December 2, 2009
That’s the title of a piece in Saturday’s New York Times. That welfare usage is up in a recession isn’t surprising, but if the stigma is truly fading it’s not a positive development. As a Cato essay on food subsidies states, “The [food stamp] program contributes to long-term dependence on government and produces various social pathologies as side effects.” Disturbingly, the USDA official who oversees the program is pleased:
Although the program is growing at a record rate, the federal official who oversees it would like it to grow even faster. ‘I think the response of the program has been tremendous,’ said Kevin Concannon, an under secretary of agriculture, ‘but we’re mindful that there are another 15, 16 million who could benefit.’
There are certainly people in need of assistance, but the government is the wrong delivery system. Michael Tanner sums up why in his book, The Poverty of Welfare:
In the absence of government welfare, the civil society can be expected to rise to the occasion, as it always has, to address the needs of the poor in a way that is both more compassionate and more effective. No government program can provide the degree of flexibility and diversity of private ones. But perhaps more importantly, voluntary, private charity treats both givers and recipients as individuals, fully respecting their worth and dignity. Unlike the coercive nature of government, private charity understands that true charity starts with the individual and that individual’s choice to give out of individual conscience and virtue.
The Times piece goes on to provide anecdotal cases of food stamp recipients who traditionally harbored negative views of the program. In an example of why federalism needs reviving, we learn that one fellow “gave in” when “an outreach worker appeared at his son’s Head Start program.”
The outreach worker is a telltale sign. Like many states, Ohio has campaigned hard to raise the share of eligible people collecting benefits, which are financed entirely by the federal government and brought the state about $2.2 billion last year. By contrast, in the federal cash welfare program, states until recently bore the entire cost of caseload growth, and nationally the rolls have stayed virtually flat.
If the outreach worker is a state government employee as the article appears to indicate, it means his or her salary is funded by taxpayers. This person’s job is to go to a Head Start program, which is also funded by taxpayers, to encourage people to sign up for additional government benefits to be funded by – drum roll – taxpayers.
We would have a more efficient government welfare system if the state governments that wanted to have welfare programs had to fund them using state tax revenues, without the subsidies and incentives for profligacy from Washington. Even better would be to allow individuals to control funding for charitable causes through private contributions without a bloated government welfare system at all.
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