You Are Not Entitled to Anything

The Declaration of Independence did not just announce the independence of America. It also announced the independence of Americans. Your unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (among the other rights) are not granted to you by government. They are endowed upon you by your Creator. Governments are instituted to secure those rights and, if a government becomes destructive to those rights, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish such government.

The question that we must address is: has our current government become destructive of those unalienable rights endowed by the Creator? I would assert that Trump’s MAGA Republicans and the Democrat’s leftist progressives would agree that the United States has become destructive of the peoples’ rights and seek to abolish the current constitutional government to be replaced by some form of new government that would secure those rights. But not only are the rights these groups seek to secure different from each other, they are also different from the unalienable rights as conceived by the Founders.

The unalienable rights as conceived by the Founders were civil rights, which are also known as negative rights. Just reread the amendments to the constitution known as the Bill of Rights. It is a list of things the government cannot do. “Congress shall make no law….the right of the people…shall not be infringed, the right of the people to be secure …against unreasonable searches and seizures, etc.” the rights described in the Declaration of Independence.

But there is also a belief that there are positive rights, also known as social justice rights. Rather than restrain or prohibit government action (as is the case with negative rights) positive rights require government action. And because the government does not create wealth, the cost of positive rights must be paid by some citizens for the benefit of other citizens. These payments may be in the form of taxes such that wealthier citizens fund the benefits to poorer citizens. Or they may be in the form of deficit spending, borrowing the funds such that future citizens pay for the benefits of current citizens.

The concept of such positive rights did not exist at the time of the Founding. The Enlightenment philosophy on which our country was founded emphasizes the sovereignty of the individual and the liberty of individuals to pursue their unique version of happiness (what we now call the American Dream). Poorer citizens suffered from their poverty relying on the charitable giving of those better off for whatever meager benefits they might receive. However, such poverty was a great incentive to work hard and many immigrants were able to work their way up from poverty. Nevertheless, in any large and complex society there will be individuals that are not able to reap the benefits of such society, whether through physical or mental handicaps.

Some accommodation should be made for those unfortunate people, but the current welfare state casts a much broader net. The welfare state seeks to convert an individualistic society into a collective or communal society where it assumes that the purpose of government is to provide for the people rather than to liberate the people. Liberated people thrive in a meritocratic society although some will have greater success than others creating an unequal system, but even though the system might be unequal everyone is better off because of economic growth. Dependent people in a welfare state seek an egalitarian society where any gain by some is seen as coming at a cost to others. But if some of the people in an egalitarian society are incapable of rising up (due physical or mental incapacity) then other people must be held down in order to assure equality of outcomes. Schools and jobs are modified to accommodate the least capable in society. People are no longer able to pursue their happiness but must beg government to please give them some happiness. MAGA Republicans and progressive left Democrats are happy to supply these panaceas to a cowed and helpless people but that is not the Post-Trump world I would want to live in nor is it the kind of world I want to bequeath to my grandchildren.

If we want to be truly compassionate toward those in our society that are less fortunate or struggling, we need programs that will give them the abilities to overcome the hurdles we all face in life. They need to imbibe the American culture of hard work, a nuclear family, deferred gratification and a deep respect for education and training. There is a reason kids of recent immigrants excel in school. Not because they are inherently more intelligent than the rest of us but that their parents drive them to succeed. Those parents firmly believe in the meritocratic society which is why they left their home countries to come to America. And just like the Jewish families (and families from Italy, Poland and elsewhere) that came to the US at the end of the nineteenth century they knew as they struggled in sweatshops and factories that the next generation would reap the rewards of their sacrifice. The new immigrants in the 21st century may be working in nail salons and corner stores but their children will be the doctors, lawyers and scientists of the next generation. Already most of the CEOs of artificial intelligence start-ups are immigrants or the kids of immigrants.

Our current welfare system has put millions onto a downward spiral of illiteracy, dependence, fatherless children, drug addiction and suicide. Government programs cannot lift them out of this morass because it is those programs that have sent them there as well documented by Thomas Sowell, and even as far back as the 1965 Moynihan Report on the Negro Family. The current welfare system of entitlements must be reformed (or transformed) in order to break the downward spiral of dependency.

First, let me be clear. Social Security and Medicare are not entitlements. Nor should they be considered welfare or charity. I have been paying into Social Security for sixty years and if I had put my social security payments into the stock market, I would have more than a million dollar nest egg. And if I had invested that nest egg into Treasury bonds I would have annual interest income well in excess of what I receive from Social Security, with the added benefit that after I die that nest egg could be passed on to my kids and grandkids. It’s not my fault that the government used my Social Security contributions for current expenses (such as welfare benefits and transfer payments). Nor is it my fault that the demographics on which Social Security was based have completely changed such that the Social Security Trust Fund is practically broke. But even though Social Security’s problems are not my fault, I am willing to make some sacrifices to reform the system and make it financially sound but I want to make sure that 1) other people also must sacrifice something, and 2) the Social Security Trust Fund is rebuilt which will require contributions from the federal government. It will take decades to make Social Security financially whole again but that does not mean we can waste any more time kicking the can down the road.

Medicare is a trickier problem, but I have been contributing to Medicare for almost as long as for Social Security and in even greater amounts. Further I am still paying into Medicare as well as supplemental medical insurance. These payments are my biggest expenses. Not only does Medicare need to be fixed, the entire healthcare system needs to be fixed. Healthcare in the US as a percent of GDP is larger than any other country in the world. But our healthcare problems are more than greedy doctors and big Pharma (although those do exist), in its attempt to fix healthcare, the government has screwed everything up. Government has screwed up healthcare so badly I would be very scared to have the government create a single payer system like in other countries.

The solution to our healthcare problems is not greater government control but greater competition. Recently, President Trump urged pharmaceutical companies to lower their prices for prescription drugs or else he would lower the prices that Medicare pays to the prices charged in other countries.  But this isn’t competition, its government price controls. The problem is that much of the cost of drugs comes from R&D and clinical trials that can run into the billions of dollars. The cost of production is relatively cheap. In many other countries the only buyer is the government and these governments say they will only pay for the cost of production plus a small margin or they will reverse engineer our drugs and produce them themselves, forcing the American people to cover the entire cost of the R&D and clinical trials. Instead of threatening American based pharmaceutical companies, President Trump should threaten those countries that are stealing American intellectual property with sanctions (or tariffs) unless they pay the same price as Americans.

So Social Security and Medicare need to be reformed and restructured so that those expenses do not jeopardize the financial system of the entire country. This may mean larger contributions to the system and smaller benefits received but some sacrifices will be necessary to avoid a complete collapse. Ands there is another $1.7 trillion of other mandatory expenses that need to be addressed. And don’t forget the additional $1.9 trillion of so-called tax expenditures, much of which are part of the US welfare system. Some of these payments are essential to the well-being of millions of people, but these payments must be structured as temporary benefits in order to encourage people to rejoin the workforce and be productive members of society. President Obama once bragged about how many people he had added to the welfare rolls. But this is not something that should make a person proud. President Obama should have been ashamed. The objective that could make a president truly proud would be how many people had improved their lives and gotten off the welfare rolls.

The true goal of welfare reform is not to save money (although we DO desperately need to save money). The true goal of welfare reform is to liberate the American people from a culture of dependency. American greatness, American exceptionalism is based on a free and liberated people striving to achieve their unique vision of the American Dream.