Welfare has become a grotesquely twisted word in our modern context. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word “welfare” means; the general health, happiness and safety of a person, an animal or a group. But the modern sense of the masses believes the definition of this word to be, “Money that the government pays regularly to people who are poor, unemployed, sick etc.”. The Indian populace usually derive these classifications from their childhood school textbooks which are heavily regulated by the government.
This concept of an external authority paying the needy a fixed amount of income sounds soothing but in reality, it reveals to be an immensely horrible and mafia-like notion. This progressivist socialist idea claims that the governmental policy of social security helps people to exit poverty or at least survive it for the time being and it also supports the sick and old. It’s true that it do perform the above functions, but at a tyrannical cost.
Let us unravel this idea before exposing it. The hard fact of reality is that nothing is free of cost and every action has its reaction or consequences, be it positive or negative. Henceforth, “free” welfare is not free at all because the taxpayers had to involuntarily pay for it at gun point. It’s like a group of criminals robbing a person and then each of them describing their different intentions to spend that money and then asking the victim to decide about whose idea is better.
The deliberately ignored long term consequences of extorting money from hard working individuals or incurring debt to which no one is liable but the taxpayer who had absolutely no voluntary role in borrowing that money in the first place and then distributing the loot among those who don’t or can’t work just because they don’t or can’t work is an immensely disastrous and fascist scheme of populist government spending. The financial records kept by the government of Ancient Rome under Augustus’s regime illustrates about how Augustus spent the loot from his conquests in Egypt in lavish gifts to the aristocracy, public works and distributing it among the labourers and bankrupted the state. There is no such thing as a “free lunch” as they say.
Jobs are the means and not the ends in themselves, people work to earn and honest wage with which they could fulfil their desires and needs. People who had worked hard and saved extra capital, invest in another or their own venture. To recover the investment and earn more money to fulfil personal needs, invest further or expand the venture, one needs to produce goods and services which are cheaper and better than the existing ones otherwise consumers won’t have any reason to buy his/her products.
But the owner of the venture needs workers to produce those goods and services and particularly those workers who possess the necessary skills to produce products which owner of the venture has in mind. But he/she also has to offer those skilled workers more wages than what they already earn otherwise, just like the consumers mentioned above, they won’t have any reason to work in the venture.
On the other hand, the government earns zero income and produces zero goods and services because the people do not have any other choice but to follow this cohesively established organization’s orders. Thus the only incentive the government officials has is to serve the status que which includes preparing welfare schemes which punishes those who works to earn money (taxation) and rewards those who does not work at all and consequently does not earn anything (handouts), but this policy benefits the government because it harvest votes which further helps in maintaining the illusion of freedom and serves the status que.
Private charities had been proven way more efficient than the government in helping the downtrodden because the volunteers working for the private charities provide their services just because they themselves want help those in need unlike the government official who distribute handouts to unemployed voters just because a government official with more cohesive powers orders him to do so. Private charities are funded by those individuals who voluntarily sacrifices a portion of their hard earned money to those private charities which the donor believes to be helping in the way the individual donor considers most compassionate unlike government agencies who send armed personale to extort money from workers and producers or incur dept to which the politicians aren’t personally liable for.
In the case of welfare schemes for the old and sick also the government only invests its loot to maintain the status que. Strangers aren't responsible for life choices of those who hadn't purchased a retirement or health insurance plan while they could or those who were ditched by their families or have no family anyway.
