“The growth of the entitlement state over the past half-century has undermined the sturdy self-reliance that has long characterized most Americans, replacing it with a culture of dependence that not only distorts our government but also threatens the American experiment.” – A Nation of Takers
In the 1500s, the Poor Laws in England created the first compulsory secular system of relief. Unfortunately, its effects would create ill consequences by removing the primary responsibility of each individual over their own life. Illegitimacy grew as a result, as single mothers now had a benefactor to alleviate their woes. Over time, help became an entitlement, self-perpetuating, and permanent. Once in the hands of the government, it was no longer an act of alms. What used to be provided by the church and the community was now the role of the government, to serve as an eternal stopgap assuring basic human needs. Eventually, the poor laws were replaced with the modern welfare system and extended across all nations enshrining dependency on the state.
Private charity, on the other hand, was voluntary and temporary, where givers and takers created a bond based on goodwill and gratitude making sure the aid was improving their lives without the all too frequent curse of unintended consequences.
In America, the growing dependence on public money did not only expand the welfare rolls but changed the nature of government itself. Today, two-thirds of federal government expenditures are under the banner of entitlements, often attempting to equalize inequality, with the remaining one-third left to cover constitutional government. While poverty payments are at the mercy of the taxpayer, Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment are paid, in part, by deductions from workers' paychecks meant to subsidize their costs. As programs continuously expanded, the government became an economic influence in the people’s lives, making them heirs of its largesse.
In Nicholas Eberstadt’s 2012 book, “A Nation of Takers”, Eberstadt provides a fiscal overview of the monstrous growth of entitlements over the past fifty years, from a nominal supplement to the private sector, to its growing replacement. What started as a small outlay for those in need has now grown to a majority of the government's budget. By 2022, a significant portion of 6.3 trillion in annual transfer payments was being taken from the productive and handed to the unproductive using money either financed by taxes or borrowed against the future.
Eberstadt’s financial assessment includes a growing list of entitlements covering citizens from womb to tomb including anti-poverty programs from Head Start, to SNAP, to SSI, to EITC, to WIC, to Pell Grants, and TANF. Along with healthcare expenses covered by CHIPS, ACA, Medicare, and Medicaid; Social Security (retirement and disability), and unemployment are all paid to hundreds of millions of Americans every year. While roughly one in ten Americans lives below the poverty level, more than 50 percent currently rely on one or more government programs, with entitlement rolls growing as benefits are continuously expanded to capture more beneficiaries.
The biggest entitlement today is healthcare, with annual expenditures of 4.2 trillion in 2022, a full 17.3 percent of the GDP. The Government first began interfering in the healthcare market with Medicare/Medicaid in 1965, CHIPS in 1997, and ACA in 2010. By 2024, nearly half of all healthcare expenses will be covered by the government. Correspondingly, by 2022, only 61 percent of Americans were covered by private insurance, a fall of nearly 10 percent from 1997.
Disability, too, is a growing area of abuse. With mental health and pain accounting for half the claimants, gaming the system through fraud or malingering has led to an unsustainable number of takers who now view work as merely an option. But it's not just the poor and non-whites as is so often the claim. A system of special deductions and loopholes has captured the wealthy and connected as well.
While welfare costs impact the nation's wealth, the influence of a growing entitlement system also affects traditional mores and culture. Acceptance of government benefits, now thoroughly destigmatized, is quickly becoming a rite of passage, ironically changing America to a paternalistic state, altering its character from a self-governing people to perpetual dependency. In fact, one of the reasons welfare was shifted to the government is to dismiss aid as an act of charity. Instead, it is now an accepted fact that the government exists, in large part, to make everyone more equal.
Worse, poverty programs have done little to improve the overall position of the poor since welfare programs were introduced in the 1960s. All the government did was shift responsibility away from the space where institutions and churches once held sway, undermining social cooperation provided by civic, voluntary, and religious organizations.
New York Senator Patrick Moynihan once said, “It cannot too often be stated that the issue of welfare is not what it costs those who provide it, but what it costs those who receive it.” If we truly care about helping those in dire need, we should at least create a sustainable system that can be availed in times of need, and not one that is splitting at the seams from overuse and fraud. Nor can we grow a huge entitlement nation without the corresponding tax revenue, and its risk to the nation’s wellbeing. But most importantly, we can’t create a big government without affecting the character of the population. A character that our Founders knew was necessary for the American Experiment to succeed.
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