Welfare State Quotes - Page 4

• The future of Norway isn't about competing on being the cheapest but the most innovative. We have an expensive welfare state and the only answer to continue that way is to become more competitive, especially on knowledge.

  Erna Solberg

  Answers, Way, Welfare

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• The fundamental fact in the lives of the poor in most parts of America is that the wages of common labor are far below the benefits of AFDC, Medicaid, food stamps, public housing, public defenders, leisure time and all the other goods and services of the welfare state.

  George Gilder

  America, Benefits, Leisure

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• The US, for historical reasons, mistrusts the concept of a welfare state, and this mistrust shows itself nakedly under present US government, which commits uncounted billions of the national wealth to what it calls defence, and is close-fisted in giving money to plans which would ameliorate the grinding poverty of a great part of its people. Quite simply, in Canada you could not get away with that.

  Robertson Davies

  Giving Money, Government, People

  Robertson Davies (1997). “The Merry Heart: Reflections on Reading, Writing, and the World of Books”, Viking Press

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• The question about progress has become the question whether we can discover any way of submitting to the worldwide paternalism of a technocracy without losing all personal privacy and independence. Is there any possibility of getting the super Welfare State's honey and avoiding the sting?

  C. S. Lewis

  Independence, Progress, Honey

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• Isn't our choice really not one of left or right, but of up or down? Down through the welfare state to statism, to more and more government largesse accompanied always by more government authority, less individual liberty, and ultimately, totalitarianism, always advanced as for our own good. The alternative is the dream conceived by our Founding Fathers, up to the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with an orderly society.

  Ronald Reagan

  Dream, Father, Government

  Ronald Reagan (2004). “Speaking My Mind: Selected Speeches”, p.212, Simon and Schuster

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• The biggest threat to the American people today lies with the United States government. ... [T]he long-term solution is to dismantle, not reform, the iron fist of the welfare state and the controlled economy. This includes the end (not the reform) of the IRS, the DEA, the BATF, the SEC, the FDA, HUD, the departments of HHS, Labor, Agriculture, and energy, and every other agency that takes money from some and gives it to others or interferes with peaceful behavior.

  Jacob G. Hornberger

  Lying, Government, Iron

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• 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

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• 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.

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• The modern welfare state, highly touted as soaking the rich to subsidize the poor, does no such thing. In fact, soaking the rich would have disastrous effects, not just for the rich but for the poor and middle classes themselves. For it is the rich who provide a proportionately greater amount of saving, investment capital, entrepreneurial foresight, and financing of technological innovation that has brought the Unites States to by far the highest standard of living - for the mass of the people - of any country in history.

  Murray Rothbard

  Country, Class, People

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• 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

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• Those on the left who scream about income gaps choose to focus on the success of those at the top rather than the failures of those at the bottom. They conveniently ignore that liberals are the ones who have pushed the moral relativisim and welfare-state dependence that has destroyed black families over the last 60 years. And it is these same liberals who fight to keep low-income kids in failing public schools and fight efforts to get school choice.

  Star Parker

  School, Kids, Fighting

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• In Europe there's an dangerous growth of ultra xenophobia which is pretty threatening to any one who remembers the history of Europe... and an attack on the remnants of the welfare state. It's hard to interpret the austerity-in-the-midst-of-recession policy as anything other than attack on the social contract.

  Noam Chomsky

  Xenophobia, Europe, Growth

  "Noam Chomsky on America's Economic Suicide". Interview with Laura Flanders / GRITtv, www.alternet.org. May 4, 2012.

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• The conservative revolution that Reagan helped usher in gained traction because Reagan's central insight - that the liberal welfare state had grown complacent and overly bureaucratic, with Democratic policy makers more obsessed with slicing the economic pie than with growing the pie - contained a good deal of truth.

  Barack Obama

  Pie, Growing, Revolution

  Barack Obama (2007). “The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream”, p.156, Canongate Books

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• Thatcher had broken the miners' union, all but crushed the Labour Party, dramatically cut back the welfare state, even flirted with a poll tax. In the circles I ran in, Reagan was mocked as a childish dolt. Thatcher was despised.

  Jon Weisman

  Party, Cutting, Circles

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• It is hard to tell if capital punishment has such an effect. And even if, in some contexts it has (such as in the American South with a very high incidence of murder), this effect may very well go away if a decent welfare state was replaced for the existing social order.

  Torbjorn Tannsjo

  Order, Punishment, Going Away

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Social bonds have given way under the collapse of social protections and the attack on the welfare state. Moreover, all solutions to socially produced problems are now relegated to the mantra of individual solutions.

  Henry Giroux

  Way, Problem, Protection

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• Collective insurance policies and social protections have given way to the forces of economic deregulation, the transformation of the welfare state into punitive workfare programs, the privatization of public goods and an appeal to individual accountability as a substitute for social responsibility.

  Henry Giroux

  Responsibility, Accountability, Deregulation

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• In the last thirty years we have gained enormous amount of freedom (everywhere, except perhaps in places like Burma or North Korea), but we lost quite a large amount of security. Because of all sorts of reasons, because of globalization which stripped the nation state of a large part of its sovereignty away, because of the dismantling of the so-called welfare state. As a result, people feel simultaneously much freer and much more insecure.

  Zygmunt Bauman

  Insecure, Korea, Years

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• The fact that refugees traveled through six other countries, like former Yugoslavia, Macedonia, Hungary, Austria, Switzerland, France, Germany, Holland, is because they like our social benefits. They like our welfare state. They know which country to pick. They're not going to stay in Hungary or in Estonia. They come to Germany, to Holland. And people sense that those are not the real refugees. And our government has spent billions of euros on them, and the Dutch people know.

  Geert Wilders

  Country, Real, Government

  Source: www1.cbn.com

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• The welfare state may be well-intentioned, but it is a Ponzi scheme

  Dennis Prager

  May, Welfare, States

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• We wanted to describe society from our left point of view. Per had written political books, but they'd only sold 300 copies. We realised that people read crime and through the stories we could show the reader that under the official image of welfare-state Sweden there was another layer of poverty, criminality and brutality.

  Maj Sjowall

  Book, Views, People

  "The queen of crime". Interview with Louise France, www.theguardian.com. November 21, 2009.

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• 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.

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• The best performers in Europe are those who use their welfare states to help people adjust to change.

  John Monks

  Europe, People, Use

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• Bad schools, crime, drugs, high taxes, the social security mess, racism, the health care ? crisis? unemployment, welfare state dependency, illegitimacy, the gap between rich and poor. What do these issues have in common? Politicians, the media, and our so-called leaders lie to us about them. They lie about the cause. They lie about the effect. They lie about the solutions.

  Larry Elder

  Lying, School, Issues

  Larry Elder (2001). “The Ten Things You Can't Say In America”, p.7, St. Martin's Griffin

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• Nothing more guarantees the erosion of character than getting something for nothing. In the liberal welfare state, one develops an entitlement mentality. And the rhetoric of liberalism - labeling each new entitlement a 'right reinforces this sense of entitlement.' -

  Dennis Prager

  Character, Erosion, Guarantees

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