Government intervention has resulted in laziness
In the ‘80s John Kenneth Galbraith said “Trickle-down economics: the less-than-elegant metaphor that if one feeds the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows” to mock the Republican’s decrease in tax rates on the rich from 70 percent to 28 percent. The Democrats have been trying to raise it ever since, having brought the tax rate on the wealthiest Americans back to about 40 percent at present.
Galbraith and the Democrats do not believe that money in the hands of the rich can benefit the poor, i.e., it does not “trickle down.” Rather, they believe the government should take this money from the rich through taxation and redistribute it to the poor. This difference in belief is fundamental to the political battle being fought today in Washington.
When a private enterprise makes a profit, this money is used to pay employees, suppliers and contractors — usually lower and middle class people. When the profit does reach the rich store owner, this wealth is injected back into the economy in the form of investment or spending (money held in savings is actually invested by banks). In either case, “the rich getting richer” creates job opportunities and supplies capital to start-up companies.
Cutting taxes on the rich and providing an incentive for them to make money is the best way to help the poor because it directly benefits them through paychecks and loans. When the government taxes the rich and gives to the poor, there are unintended consequences. The welfare state created by the Democrats has inflicted unfathomable harm on the poor and is tearing at America’s social fabric.
A system where people live off the fruits of other’s labor is not only morally wrong but has robbed the poor of their self-dignity. Welfare checks discourage people from seeking employment and inhibit overcoming hardship individually, a principal source of human fulfillment.
It is essential to distinguish between hardship and suffering. We as a society would never leave a leukemic child out in the cold. But a welfare check that pays for a car and cable television is wasteful and immoral. Determining the precise line that divides hardship and suffering is a healthy political debate.
The objective of promoting the welfare of the regular man is a noble cause desired by every political philosophy. The machinery of government fails in achieving this goal because it requires doing good with someone else’s money, an impossible task since no one spends someone else’s money as carefully as they spend their own.
Governmental instruments are futile in helping the needy. Though politicians often assert that poverty is the fault of capitalism, government intervention has been prone to failure and has caused immeasurable adversity for the poor. Government policies must be judged by their result, not by their purpose. American history has shown that welfare programs can have the opposite effect of what their well-intentioned sponsors hoped.