Quickies: Showing Rather Than Telling The Baleful Influence Of Welfare

     Tyler Durden has produced an extremely instructive article that depicts, with the aid of some simple graphics, the work-punishing effect of American welfarism. The article is so good that it defies excerpting. Please read it all.

     Only one approach to welfare has managed to avoid the “welfare cliff” dramatized in the article: what social scientists call “indoor relief” and was exemplified by the Victorian Era “workhouse.” In such system, the beneficiary receives no cash; rather, his physical sustenance is maintained and he is put to monotonous work of little value. He’s protected from starvation or death by exposure, but he’s also given a powerful incentive to find other work. If he has children, they too reside in the workhouse. They’re compelled to attend school or work at equally monotonous, unfulfilling chores eight to ten hours per day, such that they cannot run riot through the community.

     While it is true that such a system can be abused, just as our prisons can be, it is the only way to sustain a dependent that averts the “welfare cliff.” Its superiority to “outdoor relief” – the cash-handout variety of welfare system currently in force in the U.S. and all other Western countries – has been well documented. But our “bleeding hearts” want none of it...mainly because it doesn’t provide government jobs for them and their children.

     Storytellers learn early to “Show, Don’t Tell!” It’s the key to a really involving piece of fiction. Durden has applied the maxim to welfare, and in doing so has dramatized its fatal fault better than any muckraker or yellow journalist.