Truth and Lies About Welfare

by Ken Bowers (Utah)

Speech given at the Restaurant Social and Speakers Forum of the IAP National Conference, January 17, 2003, Taylorsville (Salt Lake City), Utah.  Ken Bowers is author of the book, "Hiding in Plain Sight."

Thank you very much. This is going to be a kind of “Welfare 101.”

Years ago while I was attending BYU [Brigham Young University], I took an economics class, a general ed class, Economics 101, for my degree in Chemistry. The textbook for that course taught basic economic principles derived from human nature. As an example of that, the book told about a certain poll that was taken among Americans. About 1500 Americans were polled, from all walks of life, from all economic strata. The poll asked many questions, but the textbook centered on two questions. Those questions seemed to reach out and grab at my attention. They were, as a matter of fact, mind-boggling to me at least. Those questions spoke volumes about human nature and finances. Here are the questions:

1. Do you make enough money to give you “financial happiness?” That was one of the questions they asked. And I looked at that and I thought, “What an incredible question!” Let me repeat that: Do you make enough money to make you financially happy? The person who thought that question up should have been given an award, but the answer was equally incredible. The textbook commented on it. Every single person in the poll answered in the negative. Not one person answered positively. In other words, not one person thought that they made enough money to give them financial security. And yet, they asked this question of people from all walks of life and from all economic strata; from people who were making minimum wage up through CEOs, bank presidents, even people who inherited great fortunes. They asked questions of everybody. And not one person said that they made enough money. The pollsters commented that this was the first time since they began taking polls that every single respondent replied the same.

But the best is yet to come. The next question was: How much money would you need in order to make you financially happy? Now in that question there was a diversity of answers, and they ranged from approximately five times more than what they were making, to maybe 25% more than what they were making. But if I remember correctly, the most common response (about 40%) said, “Well, I’d be happy if I made 50% more than I am making now.” And again, that ranged from people who were down on the economic bottom rung to those up on top. From CEOs – they’re making millions of dollars, and they have millions more in stock options – and yet they said they wanted more money.

I began to think about that. Those two questions are really incredible, because they speak to human nature. From those two questions, the textbook that I read extrapolated certain general conclusions about human nature. Both questions seemed to point to a fact, which the text explains as follows: Human wants and desires are infinite. They took that from the fact that even those on the top of the economic ladder said that they weren’t satisfied with what they were getting. They had to have more. 

Let’s go with that a little ways.

Suppose now you here in the audience had the power to give me everything, the whole earth. Suppose I had power over the whole earth and everybody on the earth. Do you know what I’d say next? I’d say, “Well, that’s fine and good, but what about the Moon? What about Mars? Give me the whole solar system! I want more! I want more!” Human wants and needs are infinite.

And then the textbook said: The resources necessary to fulfill those wants and need are finite. We have just so much gold and silver in the earth. There’s just so many diamonds, there’s just so much coal, there’s just so much water, there’s just so much timber, there’s just so much of what we have on the earth – there’s no more. Human needs and wants are infinite, but the resources to fulfill those wants and needs are finite.

Now I wish that every politician in this country had to take Economics 101 and pass it. That would shut a lot of them up. We can’t satisfy every human want and need. As a matter of fact, in my book Hiding in Plain Sight, I comment on that. When the Thirteen Colonies were still part of England, Professor Alexander Tyler wrote about the fall of Athenian democracy over two thousand years earlier. And he said, “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves funds from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship.” 

Professor Alexander Tyler wrote that when we were part of the English colonies, before the American Revolution. He could only have said that if he understood the core, the very fiber, of human nature. He could have only said that if he had that knowledge.

Now, we have to ask ourselves a question: Aren’t we supposed to be charitable? Aren’t we supposed to give money to the poor? As a matter of fact, from the LDS [Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints] perspective, the Savior in 3 Nephi chapter 13, verse 1, said the following: “Verily, verily I say that I would that ye should do alms unto the poor.” So what’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with that? Why can’t the government do that, as an institution, what we’re commanded to do as individuals? What’s wrong with the government doing that? 

The answer to that question was given in a talk by Ezra Taft Benson when he was President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. And he said, “Americans have always been committed to taking care of the poor, the aged, and the unemployed. We’ve done this as a basis of Judaic-Christian beliefs for hundreds of years. It has been fundamental to our way of life that charity must be voluntary, if it is to be charity. Compulsory benevolence is not charity.

Today’s socialists who call themselves egalitarians are using the federal government to redistribute wealth in our society, not as a matter of voluntary charity, but as a matter of right. One HEW official said (now, for those who remember the HEW stood for the Department of Heath, Education, and Welfare back in the 50s and 60s), “In this country, welfare is no longer a charity – it is a right. More and more Americans feel their government owes them something.”

And do you know what? When you use the government to forcefully take from others, and redistribute it to someone else that you think should receive it, that is what happens. People start to rely on it, and they stop thinking of it as charity, and as a right! They think they have the right to pick your pocket! Even though compulsory benevolence is not charity, that doesn’t answer the question: Why is it wrong? Well let’s continue his talk.

He said, “Society condones a dole, which demoralizes man and weakens his God-given initiative and character.” Can we condone it? We should always, always, have a negative take on any social service program that the government tries to force upon us. Through confiscatory taxation they will take from us and give to somebody they think deserves it. That is not charity, that’s force – and force comes from Satan.

Now, there’s another take on this. Robert J. Ringger in his book, Restoring the American Dream, said it best: “We have become a society which rewards people for doing less. And in such an environment, that is exactly what people will do – less!” This fact notwithstanding, President Jimmy Carter was proposing a direct cash payment to families below certain income levels. Government always manages to outdo itself in coming up with creative labels for its ludicrous actions. The name given to this one was a “negative income tax” – remember that? Negative income tax. Any rational person could predict the unavoidable effects of such handouts. Quite simply, the more money people receive for not working, the less they work. It is so obvious. And in fact that is recently what a study conducted by the government itself shows. 

Congress spent 112 million tax dollars testing 8500 low-income families, giving them various kinds of direct payments over a period of ten years. The government’s own reports concluded that the more money these families received the less they worked. Washington spent 112 million to find out something that any person with a layman’s grasp of human nature already new. Then after studying that question, Carter (in his infinite wisdom) concluded that more income, and less production, was a good thing. One could not ask for a more blatant example of a politician’s totally ignoring the facts and basing the decision on political expediency.

The dole in whatever form it takes is soul-destroying. And it is my contention that the people who promoted it knew that! They didn’t want people to be independent. They wanted a populace to depend on government, to look to government for answers, to let Washington solve all their problems. That is evil. We need to put people in office who will give back to people their God-given initiatives. We need people in office who will honor their fellow man, not make him their economic slave. And with God’s help we will turn it around this year or next year. Thank you very much.