Every so often, some pretentious intellectual calls for the government to draft every American into performing a few years of community service. The proposals never go anywhere.
Peggy Noonan ably exposes the emptiness of the left’s triumphalism over Obamacare’s announcement of “7 million insured.” However, in the course of her comments, she praises Social Security by comparison.
Last Tuesday I kicked off a series of debates against welfare state supporters in order to let young people know about the Debt Draft and why the only moral solution is to abolish the old-age welfare programs — Social Security and Medicare — that are drafting my generation and my daughter’s generation into debt.
Here’s the welfare state myth: America has always had a welfare state, but for too long we relied too heavily on the private sector and voluntary organizations to protect people from some of life’s greatest risks. Voluntary institutions failed...
“Your side is driven by ideology. My side is just looking at the facts and doing what common sense would dictate.” Isn’t that what we always hear in political debates?
In this episode of The Debt Dialogues, I talk to my colleague Onkar Ghate about the morality of the welfare state. Onkar is a senior fellow and chief content officer at the Ayn Rand Institute.
In anticipation of my upcoming debate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, The Undercurrent just released an interview I did on my End the Debt Draft campaign.
As I and others have pointed out, all of the risks that welfare state supporters say we need government “social insurance” to protect ourselves against — accident, illness, old age, job loss — can and were addressed privately and voluntarily before the creation of the welfare state: through private savings, insurance, informal help, formal charity and, notably, mutual aid societies.
When I tell people that I’m working to abolish the welfare state, the most common response I get is not, “That’s awful!” It’s actually some version of, “You’re being unrealistic.” Given the apologetic, uninspiring arguments critics of the welfare state typically offer, it’s hard to blame people for that attitude.
