Thomas Sowell Quotes About Welfare

Quotes about: Welfare

• The welfare state is not really about the welfare of the masses. It is about the egos of the elites.

  Thomas Sowell

  Ego, Politics, Welfare

  Thomas Sowell (2013). “Ever Wonder Why?: and Other Controversial Essays”, p.23, Hoover Press

• Mystical references to society and its programs to help may warm the hearts of the gullible but what it really means is putting more power in the hands of bureaucrats.

  Thomas Sowell

  Heart, Mean, Hands

• The welfare state is the oldest con game in the world. First you take people's money away quietly, and then you give some of it back to them flamboyantly.

  Thomas Sowell

  Games, People, Giving

• The more people who are dependent on government handouts, the more votes the left can depend on for an ever-expanding welfare state.

  Thomas Sowell

  Government, People, Vote

• Not since the days of slavery have there been so many people who feel entitled to what other people have produced as there are in the modern welfare state, whether in Western Europe or on this side of the Atlantic.

  Thomas Sowell

  Europe, People, Slavery

  "Random Thoughts". townhall.com. October 16, 2012.

• The greatest danger to the liberal vision are facts about the consequences of liberalism itself and the laws, policies, and ways of life that the left has spawned. That the black family, which survived centuries of slavery and generations of discrimination, has disintegrated in the wake of the liberal welfare states is only one example.

  Thomas Sowell

  Law, Black, Vision

• The black family survived centuries of slavery and generations of Jim Crow, but it has disintegrated in the wake of the liberals' expansion of the welfare state.

  Thomas Sowell

  Black, Crow, Expansion

• What the welfare system and other kinds of governmental programs are doing is paying people to fail. In so far as they fail, they receive the money; in so far as they succeed, even to a
  moderate extent, the money is taken away.

  Thomas Sowell

  Taken, People, Succeed

  TV Series "Free to Choose" with Milton Friedman and Rose D. Friedman, 1980.

• The assumption that spending more of the taxpayer's money will make things better has survived all kinds of evidence that it has made things worse. The black family- which survived slavery, discrimination, poverty, wars and depressions- began to come apart as the federal government moved in with its well-financed programs to “help.”

  Thomas Sowell

  War, Government, Black

• Even squirrels know enough to store nuts, so that they will have something to eat when food gets scarce. But the welfare state has spawned a whole class of people who spend everything they get when times are good, and look to others to provide for their food and other basic needs when times turn bad.

  Thomas Sowell

  Squirrels, Nuts, Class

  "A time to speak plain". "Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette", July 24, 2012.

• Welfare states on both sides of the Atlantic have discovered that largesse to losers does not reduce their hostility to society, but only increases it. Far from producing gratitude, generosity is seen as an admission of guilt, and the reparations as inadequate compensations for injustices - leading to worsening behavior by the recipients.

  Thomas Sowell

  Gratitude, Generosity, Guilt

• The welfare state has always been judged by its good intentions, rather than its bad results.

  Thomas Sowell

  Good Intentions, Welfare, States

• The welfare state shields people from the consequences of their own mistakes, allowing irresponsibility to continue and to flourish among ever wider circles of people.

  Thomas Sowell

  Mistake, Circles, People

• The way the [welfare] programs are organized, poor people are only paid to do things that are counter-productive - such as breaking up their families, such as not earning above a certain level of income.

  Thomas Sowell

  Welfare Programs, People, Way

• The biggest and most deadly 'tax' rate on the poor comes from a loss of various welfare state benefits - food stamps, housing subsidies and the like - if their income goes up.

  Thomas Sowell

  Loss, Income, Benefits

• There are no dead-end jobs. There are no dead-end jobs. There are only dead-end people. Our current social philosophy, and the welfare state apparatus based on it, are creating more dead-end people.

  Thomas Sowell

  Jobs, Philosophy, Creating

  Thomas Sowell (2011). “The Thomas Sowell Reader”, p.40, Basic Books

• When Congress votes for all sorts of benefits, without voting for enough taxes to pay for them, they get the support of those who have been promised the benefits, without getting grief from the taxpayers. It's strictly win-win as far as the welfare-state politicians are concerned. But it is strictly lose-lose, big-time, for the country, as deficits skyrocket.

  Thomas Sowell

  Country, Grief, Winning

  "Political Statistics". townhall.com. April 05, 2011.

• Child poverty in the United States declined after the work requirement was put in there. People realized that they had to work and people went out and worked and they got off welfare.

  Thomas Sowell

  Children, People, United States

  "Do No Harm: An Interview With Thomas Sowell". Interview with David Harsanyi, thefederalist.com. January 13, 2015.

• Compassion is good but politicians have turned compassion into the welfare state.

  Thomas Sowell

  Compassion, Welfare, Politician

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