Public Assistance / Welfare - a brief history - an unintended consequence of good intentions

[shellbyrne]

The reign of Elizabeth I had conferred this right, as a way of dealing with the epidemic of begging that had followed the Dissolution of the Monasteries.  In the past they had provided essentially private and voluntary charity to the poor, on a discretionary basis.

At first, the replacement of discretionary charity by public assistance as of right appeared humane.  If men were not thinking beings who react to their circumstances by taking what they conceive to be advantage of them, this system doubtless would have had the desired effect.     

But instead, this system gave rise to voluntary idleness.  It destroyed both kindness and gratitude (for what is given bureaucratically is received with resentment); it encouraged fraud and dissimulation of various kinds, and above all it dissolved the social bonds that protected people from the worst effects of poverty.  The provision of relief by entitlement atomized society. 

The provision as of right destroyed the motive for human solidarity in the face of hardship, and undermined both ties of personal affection and the sense of duty toward close relations.  Intended as an expression of social responsibility, it liberated selfishness.  The shift of responsibility from individual to collectivity had an enormous and deleterious effect on how people thought and felt, and therefore upon society as a whole.  Where this shift had taken place, economic progress was perfectly compatible with squalor of every kind, and general wealth with degradation. 

- Public Assistance as of Right:    Tocqueville Memoir on Pauperism: The Social Pathology of the American (British) slum an excerpt from Dr. Theodore Dalrymple