The Welfare State and the Selfish Society
By Dennis Prager
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In the contemporary world, where left-wing attitudes
are regarded as normative, it is a given that
capitalism, with its free market and profit motive,
emanates from and creates selfishness, while
socialism, the welfare state and the "social
compact," as it is increasingly referred to, emanate
from and produce selflessness.
The opposite is the truth.
Whatever its intentions, the entitlement state
produces far more selfish people — and therefore, a
far more selfish society — than a free-market
economy. And once this widespread selfishness
catches on, we have little evidence that it can be
undone.
Here's an illustration: Last year, President Obama
addressed a large audience of college students on
the subject of health care. At one point in his
speech, he announced that the students will now be
able to remain on their parents' health insurance
plan until age 26. I do not ever recall hearing a
louder, more thunderous and sustained applause than
I did then. I do not believe that if the president
had announced that a cure for cancer had been
discovered that the applause would have been louder
or longer.
It is depressing to listen to that applause. To be
told that one can be dependent on one's parents
until age 26 should strike a young person who wants
to grow up as demeaning, not as something to
celebrate.
Throughout American history, the natural — or at
least hoped for — inclination of a young person was
to become a mature adult, independent of Mom and
Dad, and to become a grown up. But in the welfare
state, this is no longer the case.
In various European countries, it is increasingly
common for young men to live with their parents into
their 30s and even longer. Why not? In the welfare
state, there is no shame in doing so.
The welfare state enables — and thereby produces —
people whose preoccupations become more and more
self-centered as time goes on:
How many benefits will I receive from the state?
How much will the state pay for my education?
How much will the state pay for my health care and
when I retire?
What is the youngest age at which I can retire?
How much vacation time can I get each year?
How many days can I call in sick and get paid?
How many months can I claim paternity or maternity
care money?
The list gets longer with each election of a
left-wing party. And each entitlement becomes a
"right" as the left transforms entitlements into the
language of "rights" as quickly as possible.
What entitlements do, and what the transformation of
entitlements into rights does, is create a citizenry
that increasingly lacks the most important character
trait — gratitude. Of all the characteristics needed
for both a happy and morally decent life, none
surpasses gratitude. Grateful people are happier,
and grateful people are more morally decent. That is
why we teach our children to say "thank you." But
the welfare state undoes that. One does not express
thanks for a right. So, instead of "thank you," the
citizen of the welfare state is taught to say,
"What more can I get?"
Yet, while producing increasingly selfish people,
the mantra of the left, and therefore of the
universities and the media, has been for generations
that capitalism and the free market, not the welfare
state, produces selfish people.
They succeed in part because demonizing
conservatives and their values is a left-wing art.
But the truth is that capitalism and the free market
produce less selfish people. Teaching people to work
hard and take care of themselves (and others)
produces a less, not a more, selfish citizen.
Capitalism teaches people to work harder; the welfare state teaches people to want harder. Which is better?