Is Welfare Fair?

For today's post on welfare, I want to give a brief history of welfare states, look at some places where it seems to be working today, and highlight some of the inherent drawbacks to the system.

Welfare is the redistribution of wealth through contribution into a pool of money which is provisioned to provide basic levels of well being to everyone in a community. This can take the form of government programs, charities, or religious endeavors. The history of such programs is quite rich, dating back as far as the Roman Empire! Upon realization that their empire had grown too large for local crops to feed the populace, they developed a program called annona which consisted of large collections of crops in storehouses, sold to the poor at a very cheap rate during times of scarcity. The emperors would collect this tax from landowners within the empire. Historians have found that the great Roman Coliseum was used as a form of public welfare, and nearby people could collect their food. 

                               

                                      

These Roman coins called tesserae were the Roman equivalent to food stamps

This quote from Henry Joseph Haskell's 1939 book "New Deal in Rome" portents an ominous future for countries following a trend similar to ancient Rome:

The failure of the Roman system to furnish decent minimum standards of living for the mass of the people was a fundamental cause of instability, both political and economic. The decay of character that attended the sudden rush of great wealth undermined the Republic even before it was submerged by civil wars. Later, in a society unstable through social bitterness, extravagant public spending proved fatal. A British commentator, Professor F. E. Adcock of Cambridge University, remarks on the price the world finally had to pay for ” the gilding of the Golden Age of the Antonines.” The spending for non-productive public works, for the bureaucracy, and for the army, led to excessive taxation, inflation, and the ruin of the essential middle class and its leaders. It destroyed the men whom Leon Homo, French historian, calls, in a brilliant phrase, “the general staff of civilization.” These facts have implications that may be pertinent today

In modern day, Otto von Bismarck of Germany ushered in our current notion of the welfare state. He established pensions, medical care, and accident insurance through the strong ties with the business sector. In America, the Great Depression motivated a reevaluation of the role of government in maintaining the well-being of its citizens. Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal created many of the social programs we still support to this day. Overtime, these systems of welfare have become more and more holistic, with some European countries offer nearly holistic social safety nets.

One of the main sources of conflict over the welfare state is the requirement for people to pay into a system regardless of whether or not they think the system is effective. Not paying taxes is punishable by law, yet many feel as if they would rather choose how they would like to spend their money, rather than have that decision made for them by the government. There are strong arguments to be made on both sides of the debate. Often times the scale of operations in a welfare state produce incredible bureaucracy and stagnation. Programs are slow to adjust to demand, and even smallest of decisions are hard to make with so many affected parties. Additionally, the distance of the welfare system from the refinement mechanisms of the free market contribute exacerbate the inefficiencies of government social programs even further. On the other hand, social safety nets really are a public good, and those who at highest risk for needing support are rarely in a position where they can find help in times of need. A country without a welfare system would rely on the privileged to be charitable towards the lesser privileged. While this is most definitely possible, and many wealthy people are incredibly charitable global citizens, there is no guarantee that the level charitable people will match the great demand for support.

I believe that the values of a particular society dictate the importance of a welfare program and the scale to which it should be provisioned. For example, in countries where family and community are of greater importance, there is an inherent system of welfare which would make large government programs less efficient than the direct support of family and friends. Alternatively, in a country like the US which is very individualistic, it may be more important to include welfare as a major component of taxation because people are less compelled to help out their neighbor.

Although the Romans happened upon an important social innovation in the form of welfare, there is still a great deal of refinement necessary to address the root motivations for welfares existence. Opinions on welfare nearly divide the US in half, demonstrating the incredibly divisive nature of the subject. We may to reconsider our preconceptions about welfare in order to find a more suitable compromise. I am excited to talk about these divisions, and possible ways to re-envision welfare in future posts.