The wagon fills up

Filmmaker and author Dinesh D'Souza uses an interesting analogy to explain the logic of the welfare state, one in which one part of the population sits in a wagon that is pulled by the other part of the population. Those dependent on the welfare state are in the wagon; those doing the pulling are the taxpayers who pay for that welfare state.

As D'Souza notes, people can disagree about how many should be in the wagon and what the requirements might be for getting a seat, but there can be no doubt that someone has to pull it.

The wagon metaphor is instructive regarding what can be called "entitlement liberalism," which both propels the growth of the welfare state and creates perverse incentive structures within the populace.

The first and most important step in the game of entitlement liberalism is to identify something that people might want and then define it as a "right."

In contrast to "negative" rights, which cannot be abridged by government, the rights of entitlement liberalism are "positive rights" that come from government, either directly or by mandates upon other parties, such as employers. Demands for such rights usually begin with the necessities of life, including housing, food, and medical care, but inexorably move from there to the less urgent (transportation and college education) and even trivial (contraceptives, wide-screen TVs, and Internet service). Along these lines, Guardian columnist Jessica Valenti argued recently that tampons should be free.

The point is that incentives exist for politicians to constantly expand the provision of free stuff under the guise of rights. If it would be nice for everyone to have access to (fill in the blank), then (fill in the blank) must be a right. And if (fill in the blank) is a right, then it must be provided free of charge, because the exercise of rights shouldn't be compromised by considerations of cost.

All kinds of troubling questions emerge, of course, as one slides down this slippery free-stuff slope. Since there will always be something that somebody somewhere can't afford, and if even the most trivial things in life should be provided for free under the banner of rights, then we arrive at a logical position where just about everything becomes free, and it becomes logically impossible to differentiate that which should be free from that which shouldn't be. But if everything is free, nothing is really free because someone ultimately has to pay for it all, meaning everyone ends up paying for everyone else's free stuff.

Free stuff becomes quite expensive when there is so much of it.

Along with this comes the question of why anyone would produce anything (including TVs or shoes or tampons) without compensation, since there would be no sale and hence no profit from free stuff, which is also simply another way of illustrating that entitlement liberalism depends upon state coercion to get party A to provide things for party B that they wouldn't otherwise and, for understandable reasons, be willing to provide.

Apart from the logical and economic complexities, however, there is no denying the political genius of an approach in which votes can be efficiently "bought" with targeted "free stuff as rights" appeals. Those who might, for instance, resist the idea of taxpayers providing free tampons or contraceptives can be accused of wanting to prevent women from having access to tampons or contraceptives (or even waging war on them). Or those who might object for various reasons to making college free could be accused of wanting to prevent kids from going to college.

But the logic of entitlement liberalism doesn't end there, with the mere establishment of an entitlement, because several other psychological tendencies involving what economists call "moral hazard" also come into play.

First, any sense of shame at receiving benefits one didn't work for, and that the labor of others makes possible, is gradually and intentionally lost. Going on the dole is no longer embarrassing, or even to be avoided, because such dependence is disguised as an entitlement/right. Indeed, the only complaint at this point is that the recipient isn't getting enough of whatever there is to be got, a condition which itself can be usefully redefined as a form of injustice or even oppression and thus a basis for victim status.

Second is the sturdy political loyalty that flows from dependence upon government. As the old saying goes, those with the least to share are always the ones most in favor of sharing. Voters who receive a government benefit will not only vote for the politicians who provided it, but against any in the future who might take it away or propose even infinitesimal cuts in its rate of growth. Put differently, we might be sticking our grandkids with a $17 trillion national debt, but you're not touching my Medicare.

And then there is the third and most devastating psychological consequence of all, the one that finally signals societal decline and eventual collapse, which occurs when those pulling the wagon--the ones who work hard, pay most of the taxes, and more generally make their own way in life--say "why bother" and jump in the wagon too.

------------v------------

Freelance columnist Bradley R. Gitz, who lives and teaches in Batesville, received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois.

Editorial on 08/25/2014

Upcoming Events