they don't have any power. This has always been a lie because the whole point of the Civil Rights Acts was to give blacks power, to establish that blacks had the power to vote, and send federal troops to enforce that right if that's what it took.

Never mind about that. Liberals do stuff like that all the time. It is called abuse of power.

What tripped up Gates and Obama is that the Gates incident involved two powerful black men and a white man who, of all things, is a racial profiling instructor. It also involved routine audio and video of the incident. So it turned out that the white cop was truthful in his report of the incident and Gates was not.

Also, as Michael Barone points out, the guy facing the big risk in the Gates affair was the white cop. If he had lied (as Gates appears to have done) or if he had tried a cheap shot (as Obama appears to have done) then all the power of the race industry would have descended upon him without mercy.

Now we learn that the black cop photographed at the Gates incident, Sgt. Leon Lashley, has also suffered in this incident. He sent a letter to President Obama with Sgt. Crowley telling him that he's been attacked as an Uncle Tom for his support of his fellow police officer.

Well now. Isn't that interesting.

It's a reminder, as if we needed one, that in all the political maneuvering of the "Do You Know Who I Am" people there are usually innocent victims. In the liberal race politics of the last half century the victims have usually been the white working class, suitably scapegoated as "red-necks."

But now we are reminded that it's not just the white working class that gets caught in the cross-currents of liberal racism and power politics. Blacks get tossed around as well.

Yes indeed. We just had a teachable moment. But the guys that need a spot of "larnin'" probably aren't going to get the message. Professor Gates ought to be ashamed. President Obama ought to be ashamed. But don't wait around for that to happen.

But we can take comfort in the honest and honorable conduct of Sgt. Crowley and Sgt. Lashley. There are actually a lot of worthy Americans in these United States who do the right thing, even when nobody is looking. They even do the right thing after their betters have lashed their backs to ribbons with the cat-o-nine-tails.

It's enough to make you proud.

ObamaCare: Defeat Now or Later

Either ObamaCare will pass in some form, or Congress will buckle and pass a face-saver. Either way, the question is: What happens next?

People who are adamant about killing ObamaCare at once fear that once the new subsidies and special-interest deals have been enacted into law we will never get back to the status quo ante. On this view we must defeat it now or water it down to a minor new subsidy for the uninsured.

Then there's the Leninist argument: the worse the better. On this view we need a political cataclysm in order to reverse the century-long trend of the welfare state. What better than for the Democrats to pass an unpopular government health takeover in the teeth of grass-roots opposition that gets stuck in the gullet of the American people?

I admit that my preference is for ObamaCare to pass and for the American people to rise up and send a president and Congress to Washington in 2013 to repeal it. I don't think that we can avoid this kind of confrontation if we are ever to reverse the welfare state and chart a new course based on the principle articulated by British Conservative Party leader David Cameron.

Cameron said: There is such a thing as society. It's just not the same thing as the state.

This articulates the essential conservative position. If you want to do societal things, like help women and children, you don't have to do it with a government adminstrative program. There is another way. In fact it is better not to get the government involved.

Why? Why shouldn't we have government programs where we come together to do things collectively? Well, the simple answer is: Force. Whenever government does something, it does it with force. Do we want health care to be a question of force, where we force some people to provide health care for other people? Do we want education to be a question of force. where children are forced to go to school for twelve years according to a syllabus that has been determined by political chicanery?

Conservatives say that there has to be a better way than force. In fact, there is. And if you want to know what it looks like, look around you at the amazing things that get done without government compulsion.

Sitting Next to a Liberal

I just finished Harry Stein's I Can't Believe I'm Sitting Next to a Liberal. It's a quick read, and full of fun and frolic.

But underneath is the rather grim truth. Liberals don't want to hear from the loyal opposition to them, the ruling elite. The educated progressive class ditch friends that disagree with them. They ditch academics that disagree with them. And they think it is perfectly OK, as the book's title says, to embarrass a conservative at the dinner table.

Conservatives can get mad at this, but getting mad rather misses the point. Because it is worse tham that.

One of the key things that any political elite must do is keep in touch with the plebs. Any ruling class--and the progressive educated elite is one such--will commit injustices and will be corrupt. Power corrupts, as Action wrote.

So if you are serious as a political elite you must make sure that you are listening to the people. Not because it is the right thing to do, but because it is the necessary thing to do.

By keeping in touch with the people you get to know what is bothering them. That means that you can figure out how to diffuse their anger and perpetuate your power.

If the liberals have stopped listening then they are shortening the life of the Liberal Era. Because they are raising the odds that some day soon, some conservative will raise a head of rebellion against the liberal power elite. And if liberals are blindsided by the rebellion, they won't be able to react appropriately and decisively, as a power elite must do. So maybe one day soon a routine injustice will spark a major movement and end up toppling the liberal elite from its perch.

Or maybe liberals will wake up just in time.

But according to Harry Stein, liberals are so deeply embedded in their liberal enclaves that it is probably too late for them to wake up. Their ideological conformity is so deep that nothing can disturb their dogmatic slumber.

Palin Loaded for Bear

Some how I've gotten the idea in recent months that Sarah Palin couldn't take it. She was whining too much at the media instead of taking it like a man. I don't know where I got the idea. I must have read it, and heard it from every liberal friend.

Anyway, what would a liberal know about Sarah Palin?

But the Palin exit speech, delivered at the inauguration of her successor as Alaska Governor, certainly didn't sound like a whimper. It sounded like a declaration of war.

Palin spent a lot of time talking about the armed forces, and then just to emphasize the point, reminded the media that the armed forces were there to protect them. Oh, and by the way, lay off the children of my successor, she added.

Then it was on to remind everyone of her extraordinary record as governor, getting the Alaska gas pipeline off dead-center.

Here's how it sounded to me. Palin is positioning herself as the candidate of conservatives and moderates. She's not really running as a movement conservative but as an American patriot who believes in America, independence, self-reliance, faith, reform, small government, and neighbors.

Who believes in that sort of stuff? Well, there's the 40 percent of Americans that style themselves as conservative, and the 35 percent that style themselves as moderate. You could say it's a start.

There are two kinds of politicians in America. There is the kind like President Obama that follows the liberal trade-winds. It's the kind that hopes, by staying right in the middle of their political party, that she'll eventually be rewarded.

Then there are the politicians that make their own weather. I am thinking Ronald Reagan. Even in 1980 he ran as the outsider. Even in 1980, after a decade and a half in national politics he just wasn't considered "safe."

Sarah Palin is like that.

It's been pretty obvious since Palin first emerged as a national politician that she makes her own weather.

But that won't make any difference to the doubters. People will be predicting that she just doesn't have what it takes right up until the day of her election as President of the United States.

Obama Wasn't Elected to Go Liberal

As President Obama pushes his government takeover of health care his approval numbers are tanking. What's going on?

Clark Judge thinks he knows. The American people didn't elect Obama to implement a liberal agenda. They elected him to rein in government spending.

What the Obama people failed to understand was that the election of Mr. Obama in 2008 began in 2005. That was when pollsters started picking up that a big segment of George W. Bush’s 2004 vote was becoming disaffected, not over Iraq (as many Democrats later imagined) but over spending. This group was enraged by the growing deficits, saw passage of the Medicare prescription drug benefit in the first Bush term as a minus, not a plus, and later in the second term was repulsed by the emblematic Alaskan bridge to nowhere. So they abandoned the GOP in 2006. In 2008, they remained disaffected. Many were attracted to Mr. Obama personally and embraced the historic change he seemed to epitomize regarding race. The result was that again they voted Democrat.

The Obama people must know this. After all, they ran a center-campaign full of talk about transparency, getting rid of corruption and lobbyists, and choice. Just like the congressional Democrats ran in 2006.

Evidently they don't care. They figure, following Rahm Emanuel, that you should never let a crisis go to waste. They believe that if they rush through their agenda it will be a fait accompli and will never be reversed.

Well, maybe they are right. It worked for Social Security and the Great Society. Why not try it on again?

But there is another possibility. The Dems might remind people why they voted for Ronald Reagan in 2000 and against Clinton in 1994. For the new generation of voters, the ones who believed that Obama meant "change," it might teach them a bit of political reality.

For the truth is that the Democratic Party is not the party of hope and change. It is the party of the welfare-state status quo. It is the party of patronage. It is the party of the education blob. It is the party of the trial lawyers. It is the party of extreme environmentalism.

Every American voter needs to be reminded of this from time to time. And every new voter needs to be taught it.