The Parable of the Crutch and the Wheelchair

When debating the state of welfare in our country, there are many well-intentioned people who argue that our nation needs welfare because individuals can’t survive without it.  To illustrate why this isn’t so, let me tell you the parable of the crutch and the wheelchair.

Short-term assistance is like a crutch, and long-term welfare is like a wheelchair. If a person breaks their leg, a crutch can support them long enough for their injury to heal so they can walk again on their own. However, if you push that same otherwise healthy person around in a wheelchair for as long as their leg takes to heal, they will lose enough muscle and stamina that walking again will be an uncomfortable challenge. If they forgo the discomfort and stay in the wheelchair, having become so accustomed to it, they will eventually reach the point where they won’t be able to walk independently without some serious rehabilitation.

When an individual or family breaks a financial leg and can’t make it on their own, providing them the crutch of short-term assistance is sensible and laudable, but only necessary for them to get back on their own two feet.  Keeping a financially injured individual or family in the long-term welfare wheelchair, while it may come from a sense of caring and compassion, is not the way to get them back on the road of social and financial wellness. Long term welfare robs people of the ability, and often the desire, to financially walk on their own.

Our society has shortsightedly raised generations who are dependent on government assistance for their survival. Relieving people of the responsibility for their own support also takes away the rewards of self-sufficiency. If, as a society, we really want to help people, we will become rehabilitators instead of facilitators.

 

I Want It, So I Deserve It

Among many Americans, there is a belief that the government could pay for all sorts of wonderful things if only they weren’t so stingy. Some people feel they deserve government assistance for housing, food, medical care, child care, higher education, transportation, and utilities, among other things. In short, many grown-up Americans are still operating with the spoiled teenager mindset of thinking they have a right to have all their needs and wants met, and that the government should take the place of mom and dad in being their great provider.

And like teenagers, this breed of entitlement-loving American is not concerned with how things are paid for, as long as they keep getting what they want. But in the real world, goods and services aren’t free, and the government cannot simply produce wealth like manna from heaven. The funding must come from somewhere, and that somewhere is the taxpayers.

However, the simple fact is that the current US income comes nowhere close to being able to cover the current US spending, and the difference is all borrowed. At this time, the US debt is over 15.5 trillion dollars. That is 15 with twelve zeros! Broken down per citizen, each man, woman, and child in this country owes over $49,700. A family of four’s portion of the debt is nearly 200 thousand dollars! If our country’s debts came due tomorrow, would you be able to cover your family’s share? I know I couldn’t.

It is past time for our government to become a responsible parent and realize that its children have become indolent and greedy, and cut us off for our own good. Make no mistake, this will be quite a difficult transition as Americans shift back to the mindset that if they want something, they need to go out and get if for themselves. As Benjamin Franklin said, “I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.” [1]

 

Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You

Alexis de Tocqueville said in his book Democracy in America that democracy “can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury.” [1] He also said, in the same book, that “The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.” [2] This Frenchman, over 170 years ago, saw with alarming accuracy what is happening today in America. Modern political races have become more like middle-school student council elections, with the candidates offering wild promises to their electorate that they have no way to keep. And the voters have become just as bad, choosing candidates based on who is offering them the most, instead of voting for what is best for the country.

Voters and Congress, working in tandem, have swept any concern about sustainability and finances under the rug, choosing instead to vote themselves more and more payments and services from the public treasury, which we have no hope of paying for as a country, and that government has no business providing. This is not to say that fiscal responsibility means the government should abandon the elderly and disabled to their fate, as the pro-spend mentality of some individuals would have you believe. However, it is clear that the government is living well outside its means, and that people have come to expect far more from government than it was ever meant to provide.

Tocqueville predicted that the ultimate result of this process is that democracy will collapse over loose fiscal policy and be followed by a dictatorship. As a country, we are dangerously close to this point, but it is not too late to halt and reverse the process. However, to do so, a majority of the voters must recognize that the financial writing is on the wall, and that, as a country, we have maxed out our credit. The only option left, other than to continue in our current path until the government collapses, is to eliminate the extravagances in our budget and to cease operating on a deficit.