The goal of the left for decades has supposedly been the end of poverty by government redistribution of wealth. Our tax system takes from the wealthy and the government uses that money to give to the poor. In fairness, the government also uses the money to subsidize political friends, to run the armed forces, and to waste as a result of fraud and graft. The government runs all sorts of relief programs from regular welfare to Medicaid to Obamaphones to food stamps etc. These payouts to the poor grow year after year, but we still always seem to have roughly the same amount of poverty. The programs don't help, but we still go on spending trillions of dollars for the same unsatisfactory result.
The inability of these relief payments from the government to work is not mysterious. Any clear minded observer could have recognized the inevitable failure when the programs were first starting. Here, for example, is what Franklin Delano Roosevelt had to say in the State of the Union Address in 1935:
The lessons of history, confirmed by the evidence immediately before me, show conclusively that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To dole our relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit. It is inimical to the dictates of a sound policy. It is in violation of the traditions of America. Work must be found for able-bodied but destitute workers.
The Federal Government must and shall quit this business of relief. I am not willing that the vitality of our people be further sapped by the giving of cash, of market baskets, of a few hours of weekly work cutting grass, raking leaves, or picking up papers in the public parks. We must preserve not only the bodies of the unemployed from destitution but also their self-respect, their self-reliance, and courage and determination.
The inability of these relief payments from the government to work is not mysterious. Any clear minded observer could have recognized the inevitable failure when the programs were first starting. Here, for example, is what Franklin Delano Roosevelt had to say in the State of the Union Address in 1935:
The lessons of history, confirmed by the evidence immediately before me, show conclusively that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To dole our relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit. It is inimical to the dictates of a sound policy. It is in violation of the traditions of America. Work must be found for able-bodied but destitute workers.
The Federal Government must and shall quit this business of relief. I am not willing that the vitality of our people be further sapped by the giving of cash, of market baskets, of a few hours of weekly work cutting grass, raking leaves, or picking up papers in the public parks. We must preserve not only the bodies of the unemployed from destitution but also their self-respect, their self-reliance, and courage and determination.
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