Introduction

Sam Slime, a man who is down on his luck, a man with no light at the end of the tunnel, a man who desperately needs help to get back on his feet and become a productive member of society. As time progresses, Mr. Slime becomes more and more desperate for help and finally reaches a breaking point: he decides action is necessary for his life depends on it. Mr. Slime pulls out one of his few possessions, a deadly sharp knife. He then proceeds to plot a criminal course of action to gain the money he needs to sustain himself. He strikes! You are his next victim!

You, an innocent victim, have your rights violated in order for Sam to continue. Sam flees the scene, at that moment you see a police officer and you holler for him, exclaiming "that thief threatened my life, and stole my property." The police officer rushes after Mr. Slime, apprehends him and places him under arrest. Mr. Slime will have to pay for his actions and suffer the consequences for his rape, pillage and plunder. Sam Slime is sentenced to jail time, where he will spend the next five years of his life.

Now Mr. Slime is even worse off than before. His release from prison is imminent, and he plots his next crime to gain the funds needed to "get back on his feet." This time Mr. Slime is more slimy than before; he has had five years to plan his next theft.

He uses his maniacal criminal mind to plan another robbery of innocent victims. This time it is not just you, but it is your mother, your father, your sister, your brother, your dearest friend, and your spouse! An inescapable crime, in which if you defend yourself you will be punished, go to jail, be damned in the eyes of society, have your remaining rights taken!

How, you ask, could he impact every important person in your life in one fell swoop? He conspires with the biggest bully of them all, your local politician! By conspiring with the government he is able to get everything he wants and more. Why should his every wish and whim from the government be granted? Because he deserves it, it is "society's" fault that he is in this position. The cruel world required him to work for a living, being paid on his productivity, rather than his will. It required him to fend for himself. Overcome obstacles. Grow beyond his mold. What an evil and terrible system we live in. Having to be responsible for your own destiny, responsible for your actions, held accountable for your mistakes!

We have to SAVE THE IDIOT, just like we saved the whales. For what would life be like without an idiot on every street corner, living off the fruits of our labor?

It would be freedom!

It would be what the Framers of our Constitution intended! It would be our ability to pursue "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." The framers feared this day. They knew that a big government would take away the rights of the American people. David Kelley, author of A Life of One's Own explains "just as the idea of a constitutional right to welfare is at odds with the Founders' legal conception of the function of government so the idea of a basic human right to welfare is at odds with the Founders' philosophical conception of the rights of the individual."

The expropriation of wealth is nothing but violation of life, liberty and property! Neither the criminal nor the government has the right to take your wealth for the sole purpose of redistributing it to others. This is only a restriction on our freedoms.

There are two types of freedom, negative freedom and positive freedom. In laymen's terms a negative freedom is freedom from something and a positive freedom is freedom to something. Free speech is a negative freedom. It is being free from governmental controls on you right to express yourself -- whereas an example of positive freedom would be social security, a right to a retirement pension. On paper the two concepts seem to coexist, in reality quite the opposite is true. Positive freedoms actually usurp other peoples negative freedoms. They do this by taking away your right to choose, your right to decide where and what to spend your money. This is how the expropriation of wealth is a violation of your individual rights.

Using this logic strictly can also have negative consequences. For example the right to individuality also has to be enforced, i.e., by a police and court system. These require revenue to support; they do limit your freedom to an extent. On the same token though courts and police also protect your freedom by allowing you to be free from the negative influences of others.

Another valid place for government is in Public Goods (a good as in a good or service, not a good thing.) These are services generally provided that can be easily and freely used by others without paying for them. Military protection is a good example for a public good. The military protects everyone in a geographical area from other countries. Adding one more family does not use up more military service as is the same in reverse. Therefore, it is easy to shirk your responsibility to pay, for if you do not pay they can not turn off the military service. Eventually it becomes an economic disadvantage to pay, for no one else is, and then military service no longer exists. The government can solve this conundrum by taxing the citizens and forcing payment for Public Goods.

When someone outwardly steals your money by force the criminal is easily identifiable, but when someone goes through political means to gain the same end, we have the perception that they are nothing but a victim, and we must care for and shelter them.

The special interest has turned our country into a semi-socialist empire. Where political correctness and the victim mentality rule our society, "The poor and needy have been at last banished, replaced by 'the under-privileged.'" This is why the Framers' designed the government to be difficult to expand and did not legislate welfare in the Constitution. Unfortunately the framers underestimated the power of the special interest.

Special interest groups are able to be so powerful due to the theory of Public Choice. Public Choice theorists take the utopia out of government and bring political theory back into reality. People's motivations are generally the same. They are self interested.

The politician is motivated by attaining votes, the voter is motivated by what the politician has done for them as of late, and the bureaucrat is motivated to acquire as much money as possible and spend it in totality. The voter is the germane party in this equation. The voter's motivation is what they are personally getting from the government today. It is impossible to know the impact of every bill passed, so the voter is "Rationally Ignorant" for they could not expend the energy required to make an informed decision. Therefore, the special interest groups move in to collapse this void. They lower the cost of information and maximize the returns to voting by researching the issue and informing the voter how to maximize your vote.

According to Doug Bandow, "The problem with the welfare state is not that it is a bit too ungainly and wasteful. The problem with the welfare state is that it is immoral in principle and disastrous in practice." This "Robin Hood" glorification of the government over looks the fact that we supposedly live in a free society, in which we should be able to reap the benefits of our prudent actions or suffer the consequences of our inappropriate actions. As Michael Tanner stated in his Policy Analysis for the Cato Institute, "The only way to prevent new people from entering the failed system [the welfare state] is to abolish programs that insulate individuals from the consequences of their actions." Furthermore, the government's intervention in social problems is not "an expression of benevolence. By its very nature, a right is not a gift or favor for which gratitude is required. It is an entitlement, an enforceable claim to something someone else owns. But people in a free and civilized society do not own each other." Therefore, our country is neither free nor civilized in its current form.

Our greatest philosophers knew that we were nothing but slaves to the government. John Locke said "government is legitimate to the extent that it protects life, liberty and property." When you have a system of entitlements, you lose your rights to property and liberty. Therefore, the welfare state is simply not a legitimate function of government. It infringes upon your own individual freedoms, by taking away your right to choose how you see fit to spend your money.

Finally the welfare state defies all economic principles. It is simply illogical! Michael Tanner exemplifies my point when he writes

"What has America received in exchange for the massive anti poverty spending? Primarily more poverty...the greatest strides in reducing poverty in America occurred before the advent of the social welfare state. Indeed, since 1973, poverty has actually increased, despite the continued growth in social welfare spending."

The reason for this is simple. Every time you raise the spending on welfare, you increase the size of government and taking precious purchasing power away from the people. As a result they can not in turn buy the goods that fuel the economy. This further impoverishing the poor, which in turn requires more spending, which in turn sets the dangerous cycle back in motion. The unforeseen impacts of social programs FAR outweighs the tangible benefits.

Conclusion

Sam Slime's methods of extracting money from his victims do not differ at all. They only differ in semantics. He is either using a knife to threaten our life, or he is using the police power of the state to threaten our life. The government actually violates us more in this case. Not only does it take money from each productive man, woman and child in America, it also propagates the further cycle of welfare spending. Ultimately you must consider these worlds of Stephen Moore:

"Almost all Americans outside Washington understand full well that the War on Poverty, launched by Lyndon Johnson thirty years ago has probably been the most destructive government concept ever invented. Poverty rates are virtually no lower today than they were in the mid-1960s despite a 40 percent increase in real per capita income since then and a $5 trillion infusion of funds. Thirty years of experience with the great society should have taught us at least one important lesson: welfare reform is not cruel; welfare is."