The Welfare States of America

"If the false charge against capitalism is that it allows 'the strong' to exploit 'the weak'," write Yaron Brook and Don Watkins in Forbes, "then the true nature of the welfare state is that it allows 'the weak' -- i.e., the unproductive -- to exploit 'the strong' -- i.e., the productive."

And exploiting they are. The Davey family, for instance, made headlines in 2010 for receiving £42,000 in state-provided benefits while driving a Mercedes, enjoying cutting-edge electronics, and continuing to have children (at the time of the story they had seven with another on the way). Mrs. Davey had never worked, and Mr. Davey had quit his job after he figured out he could do better by living on the dole. “I don’t feel bad about being subsidized by people who are working,” Mrs. Davey told The Daily Mail.

This sort of story does not represent some bizarre failure of the system—it captures the system’s spirit.

The U.S. has its own examples: the Michigan lottery winner who continued to collect food stamps and the prison inmates using food stamps behind bars.

On July 12, the Obama Administration added a powerful new weapon that the 'unproductive' can use to fleece the 'productive'.
Ignoring the 1996 bi-partisan, Clinton-signed, federal welfare reform law that required able-bodied welfare recipients to work, Obama's Department of Health and Human Services announced it will smile favorably on state requests to waive work requirements for Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF).

As Jennifer Rubin reports, some states had already redefined 'work' to include the following:

• bed rest
• personal care activities
• massage
• exercise
• journaling
• motivational reading
• smoking cessation
• weight loss promotion
• participating in parent-teacher meetings
• helping a friend or relative with household tasks and errands

Under HHS's new rules, it appears that the 'unproductive' need not be bothered by even these leisure work activities as a condition for continued welfare checks.

Many on the right and left (it was President Clinton's signature legislation after all) are "stunned and dismayed," writes Rubin, at the "dilution of the work requirement." Rubin notes an ominous trend:

President Obama is the chief executive, obligated by the Constitution to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” Obama, however, seems to have — by executive order — altered that to read “take Care that the Laws [which he likes or wished Congress had passed] be faithfully executed. The list of laws he won’t enforce or is unilaterally amending is getting long: Defense of Marriage Act, immigration laws, voting laws, and anti-terror laws. He won’t even enforce all the provisions of his signature legislation as we’ve seen in the bushels-full of Obamacare waivers. The latest and most inexplicable gambit is his decision to undo bipartisan welfare reform.

Peter Ferrara agrees:

More troublesome is the outright lawlessness that Obama's waivers represent, just like "recess" appointments when the Senate is not in recess, or Executive Orders or regulations without statutory or constitutional authority, or Obama's refusal to enforce laws he does not like, such as the Defense of Marriage Act, or the immigration laws. The emerging Obama strategy is to trample the law with impunity, knowing the legal system grinds slowly in catching up with him, such as through suits invalidating any action his faulty recess appointees take.

From the early days of his comment to Joe the Plumber about spreading the wealth, President Obama has steered a dedicated course to transform the nation into a Welfare States of America. Brook and Watkins suggest it's an ugly place to reside:

Clearly it’s time to question the welfare state. But such questions are too often viewed as taboo. Anyone who challenges it is viewed as seeking a return to the “dog-eat-dog” world of unfettered capitalism—a world where sellers supposedly exploited buyers, employers exploited workers, the rich exploited the poor. ...

The truth is that the goal of the welfare state is to make the productive sacrifice for the unproductive. It establishes the principle that a person is entitled to state support simply by virtue of his need. But the state doesn’t have any money. In order to provide support, it has to take money from the people who earned it. Translation? A person’s need entitles him to your money. The less value he creates, the more rewards you owe him—and the more value you create, the greater your duty to serve him, and all the Daveys of the world. ...

In place of capitalism’s philosophy of win-win, the welfare state puts everyone’s wealth up for grabs, ensuring that one person’s gain comes at his neighbor’s expense. Talk about dog-eat-dog.

UPDATE: A Rasmussen poll released July 18 "finds that 83% of American Adults favor a work requriement as a condition for receiving welfare aid. Just seven percent (7%) oppose such a requirement, while 10% are undecided."