12/12/2025 – by Jacob Hornberger posted at:
The Future of Freedom Foundation – FFF
One of the things about America’s welfare-state way of life that has long fascinated me is how welfare-state advocates are convinced that this way of life reflects the goodness of the American people. By the same token, anyone who opposes this way of life is considered to be heartless, uncaring, selfish, and self-centered.
But if we carefully examine how the welfare state works, we can easily see that this mindset is deeply flawed. In fact, the welfare-state way of life doesn’t reflect goodness on the part of anyone, including the advocates of this way of life. Moreover, opposition to the welfare state does not necessarily mean that a person is uncaring or lacks compassion for others.
In a genuinely free society, people are free to keep everything they earn and decide for themselves what to do with their own money. They are free to save, invest, spend, or donate their money to others.
Some people will use some of their money to help out others. They will donate part of it to their church. Or they will help out aging parents with housing, food, or healthcare. Or they will donate it to some worthy cause.
Those donations reflect genuine care and compassion. That’s because they are coming from the willing heart of the individual. They are coming from the money that belongs to that person. After all, the person could have used his money to purchase a nice vacation or an expensive sports car instead of using it to help out others.
What about those people who choose to reject their parents, the church, the poor, and others? They decide they don’t want to donate anything to anyone. They keep all their money and use it to benefit themselves.
In a free society, that is their right. It’s their money, after all. Genuine freedom entails the right to say no. Ironically though, the people who refuse to use their money to help out others oftentimes help out others indirectly. For example, their savings produce productive capital that lifts real wage rates in society, and their spending provide jobs for people in the retail sectors. Or their successful privately owned business provides jobs for people or good products and services to their customers.
Let’s assume that I confront a multimillionaire who has chosen to not donate his money to anyone. I hold a gun to his head and force him to give me $100,000. I take the money to the poorest part of town and give it to people who desperately need it for food, housing, and medical care. I don’t keep any of the money for myself.
Am I being good, caring, and compassionate? How about him? Both of us have helped the poor, needy, and disadvantaged. Shouldn’t we both be honored as good people?
Most people would say no. They would say that I’m nothing but a thief. I have no right to steal someone else’s money and be good with it. Moreover, the fact that the victim has not voluntarily cooperated with this venture means that he hasn’t been good, caring, and compassionate in the least. In fact, it is a virtual certainty that the victim is going to be calling for my criminal prosecution notwithstanding the fact that I used his money to help the poor, needy, and disadvantaged.
Yet, isn’t this how the welfare state is structured? Instead of me taking the millionaire’s money, it’s the government doing the taking. The government, operating through the IRS, forces people to deliver a portion of their money to the federal government. The government, operating through welfare agencies, then distributes, either directly or indirectly, that money to recipients of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, subsidies, bailouts, foreign aid, grants, and other governmental largess.
Welfare statists say that this process demonstrates how good, caring, and compassionate we are as a society because we collectively have enacted this program as part of our democratic system. But the fact is that this process is as much founded on force — and the denial of the individual right to say no — as when I steal that wealthy person’s money and give it to the poor, needy, and disadvantaged.
Indeed, who exactly are the good, caring, compassionate people in a welfare state? The IRS agents who seize people’s money? The welfare bureaucrats who distribute the money? The Congress that enacts the welfare-state programs? The president who enforces the income tax? The voters who elect the president and the members of Congress? The federal judges who uphold the constitutionality of welfare-state programs? The taxpayers? Opponents of the welfare-state way of life who have their money seized against their will and given to others?
The answer: None of the above. The only time that people are demonstrating genuine goodness, care, and compassion is when they are helping out others on a purely voluntary basis. Forcing people to help out others is not goodness, care, or compassion; it is instead the epitome of evil.
