The Failed Welfare Policies of Socialism
Two Princeton economists recently shocked many of us by revealing the devastating welfare situation in the United States . Although death rates have been systematically declining in the advanced countries as well-being and longevity increased in many past decades, the white middle class in America has recently seen this sign of national well-being reversed. And nothing in the economic policy of President Obama’s “transformative” (changing to socialism) years countered the trend of declining well-being for American non-Hispanic whites over the age of 25. Black non-Hispanics and Hispanics at midlife, and those aged 25 and above in every racial and ethnic group, continued to see mortality rates fall, but not America’s white population with high school education or less.
The numbers of the middle-aged in unemployment greatly increased. Part-time employment increased because Obama Care mandated that employers must provide full-time employees with health care insurance, so they immediately began to hire only part-time workers. How often have lawmakers been unable to avoid devastating unforeseen consequences! The millions on food stamps and the millions in poverty increased under Mr. Obama’s policies, and millions took advantage of more lax requirements for recipients of disability insurance.
In the meantime, the tacit social attack on marriage resulted in less stable families as “partnerships” replaced many marriages, children born out of wedlock, less stable families, as well as the growing opioid epidemic and increasing alcoholism. Incomes for these groups have not increased for decades as manufacturing has declined and jobs have been outsourced. There were marked increases in ‘deaths of despair’— “increasing death rates from drug and alcohol poisonings, suicide, and chronic liver diseases and cirrhosis. Although all education groups saw increases in mortality from suicide and poisonings, and an overall increase in external cause mortality, those with less education saw the most marked increases.” (See the Abstract, Anne Case and Angus Deaton, “Rising morbidity and mortality in midlife among white non-Hispanic Americans in the 21st century,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 112 no. 49.) Individuals in this population reported declines in their health, mental health, and in their ability to conduct normal daily activities. They had increases in chronic pain and a resultant decline in their ability to work, obviously affecting their desire to remain involved in the labor force.
I addressed some of these issues in chapter 18 of my book, Socialism, entitled “Socialism and the Welfare State”. In a number of city centers there are far too many one-parent families where teen-age sons drop out of school, find no employment, join gangs and become involved in drugs. As I pointed out there, minimum wage laws condemn young people to unemployment, especially those looking for their first employment experience. This is because small businesses find it unprofitable to add to the employment rolls when new workers add less to business revenues than to costs.
In sum, welfare programs that don’t lead minorities to better educational solutions produce only counterproductive outcomes. Poverty, ill health, drug addiction and peddling, gang activity and violence should not be the dead-end destiny of any youth, let alone the number of people affected in some of our city centers. The Welfare State has largely failed in the United States. Socialists will say it is because too few resources go into it. They will repeat that until the financial failure of the nation state, but they will not solve the problem of poverty with traditional welfare policies.
