Many conservatives/libertarians have made the argument that the welfare state has "destroyed the black family". Under the welfare system, single-mother families were nearly on pair, in terms of financial viability, with traditional two-parent families. In other words, participant fatherhood wasn't particularly rewarded in black society as it would have been absent government intervention. This, as the argument goes, had a lasting cultural impact.
This may or may not be true, and, indeed, if it were true, it might be a good argument against the welfare state. However, from a libertarian perspective, this would be problematic. If libertarians wanted to argue against welfarism on account of the taxation that is required to fund it and the economic and moral issues that are resultant from that, then I wouldn't see a problem. The problem arises when they argue against the giving aspect of welfarism.
Imagine a wealthy organization that is funded entirely through voluntary donations. Now imagine that this organization gave money to the would-be welfare recipients instead of the government. Wouldn't the socio-economic/cultural impact be exactly the same? If so, then the implication would be that these people do not know how to spend their own money, and it might even be wise for the government to step in and ban this organization from giving them hand-outs (which of course would be anti-libertarian).
The way I see it is that the government never forced the recipients to choose between the traditional family and welfare handouts. And if it were so that fatherhood was beneficial for more than financial reasons (which it is believed to be), then they should have recognized this fact and acted accordingly. To say otherwise would be oppose financial personal responsibility, a tenet of both libertarianism and conservatism.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 comments:
Post a Comment