The Conservative Cave
Current Events => Politics => Topic started by: Ptarmigan on June 07, 2016, 09:25:47 PM
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Is Personal Responsibility Obsolete?
http://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2016/06/07/is-personal-responsibility-obsolete-n2174321
Among the many disturbing signs of our times are conservatives and libertarians of high intelligence and high principles who are advocating government programs that relieve people of the necessity of working to provide their own livelihoods.
Generations ago, both religious people and socialists were agreed on the proposition that "he who does not work, neither shall he eat." Both would come to the aid of those unable to work. But the idea that people who simply choose not to work should be supported by money taken from those who are working was rejected across the ideological spectrum.
How we got to the present situation is a long story, but the painful fact is that we are here now. Among the leading minds of our times, including Charles Murray today and the late and great Milton Friedman earlier, there have been proposals for ways of subsidizing the poor without the suffocating distortions of the government's welfare state bureaucracy.
Thomas Sowell knocks it on the head.
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Is Personal Responsibility Obsolete?: Part II
http://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2016/06/07/is-personal-responsibility-obsolete-part-ii-n2174320
Too many social problems are conceived of in terms of what "we" can do for "them." After decades of massive expansions of the welfare state, the answer seems to range from "not very much" to "making matters worse."
Undaunted, people in a number of countries are coming up with new proposals that are variations on the theme of government-provided income -- which amounts to relieving people from personal responsibility.
Yet even some conservatives and libertarians are coming up with proposals for more "efficient" versions of the welfare state -- namely direct cash grants for life to virtually all adults, instead of the current hodgepodge of overlapping bureaucratic programs.
Part 2 of the article.