Welfare - adding psychological damage to injury

reprinted from 8/16/2003

In "Government and the godawful greatest generation", I described the effects of the seemingly innocuous post-WWII veterans benefits... the massive suburban home building boom, which then drained cities of jobs and housing, trapping a large, mostly black, population of Americans. Many of us think of that boom period as the realization of the "American Dream", and for the privileged veterans, it certainly was.

It also created a chasm between the nouveau middle class and the stranded inner-city poor. For those not part of the boom, it removed any hope of working their way up, and it divided our nation racially and psychologically. While the new middle class could envision nothing but future prosperity, the poor lost hope.

The 50's were a time of "can do", of limitless growth... as long as you didn't look beneath the surface. Prior to WWII, Americans of all colors labored and lived together in cities. The effects of the privileged race to the suburbs effectively split black and white into cities vs. suburbs, and psychologically into "them" vs. "us". The inner-city black population was now an embarrassment, shameful by contrast.

The new America responded. Unfortunately, it responded from its new divided, paternalistic viewpoint. Those who had would help those who had not. Naturally, they would do it through government.

So, government welfare programs got a massive new dose of support. AFDC - Aid to Families with Dependent Children - was part of the original Social Security legislation of 1935. Here's a short summary of what happened:

• By the end of 1940, 360,000 families were receiving AFDC.
• In the 50's, AFDC grows by only 110,000 families.
• In the 60's, AFDC grows by a much larger amount of 800,000 families as President Johnson's "War on Poverty" attempts to assist the poor.

AFDC was a major disaster. The "cure" was even worse than the "disease". In the AFDC program the requirements for eligibility essentially amount to:

1. low income,
2. very few assets,
3. dependent children and
4. no man in the household.

Anyone satisfying these requirements was entitled to benefits. And the word entitlement means "right" -- benefits cannot be withdrawn simply because recipients refuse to modify their behavior.

Direct Results?

1. Huge increases in out-of-wedlock births, especially by teenage girls.
2. Huge increases in single-mother "families"

People will do what you pay them to do, especially if they're desperate. It was exactly what should have been expected from AFDC. Naturally, these new families were virtually incapable of taking care of themselves. Young mothers, with little education, qualified for very few jobs, had the additional burden of children to care for, by themselves.

Fathers of children born as tickets to cash in on welfare were absent from parenting... by FORCE, and that gradually transformed young men who would have ordinarily been responsible fathers into absent sperm donors. Soon, as seen from the distant suburbs, we had a black underclass that appeared to have no morals. Not only were they not working and on the dole, they were breeding fast, and men were abandoning their families.

We had divided the nation with veteran's benefits, psychologically crushed the left-behinds with destructive welfare, and then insisted that they had a RIGHT to be "kept". Think about how similar that is to the treatment of slaves... except that the new slaves didn't have to work.

Tomorrow… Meanwhile, over in the big house...