Welfare Quotes - Page 39

• Illegitimacy is the single most important social problem of our time - more important than crime, drugs, poverty, illiteracy, welfare or homelessness because it drives everything else.

  Charles A. Murray

  Drug, Important, Poverty

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• Every liberal initiative, from welfare to antismoking measures, is justified by reference to 'the children.' Yet the clear result of liberal policies is to harm children even more than adults.

  Mona Charen

  Children, Adults, Justified

  Mona Charen (2006). “Do-Gooders: How Liberals Hurt Those They Claim to Help and the Rest of Us”, Sentinel

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• 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.

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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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• The tendency of welfare spending in the United States has been to increase at an exponential rate.

  Henry Hazlitt

  United States, Increase, Tendencies

  Henry Hazlitt, Hans F. Sennholz (1993). “The Wisdom of Henry Hazlitt”, Foundation for Economic Education

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• Absolute welfare corrupts absolutely.

  Mark Steyn

  Absolutes

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• The rationale for the vast network of government welfare programs as well as regulation and control over private enterprise is based on the socialist analysis of the market economy.

  Richard Ebeling

  Government, Welfare Programs, Analysis

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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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• The welfare state is institutionalized crime - 'organized plunder,' as the French economist Frederic Bastiat called it. It systematizes what is intrinsically wrong: forcing some people to support others. The Democrats favor the indefinite expansion of the welfare state, perpetually increasing the ratio of force to freedom in society.

  Joseph Sobran

  People, Support, Expansion

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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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• 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

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• Doing good with other people's money has two basic flaws. In the first place, you never spend anybody else's money as carefully as you spend your own. So a large fraction of that money is inevitably wasted. In the second place, and equally important, you cannot do good with other people's money unless you first get the money away from them. So that force - sending a policeman to take the money from somebody's pocket - is fundamentally at the basis of the philosophy of the welfare state.

  Milton Friedman

  Philosophy, Two, People

  Milton Friedman (1978). “Tax limitation, inflation and the role of government”, Fisher Inst

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• The same government that requires a taxpaying citizen to document every statement on his tax return decrees that questioning a welfare applicant demeans and humiliates him.

  Ronald Reagan

  Government, Citizens, Return

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• The more welfare, the more crime.

  James Cook

  Crime

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• Welfare corrupts the lower class much faster than the middle class.

  James Cook

  Class, Middle, Faster

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• I would like to suggest to you that the extent to which government in America has departed from the original design of in habiting the destructive actions of man and invoking a common justice; the extent to which government has invaded the productive and creative areas; the extent to which the government in this country has assumed the responsibility for the security, welfare, and prosperity of our people is a measure of the extent to which socialism has developed here in this land of ours.

  Leonard Read

  Country, Responsibility, Men

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• Liberal child welfare experts decided that child abuse was not evidence of a moral or character flaw in the abusing parent. Instead, like poverty, crime, and homelessness, child abuse came to be viewed as evidence of a societal failure.

  Mona Charen

  Children, Character, Parent

  Mona Charen (2006). “Do-Gooders: How Liberals Hurt Those They Claim to Help and the Rest of Us”, Sentinel

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• Liberals cling to the idea that critics of welfare are motivated by greed or callous disregard for the less fortunate. In fact, during the twenty-five years that followed Lyndon Johnson's declaration of war on poverty, U.S. tax payers spent $3 trillion providing every conceivable support for the poor, the elderly, and the infirm. Private foundations spent scores of billions more, and private and religious charities even more. Nevertheless, as Ronald Raegan later quipped, 'in the war on poverty, poverty won.'

  Mona Charen

  Religious, War, Elderly

  Mona Charen (2006). “Do-Gooders: How Liberals Hurt Those They Claim to Help and the Rest of Us”, Sentinel

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

  Thomas Sowell

  Good Intentions, States, Results

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• Social welfare is the most corrosive behavioral force ever unleashed by man.

  James Cook

  Men, Social, Force

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• The solution to this problem [welfare-statism] must take a positive form: the restoration of a faith in what free men can accomplish.

  Leonard Read

  Men, Restoration, Problem

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• Once the premise is accepted that poverty is never the fault of the poor but the fault of 'society,' or of 'the capitalist system, then there is no definable limit to be set on relief, and the politicians who want to be elected or reelected will compete with each other in proposing new 'welfare' programs to fill some hitherto 'unmet need.'

  Henry Hazlitt

  Welfare Programs, Relief, Needs

  Henry Hazlitt, Hans F. Sennholz (1993). “The Wisdom of Henry Hazlitt”, Foundation for Economic Education

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• A hundred welfare programs, spending more and more billions, lead to chronic budget deficits, which lead to increased paper-money issues, which lead to higher prices.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Welfare Programs, Issues, Paper

  Henry Hazlitt (1971). “Man Vs. the Welfare State”, p.184, Ludwig von Mises Institute

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• Unfortunately, liberals didn't stop with welfare-statism. They also turned to economic regulations, not understanding that such interventions, again, harmed the very people they were supposedly truing to help - the poor and destitute.

  Jacob G. Hornberger

  People, Understanding, Regulation

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• The welfare state is an assault on families.

  Larry Elder

  States, Assault, Welfare State

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