The Welfare State

Nations across the globe are finally realizing that they can't have everything for free.

In the majority of the developed world, citizens pay large amounts of taxes into the state coffers to guarantee that everyone will be taken complete care of from cradle to grave. In most it worked for a time because said nations had small, heterogeneous populations. Unfortunately, global migration is leading to increasingly diverse societies with increasingly diverse needs. And the global financial crisis isn't helping the situation.

Now that people and governments are losing money left and right, the new "Age of Austerity" is becoming the reality for most the world. Now that people are losing jobs, they are becoming more and more reliant on governments that are finding themselves with less and less tax revenue. If there is no money for services, people are going to have to learn to live without them.

A welfare state simply doesn't work when money is not coming in. Europeans are now going to have to face the music. If more and more people lose jobs, there isn't going to be money for free university education or free childcare, or even weeks of paid vacation.

South Africa is an interesting example of the false hopes that a welfare state creates. Since the fall of Apartheid in 1994, the African National Congress (ANC) has been slowly realizing that the greatest promise they made to the nation is one that simply cannot-and should not-be fulfilled. In a nation where upwards of a quarter of the population is unemployed, the government (to varying degrees of efficiency) continues to spend tax-payer money on houses for the poor. It is only now 16 years later that people are realizing en masse that such a policy simply wont solve the economic problems that plague the country. It also doesn't help that the tax revenue collected is coming from a small portion of the citizens, who like the rest of the world are having to tighten their belts. As the economy slows, more people are going to be demanding houses and other handouts, and the number of people paying for them will decrease.

The moral of the story is that buying people houses isn't going to lift them from poverty. All government-planned, low-income communities end up creating are ghettos in which people and business cannot thrive. No company will want to invest, and no one with a sizable amount of cash is going to move there and raise property values. The key really is education.

My friend once joked that the government need only pay for two things: education and the post office. I laughed because it's kind of true. If the government paid for everyone to get vocational and university educations, they wouldn't need to pay for health care, child care, and other forms of welfare. Education not only provides people with general knowledge, it also opens up the mind to entrepreneurial possibilities that lead to wealth creation. If people knew how to make jobs for themselves, they would be less reliant on the government and be able to accomplish things on their own.

Frankly, and maybe it's because I'm American, I don't usually trust the government and its institutions. I've always had little patience with them and those that work with their. Most of them simply don't work properly. This is because they have nothing at stake; it takes an army to fire them and they have a rock solid salary that keeps them from making more money than they may deserve or want to earn. If government workers had some kind of incentive, they would actually be willing to help people. Can you imagine a world in which everything is run like the DMV. It's awful, isn't it. Let's not allow that to happen.

The University of Washington Parking Service is another great example of what we as a nation can expect in every walk of life should a welfare state be put into effect. When I was visiting my friend on campus, I paid the fee to park overnight (knowing full well I would have to get up at 7:30 AM to ensure I didn't get a ticket). In the morning when I went to my car around 7:20, I found that I had been fined $30 dollars at 6:54 AM for not having the ticket displayed properly. Now, as someone that has proof of purchase, I was relaxed knowing that a simple mistake had been made. I was WRONG.

When I went the booth to explain the situation, the woman working was very curt and unhelpful telling me to "follow the directions on the envelope." The same envelope that was sopping wet from being on a wet windshield. I followed the directions to the parking office only to find that the office had moved multiple blocks away. I had to go back to the booth and ask a helpful man where it was. When I finally arrived, I once again tried explaining my situation to one of the workers only to be told that "it was an appeals matter," and that it would take 6-8 weeks to be process, during which I would receive penalties for paying the ticket late. I paid and left in a huff.

My point is that I don't want to have to deal with bureaucrats in every walk of life. How would you feel if you lived in a government subsidized house, a tornado occurred leaving you without a roof, and the insurance office told you it would take two months for you to prove you didn't damage the house yourself. You wouldn't be happy.

I'm happy that those in the rest of the developed world are finally beginning to realize that they've lived for decades in a bubble that for a large swath of American society has been the status quo. We all need to realize our own potential and use it to find a niche of our own.