Advanced societies, we are told, provide for their weakest members. Liberals proudly espouse this principle via the concept of the “social safety net.” The safety net, whose first roots in the USA stretch back to the beginning of the 20th century, really started to take shape with the New Deal and exploded with the Great Society. One aspect of this safety net includes retirement and disability benefits, unemployment insurance, various welfare programs, health insurance for retirees, the poor, and, most recently, ObamaCare. These all represent government declaring it would be the gate keeper for transfer payments from some members of society to others. Another aspect, one that many might not quite so obviously recognize as part of the safety net, is the proliferation of regulatory and watchdog agencies that oversee so many aspects of our lives, from our workplace to the food we eat to our consumer purchases to the homes we live in to every mode of travel we use. Yes, we have innumerable nets under and around us as we attempt to live our lives in this, the land of the free.
Arguing against elements of the safety net is a treacherous activity, one that routinely scares many politicians off and provides ample fodder for the foes of the few who dare. It makes great sound bite to claim that one’s opponent wants to throw Grandma in the street and to allow immoral corporations to poison our food. Without such arguments, however, the safety net grows into a giant mass of cobwebs, slowing and ultimately immobilizing us in a cocoon of hindrances and restrictions put there “for our own good.” We find we are less able to function, to be productive economically, to move about as we wish, to control our futures and to lead our lives with liberty and in the pursuit of happiness.
So, argue we must, despite the peril and the near-certain ad hominem accusations that will ensue. One argument, one big question I have for the proponents of the safety net, is “for whom are you really doing all this?”
American society has long demonstrated itself to be generous, charitable and caring for its members. During difficult times, communities pull together and those who have tend help those who need, so much so that people will send money half way around the world to help disaster victims. Charitable organizations abound, voluntary efforts spring up, get organized and produce results. But, at several points in our history, usually in times of crisis, opportunistic politicians falsely conflated “society” with “government” and institutionalized the effort of caring for each other. The motivations of the pols who did so isn’t as germane to the story as the attitudes of the people who put them in power, who voted them into office.
Do we accept the premise that liberals and progressives advanced politicians who sought to build the safety net because they cared for the needy? Or, might we consider the possibility that these voters were really voting to absolve themselves of responsibility? With Social Security in place, one’s need to save for retirement is reduced. With Medicare, one’s need to plan for health insurance later in life is relieved. With dozens if not hundreds of regulatory agencies watching every aspect of life, one’s duty to look out for one’s self, to pay attention to what one buys or does, is diminished. And, with a seemingly endless number of government assistance programs and a seemingly bottomless pit of money at government’s disposal for distribution to the needy, one doesn’t have to worry as much about being charitable to one’s fellow members of society. Mightn’t there be an element of laziness and selfishness motivating the supposedly altruistic motivation to elect people who’ll build safety nets?
A stand-up comic I heard a few years back related a story about his father, a man, he noted, who had the same size waist that he did in high school. When he asked his father how he stayed slim all those years, his father’s simple reply was “when my pants get tight, I eat less.” Those are the words and that is the attitude of an adult, someone who takes responsibility for himself and regulates his behavior in a responsible fashion. Being an adult means being responsible, and responsibility includes living within one’s means, planning for one’s future, taking care about the decisions one makes every day, and looking out for one’s own. But, doesn’t the safety net absolve one of many of the trappings of adulthood? How many elements of the safety net replace the things that adults do? The chattering classes have offered countless laments about how young people are more immature than ever, that the nation is growing ever more infantilized, and about man-children who, in their mid-20s and later, are either still living with their parents or living paycheck-to-paycheck and refusing to “grow up.” Doesn’t the safety net enable and incentivize the delay in the onset of adulthood?
Safety nets provided by the government establish the government as a father figure, providing that which people should look to provide for themselves and protecting against perils real and imagined. The father figure is an imperfect one, because it doesn’t offer the discipline that fathers do, nor does it kick the child out of the house when it’s time for the child to grow up. It’s there to be a wallet and a watchdog, and it makes life easier for those who don’t want to take charge of their own destinies.
Some will argue that this is a harsh indictment, that it’s cold, callous and selfish in its own way, that it ignores the fact that there are needy, that there are those who cannot take care of themselves, and that people do genuinely, through no fault of their own and not for any lack of effort, find themselves in difficult times. Of course there are people who need help in our society. Remember, though, society is not government, and government is not society. Throughout the history of this nation, when our friends and neighbors fell down, we’ve picked them up. We’ve known our friends and neighbors, we’ve lived our lives with them, we’ve come together with them in good times and bad, because that’s what adults do. We’ve organized ourselves by building charities, because that improves the efficiency of the help we want to provide.
What happens, though, when private charity and voluntary individual efforts aren’t enough? This is the prevailing retort to the proposition that safety nets exist apart from government. Skip the questionable validity of the presumption (the question is posed as “when,” not “if,” indicating that it’s a given that private resources fall short), and look to answer to this question by observing the results of 75 years of safety nets. The welfare rolls continually expand, the number of people on public assistance grows and grows, the number of government programs meant to help the needy climbs ever upward, the scope of government regulation of our lives expands… in short, we can surmise that all this help the government’s providing is making things worse, not better. A “War on Poverty” was declared half a century ago, yet are we close to any sort of “victory” today?
Why might this be? Why would safety nets, meant to ease worry and mitigate risk, be detrimental to society? A part of the answer, of course, lies in the aforementioned absolving of responsibility. Another lies in the government’s substitution for and displacement of the community bonds that foster people looking out for each other. If a faceless, dispassionate and remote government is presumed to “be there” if your neighbor needs help, you’re not only off the hook, it may very well be harder for you yourself to help your neighbor. This substitution was a feature and a goal of the socialist societies of the 20th century, which saw any allegiance to entities and groups other than the government as a conflict of loyalty and thus as a threat. And yet another part of the answer lies in the perverting of incentives. If you expect that there may be a rainy day, you’re more likely to plan for it. If you want a better lifestyle, and there’s no one out there to hand it to you, your only choice is to work for it. On the other hand, if you’re being given money or the things that money buys, and working to improve your lot puts that at risk, there’s incentive not to work.
Consider, also, the signal we receive nowadays about the fruitlessness of frugality, personal responsibility and self-reliance. Because government continues to grow faster than the revenue stream that funds it, the nation borrows money. There is enormous incentive for the government to keep its borrowing costs as low as possible, and coincidentally we see laughably low interest rates paid on savings. The income tax system is highly progressive, with those who earn more expected to pay a substantially greater percentage of what they earn to the government in order to sustain the safety nets. Work hard, save your money, and you end up feeling like a fool when you can’t earn enough on your savings to cover inflation and when your income is looked at as a source to support others. In parallel, endlessly expanding regulation supplants your ability to make choices about what you eat, drink, buy, travel in and so forth. All this works to establish a mind-set of dependency on government instead of self-reliance.
The next question might be “so what?” What’s the problem with building safety nets, if they do in fact help the needy and absolve us from having to take risks? What’s wrong with letting government handle all this? Why not forego some liberty for security? It would be very appealing if it actually worked. The problem is, it doesn’t.
Our social safety nets are unsustainable. Social Security and Medicare/aid are underfunded to the tune of a HUNDRED TRILLION DOLLARS (before factoring in ACA). In an era where mind boggling numbers are bandied about casually and recklessly (people barely blink at the mention of a billion dollars worth of government spending any more), this liability remains incomprehensibly large. The same is true for other transfer payments, and the incentives associated with them create positive pressure for more. That money has to come from somewhere – government either borrows it or takes it from the productive. Both are economically harmful, and in harming the economy, the revenue stream that sustains the safety nets suffers. Couple that with the metastatic spread of regulation, and we end up with a government that is killing its society in order to protect it. And, along the way, the safety net, which should be a “catch me if I fall” last resort has become a “hold me up forever” platform.
None of this matters to those who claim the moral high ground in their insistence on a government-provided safety net. There’s ample evidence, though that this insistence isn’t about actually tending to the needy as much as it is an excuse to emplace safety nets for themselves. It’s sold as the “true measure of a society,” but it does more to break society down than to strengthen or validate it. The safety net is an unburdening, an infantilization, an absolution, and an abandonment of responsibility. It enables people to pretend they care about others while offloading the responsibility for that care onto others. It’s not moral to use the force of government to build your safety net, and it’s not being charitable when you give away someone else’s money.
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