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Welfare State Quotes

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Welfare State Quotes

“I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion about the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.”

ThinkingWayMeanGovernmentEasyPoorOpinionPovertyDrivingBest WayWelfareFederal GovernmentDoing GoodProperty RightsWelfare StateAmerican LibertyRevolution Founding FathersGeneral WelfareGovernment And SocietyGovernment Politics
Book:Memoirs of Benjamin Franklin
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“In my youth, I traveled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.”

MadeDifferentCountryDoneGovernmentCoursesPoorYouthContraryTraveledFederal GovernmentProvisionWelfare StateDifferent CountriesGeneral WelfareGovernment And SocietyGovernment Politics
Book:The Autobiography and Other Writings
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“The biggest threat to the American people today lies with the United States government. ... [T]he long-term solution is to dismantle, not reform, the iron fist of the welfare state and the controlled economy. This includes the end (not the reform) of the IRS, the DEA, the BATF, the SEC, the FDA, HUD, the departments of HHS, Labor, Agriculture, and energy, and every other agency that takes money from some and gives it to others or interferes with peaceful behavior.”

PeopleGivingLongEndsStatesGovernmentTodayLyingEnergyTermUnitedUnited StatesEconomyBehaviorSolutionsLaborThreatPeacefulReformWelfareLong TermAgencyDepartmentIronControlledAgricultureInterfereFistsState GovernmentWelfare StateIrsFdaUnited States Government
Author:Jacob G. Hornberger
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“Isn't our choice really not one of left or right, but of up or down? Down through the welfare state to statism, to more and more government largesse accompanied always by more government authority, less individual liberty, and ultimately, totalitarianism, always advanced as for our own good. The alternative is the dream conceived by our Founding Fathers, up to the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with an orderly society.”

StatesDreamGovernmentChoicesFatherIndividualLeftLibertyAuthorityUltimateConstitutionAlternativesWelfareConsistentFoundingTotalitarianismOur Founding FathersOrderlyOur ChoicesWelfare StateIndividual LibertyIndividual FreedomLargesse
Book:Speaking my mind: selected speeches
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“A masterly analysis of how political interests, economic circumstances, development strategies, and local history have shaped what are surprisingly different versions of the welfare state across the developing world. The authors combine fine-grained country analyses with intelligent use of data, and explain and extend the theory and literature on the modern welfare state. The book is both scholarly and readable.”

WorldBookDifferentCountryStatesUsePoliticalLiteratureInterestEconomicModernTheoryFineDevelopmentCircumstancesIntelligentStrategyLocalsVersionsDataDevelopingWelfareAnalysisWelfare StateScholarlyLocal History
Author:Nancy Birdsall
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“Young people today are being robbed. Of their rights. Of their freedom. Of their dignity. Of their futures. The culprits? My generation and our predecessors, who either created or failed to stop the world straddling engine of theft, degradation, manipulation, and social control we call the welfare state.”

PeopleWorldStatesTodayYoungSocialRightsGenerationsDignityWelfareManipulationEnginesTheftMy GenerationDegradationPredecessorsWelfare StateCulpritSocial Control
Author:Tom G. Palmer
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“The US, for historical reasons, mistrusts the concept of a welfare state, and this mistrust shows itself nakedly under present US government, which commits uncounted billions of the national wealth to what it calls defence, and is close-fisted in giving money to plans which would ameliorate the grinding poverty of a great part of its people. Quite simply, in Canada you could not get away with that.”

PeopleGivingStatesReasonShowsGovernmentWealthPovertyPlansConceptsHistoricalBillionsCommitWelfareCanadaGet AwayDefenceMistrustWelfare StateGiving Money
Book:The Merry Heart: Reflections on Reading, Writing, and the World of Books
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“The fundamental fact in the lives of the poor in most parts of America is that the wages of common labor are far below the benefits of AFDC, Medicaid, food stamps, public housing, public defenders, leisure time and all the other goods and services of the welfare state.”

StatesFactsAmericaPoorCommonBenefitsLaborFundamentalsWelfareGoodsLeisureWagesStampsHousingDefendersWelfare StateGoods And ServicesLeisure TimeFood StampsMedicaidPublic Housing
Author:George Gilder
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“You have the courage to tell the masses what no politician told them: you are inferior and all the improvements in your conditions which you simply take for granted you owe to the effort of men who are better than you. If this be arrogance, as some of your critics observed, it is still the truth that had to said in the age of the Welfare State.”

IfsMenSaidStillsStatesAgeEffortConditionsPoliticianMassCriticsImprovementGrantedWelfareArroganceInferiorsBetter Than YouWelfare State
Author:Ludwig von Mises
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“The usage of the words "public" and "public sphere" betrays a multiplicity of concurrent meanings. Their origins go back to various historical phases and, when applied synchronically to the conditions of a bourgeois society that is industrially advanced and constituted as a social-welfare state, they fuse into a clouded amalgam. Yet the very conditions that make the inherited language seem inappropriate appear to require these words, however confused their employment.”

StatesSeemsLanguageSocialConditionsHistoricalVariousEmploymentWelfareConfusedSpheresBetrayPhasesBourgeoisInappropriateMultiplicityUsageWelfare StateFuseCloudedSocial Welfare
Author:Jurgen Habermas
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“There are three ways in which a man becomes a slave. He may be born into slavery, or forced into it, or he can deliberately accept his servitude. All three forms flourish in the modern world. Men are born and forced into slavery in Russia and her satellites states. Men in the free world invite slavery when they ask the government to provide complete security, when they surrender their freedom to the "Welfare State."”

MenWorldWayMayStatesWisdomGovernmentFormThreeAsksPoliticsBornAcceptingEconomyModernSecuritySlaverySlaveSurrenderRussiaWelfareLiberalismInvitesModern WorldServitudeSatellitesWelfare StateFree WorldThree Ways
Author:Fulton J. Sheen
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“Socialists do not merely want a welfare state, they absolutely must have one. They must have a grovelling dependent class from which to obtain their daily opiate: an hallucinogenic euphoria which comes from the delusion of being superior to and more altruistic than all others. They must have 'the poor, huddled masses' in much the same manner as vampires must have the blood of their victims.”

WantStatesPoorClassBloodMassVictimSuperiorsVampireWelfareDependentDelusionWelfare StateEuphoriaOpiates
Author:Edward Britton
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“General welfare is a general condition - maybe sound currency is general welfare, maybe markets, maybe judicial system, maybe a national defense, but this is specific welfare. This justifies the whole welfare state - the military industrial complex, the welfare to foreigners, the welfare state that imprisons our people and impoverishes our people and gives us our recession.”

PeopleGivingStatesWholeSoundConditionsMilitaryComplexesDefenseWelfareJustifyCurrencyForeignersRecessionsJudicialWelfare StateMilitary Industrial ComplexNational DefenseGeneral WelfareJudicial System
Author:Ron Paul
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“Stripped of its academic jargon, the welfare state is nothing more than a mechanism by which governments confiscate the wealth of the productive members of a society to support a wide variety of welfare schemes.”

IfsStatesGovernmentPoliticalWealthSupportAmountMembersProgramWideSpendingScalesFinanceVarietyWelfareProductiveMassiveMechanismAcademicSchemesTaxationDeficitResortsPolitical PowerExpendituresWelfare StateLarge ScaleJargonDeficit Spending
Author:Alan Greenspan
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“History, well taught, is the demythologising of the past... Take any important issue of our time - Northern Ireland, Nuclear Disarmament, Race, The Welfare State, South Africa - and it becomes impossible to seriously confront any of them without understanding their historical background.”

WellsImportantStatesPastUnderstandingRaceIssuesImpossibleTaughtHistoricalSouthNuclearBackgroundsWelfareOur TimeIrelandSouth AfricaDisarmamentWelfare StateImportant IssuesNorthern IrelandNuclear Disarmament
Author:Alan Bullock
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“The stark truth is that as long as the welfare state makes it possible for young women - or teenage girls - to have children without a husband and survive without a job, out-of-wedlock births will remain ruinously high, and the inner city will continue to be marked by crime, poverty, and despair.”

ChildrenLongStatesJobsYoungGirlCitiesPovertyCrimeBirthTruth IsHusbandDespairWelfareYoung WomenTeenageStarksWelfare StateInner CityTeenage GirlWedlock
Book:Libertarianism: A Primer
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“The welfare state destroys the market mechanisms - lessens free choice and willing exchange. Simultaneously creating unnatural specializations, it must, granted statism's premise, resort to welfarism; that is, it must assume the responsibility for the people's welfare: their employment, their old age, their income, and the like. As this is done, man loses his wholeness; he is dispossessed of responsibility for self, the very essence of his manhood. The more dependent he becomes, the less dependable!”

PeopleMenSelfStatesDoneAgeChoicesLosesResponsibilityWillingCreatingEssenceAssumingIncomeOld AgeEmploymentGrantedWelfareDependentMechanismWholenessManhoodResortsPremisesUnnaturalWelfare StateSpecializationDependableFree Choice
Author:Leonard Read
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“Whether we want to own up to it or not, the welfare state has done what Jim Crow, gross discrimination and poverty could not have done. It has contributed to the breakdown of the black family structure and has helped establish a set of values alien to traditional values of high moral standards, hard work and achievement.”

WantHardStatesDoneValuesBlackMoralPovertyHard WorkAchievementStandardsStructureDiscriminationTraditionalAliensWelfareGrossCrowBreakdownWelfare StateJim CrowTraditional ValuesBlack Family
Author:Walter E. Williams
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“The more the state gives to its citizens, the less they have to earn. That is the basic concept of the welfare state - you receive almost everything you need without having to earn any of it. About half of Americans now pay no federal income tax - but they receive all government benefits just as if they had paid for, i.e., earned them.”

IfsNeedsGivingStatesGovernmentPayHalfCitizensTaxesBenefitsConceptsPaidIncomeWelfareIncome TaxWelfare State
Author:Dennis Prager
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“Citizens of liberal welfare states become increasingly narcissistic. The great preoccupations of vast numbers of Brits, Frenchmen, Germans and other Western Europeans are how much vacation time they will have an how early they can retire and be supported by the state.”

StatesNumbersCitizensWesternWelfareRetiringVacationNarcissisticPreoccupationWelfare StateFrenchmenBritsVacation Time
Book:Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph
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“The welfare state is predicate don collecting money from today's workers in order to pay for those who paid in before them. But today's workers don't have enough money to sustain the scheme, and there are too few of them to do so. As a result, virtually every welfare state in Europe, and many American states, like California are going broke.”

StatesEnoughTodayOrderResultsPayEuropePaidWorkersBrokeCaliforniaWelfareSchemesCollectingWelfare State
Author:Dennis Prager
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“The bigger the government, the less the citizens do for one another. If the state will take care of me and my neighbors, why should I? This is why Western Europeans, people who have lived in welfare states far longer than Americans have, give less to charity and volunteer less time to others than do Americans of the same socioeconomic status.”

PeopleIfsGivingShouldStatesGovernmentCareCitizensBiggerCharityWesternTake CareNeighborWelfareShould IVolunteerWelfare StateTake Care Of MeSocioeconomic Status
Book:Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph
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“The welfare state corrupts family life. Even Democrats have acknowledged the destructive consequences of the welfare state on the underclass. It has rendered vast numbers of male unnecessary to females, who have looked to the state to support them and their children (and the more children, the more state support) rather than to husbands. In effect, these women took the state as their husband.”

ChildrenStatesNumbersSupportEffectsHusbandConsequenceFemaleDemocratMalesWelfareDestructiveUnnecessaryFamily LifeWelfare State
Author:Dennis Prager
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“When Congress votes for all sorts of benefits, without voting for enough taxes to pay for them, they get the support of those who have been promised the benefits, without getting grief from the taxpayers. It's strictly win-win as far as the welfare-state politicians are concerned. But it is strictly lose-lose, big-time, for the country, as deficits skyrocket.”

Has BeensCountryStatesEnoughBigsWinningLosesGriefPaySupportPoliticianTaxesBenefitsConcernedVoteCongressWelfareVotingDeficitTaxpayersWelfare StateWin Win
Author:Thomas Sowell
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“The greatest danger to the liberal vision are facts about the consequences of liberalism itself and the laws, policies, and ways of life that the left has spawned. That the black family, which survived centuries of slavery and generations of discrimination, has disintegrated in the wake of the liberal welfare states is only one example.”

WayStatesFactsLawLeftBlackVisionGenerationsCenturyDangerPolicyExampleConsequenceSlaveryDiscriminationWelfareLiberalismSurvivedWelfare StateBlack Family
Author:Thomas Sowell
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“Those on the left who scream about income gaps choose to focus on the success of those at the top rather than the failures of those at the bottom. They conveniently ignore that liberals are the ones who have pushed the moral relativisim and welfare-state dependence that has destroyed black families over the last 60 years. And it is these same liberals who fight to keep low-income kids in failing public schools and fight efforts to get school choice.”

YearsStatesKidsSchoolLastsChoicesFightingLeftBlackEffortMoralFocusFailingLowsBottomIncomeDestroyedWelfareGapsScreamDependencePublic SchoolWelfare StateLow IncomeBlack FamilySchool Choice
Author:Star Parker
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“The welfare state is institutionalized crime - 'organized plunder,' as the French economist Frederic Bastiat called it. It systematizes what is intrinsically wrong: forcing some people to support others. The Democrats favor the indefinite expansion of the welfare state, perpetually increasing the ratio of force to freedom in society.”

PeopleStatesForceSupportCrimeDemocratFavorsWelfareOrganizedExpansionEconomistRatiosWelfare StatePlunder
Author:Joseph Sobran
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