WEBVTT NOTE Great Society and the Republican Welfare State 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:15.000 He'll get me for that. There's one thing I want to say. You know, talking about the great society today, pretty easy in this group. I assume everybody's against it. 2 00:00:15.000 --> 00:00:26.000 But there's one last thing I want to say, a little leftover business from yesterday. And I recommended a book by Thomas Sowell. It really is loud. I feel like I'm sort of whispering. 3 00:00:26.000 --> 00:00:56.000 Actually, that's okay. I recommended this book by Thomas Sowell, and I called it Civil Rights, Rhetoric or Reality, and I said you should get it, it refutes every myth, it's outstanding, extremely well done, and it's a very short book, concise, and packs a punch, and I didn't mention because it just didn't occur to me, I wasn't thinking, but it's interesting to note that for those of you who don't know, Sowell is a black man, and I mention that simply because that means that the civil rights establishment 4 00:00:56.000 --> 00:01:02.000 has made his life just a ceaseless joy, constantly. 5 00:01:02.000 --> 00:01:06.000 He gets invited to all the fancy cocktail parties and all the conferences, 6 00:01:06.000 --> 00:01:09.000 and they treat his work very seriously. 7 00:01:09.000 --> 00:01:15.000 They've never caricatured his work or misrepresented him or tried to make him look ridiculous. 8 00:01:15.000 --> 00:01:21.000 And he notes in his final chapter, he makes reference to the fact that he's a black guy, 9 00:01:21.000 --> 00:01:25.000 but just in passing, because he was mentioning that at Cornell University, 10 00:01:55.000 --> 00:01:57.000 The Theory of Money and Credit 11 00:02:25.000 --> 00:02:32.000 Dr. Gordon, is David Bado's book called From Mutual Aid to Welfare State? Is that the title? 12 00:02:32.000 --> 00:02:36.000 Sounds familiar? Okay, it's something like this, okay? 13 00:02:36.000 --> 00:02:41.000 Now this has nothing to do with the Great Society, but it's still somewhat relevant. 14 00:02:41.000 --> 00:02:48.000 Alright, let's see. It's worth looking at. 15 00:02:55.000 --> 00:03:00.000 Okay, you should look at this. 16 00:03:00.000 --> 00:03:07.000 Now this does not deal with the period that I'm dealing with, 17 00:03:07.000 --> 00:03:14.000 but it looks at the question, it looks at what did ordinary people do 18 00:03:14.000 --> 00:03:17.000 before there really was an advanced welfare state? 19 00:03:17.000 --> 00:03:19.000 What had people done? 20 00:03:19.000 --> 00:03:23.000 I think this is the one case in which I'm recommending a book that I haven't read, 21 00:03:23.000 --> 00:03:31.000 I have read several of Beto's unpublished papers on the subject because he gave them to me, and I like what he's done. 22 00:03:31.000 --> 00:03:40.000 But he shows how ordinary people used fraternal associations and like organizations to provide mutual aid in the absence of a welfare state 23 00:03:40.000 --> 00:03:47.000 and how they were able to get cut rate medical insurance and so on and on through this voluntary means. 24 00:03:47.000 --> 00:03:53.720 and that this particular function began to atrophy in the 1930s or so 25 00:03:53.720 --> 00:03:56.280 because the government sort of supplanted it. 26 00:03:56.280 --> 00:04:00.520 But it's an interesting way of considering this question of what would... 27 00:04:00.520 --> 00:04:02.320 So it was a way to answer people who would say, 28 00:04:02.320 --> 00:04:06.240 well, wouldn't everybody drop dead instantly if we eliminated the welfare state? 29 00:04:06.240 --> 00:04:11.800 I don't really have any record of people in the 1920s just corpses lining the streets. 30 00:04:11.800 --> 00:04:16.120 I mean, I don't think anybody has ever testified to that. 31 00:04:16.120 --> 00:04:28.620 Okay. But that's something from a little earlier. The Great Society is the name given, that we give, and that was given at the time, to the anti-poverty programs of Lyndon Johnson's administration. 32 00:04:28.620 --> 00:04:38.620 Now, Lyndon Johnson, of course, took over from Kennedy when he was assassinated in 63 and then continued through January 69 when Nixon took over. 33 00:04:38.620 --> 00:04:45.220 I won't tell the off-color joke I just heard from David Gordon about Lyndon Johnson. 34 00:04:45.220 --> 00:04:48.220 I'll resist that temptation. You can ask him about that later. 35 00:04:48.220 --> 00:04:52.220 I'm sure he's got 27 of them for you if you're interested. 36 00:04:52.220 --> 00:04:56.620 But what I do have are a couple of quotations from Lyndon Johnson 37 00:04:56.620 --> 00:05:00.820 about what his great society would be like. 38 00:05:00.820 --> 00:05:02.620 His great society would be, quote, 39 00:05:02.620 --> 00:05:08.620 A society of success without squalor, beauty without barrenness, 40 00:05:08.620 --> 00:05:14.620 works of genius without the wretchedness of poverty. 41 00:05:14.620 --> 00:05:22.620 He also described the fight against poverty as an investment in the great tradition of the 1930s, 42 00:05:22.620 --> 00:05:26.620 an investment in the future as in the past. 43 00:05:26.620 --> 00:05:34.620 And he goes on to say that this investment will return its cost many-fold to our entire economy. 44 00:05:35.620 --> 00:05:38.620 Well, it didn't really. It didn't really do that. 45 00:05:38.620 --> 00:05:45.620 At this point, it's between five and a half and six trillion dollars that have been spent on these various programs. 46 00:05:45.620 --> 00:05:52.620 And we're still waiting for the great beauty without barrenness and so on and on. 47 00:05:52.620 --> 00:05:57.260 But nevertheless, and we're waiting for the areas that have most benefited from them, 48 00:05:57.260 --> 00:06:02.380 you know, not to look like bombed out remnants of World War II, but nevertheless, 49 00:06:02.380 --> 00:06:08.860 it's interesting, of course, to note the fact that we do not have a poverty problem in the United States. 50 00:06:08.860 --> 00:06:13.100 That should not be a controversial statement. 51 00:06:13.100 --> 00:06:22.140 It is surely a peculiar kind of poverty in which more poor children suffer from obesity than malnourishment. 52 00:06:22.140 --> 00:06:25.140 This is not a normal situation, I think. 53 00:06:25.140 --> 00:06:34.140 Likewise again, if you compare, obviously, the condition of Americans to those of areas of the world that we consider poor. 54 00:06:34.140 --> 00:06:39.140 You know, I mean, we all know this. I mean, the poor are living like kings in the 18th century, for crying out loud. 55 00:06:39.140 --> 00:06:42.140 I mean, just flush toilets is a great thing to have. 56 00:06:42.140 --> 00:06:49.140 But beyond that, all the amenities that we take absolutely for granted, refrigerators, telephones. 57 00:06:49.140 --> 00:06:53.140 I mean, now there are poor people with cell phones today walking around. 58 00:06:53.140 --> 00:06:56.140 Many of them own their own cars, own their own homes. 59 00:06:56.140 --> 00:07:00.140 You know, you see all the time, you see the Heritage Foundation and other groups like this 60 00:07:00.140 --> 00:07:05.140 doing surveys of all the various things that the so-called poor own, 61 00:07:05.140 --> 00:07:09.140 which would make them the envy of the world in any other society. 62 00:07:09.140 --> 00:07:14.140 But according to the great society philosophy, that's not enough. 63 00:07:14.140 --> 00:07:18.140 It's not enough to say, well, they're not living in absolute destitution, 64 00:07:18.140 --> 00:07:27.140 They don't get to enjoy as much of the American abundance as do their fellows, and this needs to be rectified. 65 00:07:27.140 --> 00:07:32.140 So it's a question of inequality to them, and I remember Murray Rothbard used to say things like, 66 00:07:32.140 --> 00:07:39.140 so in other words, one guy has three yachts and I have only one, it's a terrible injustice going on, it has to be rectified. 67 00:07:39.140 --> 00:07:47.140 Well, look at American society, extremely wealthy, and yet we have this anti-poverty crusade taking place. 68 00:07:47.140 --> 00:07:58.140 Roughly from 1950 to 1968, the poverty rate in the U.S. declines from about 30% to about 13% over those years. 69 00:07:58.140 --> 00:08:06.140 And there is, of course, a little bit of that that does take place during Johnson's years, 70 00:08:06.140 --> 00:08:12.140 but that can hardly be attributed to his Great Society program since they hadn't really had any time to get started. 71 00:08:12.140 --> 00:08:18.140 and they weren't really funded as highly as they would be until the early 70s in any case. 72 00:08:18.140 --> 00:08:26.140 That is, you know, the free market has a way of eliminating and combating poverty. 73 00:08:26.140 --> 00:08:31.140 And it does this. And that seems to have been what happened over these years. 74 00:08:31.140 --> 00:08:36.140 So it was happening gradually at roughly the rate of a percentage point per year. 75 00:08:36.140 --> 00:08:41.140 So this is already taking place. Poverty, there's already a so-called war on poverty going on. 76 00:08:41.140 --> 00:08:58.140 going on. That's going on automatically. But that's not fast enough. And of course, what ends up happening is that after the Great Society programs begin, well, the poverty level more or less solidifies and increases slightly and then levels out. 77 00:08:58.140 --> 00:09:11.100 And that's what we have to show for five or six trillion dollars. Well, I have here a few examples of things. By the way, is it about 5,000 degrees in this room or is it just because I'm up here and I haven't slept 78 00:09:11.100 --> 00:09:17.100 I don't know if there's anybody who can do anything about that, but it's kind of warm. 79 00:09:29.100 --> 00:09:33.100 That guy's sweating. That's a guy perspiring. 80 00:09:33.100 --> 00:09:38.100 First thing I want to note is, just to give you a few examples of these things, 81 00:09:38.100 --> 00:09:45.100 I want to give you a few examples of these things. We all know, we're all familiar with at least some of the anti-poverty programs of the Great Society. 82 00:09:45.100 --> 00:09:49.100 But I want to give you a few examples and let's see how they've turned out. 83 00:09:49.100 --> 00:09:54.100 We'll look at them and the wonderful intentions that were behind them and then we'll see what happened. 84 00:09:54.100 --> 00:09:59.100 The first one is the Job Corps, which just won't go away. 85 00:09:59.100 --> 00:10:06.100 The Job Corps. The idea was that every year you'd recruit a hundred thousand really, really disadvantaged people. 86 00:10:06.100 --> 00:10:11.380 Absolutely pathetic human beings who just can't keep a job to save their lives 87 00:10:11.380 --> 00:10:18.580 and we would relocate them far away from the slums, like in some wilderness or near military barracks 88 00:10:18.580 --> 00:10:24.660 and we'll train them to do productive things in life and this will be wonderful, 89 00:10:24.660 --> 00:10:31.300 will show how committed we are to building up job skills among people. 90 00:10:31.300 --> 00:10:34.600 Okay, so that's the idea. Well, how does this work out? 91 00:10:34.600 --> 00:10:38.800 Well, I have a historian's testimony about the Job Corps, 92 00:10:38.800 --> 00:10:43.300 and let me give you a little taste of how the first year goes. 93 00:10:43.300 --> 00:10:48.400 First year, 1965, of the Job Corps. 94 00:10:48.400 --> 00:10:55.000 Let's see, the first year, several members of the Job Corps were arrested at the Atterbury Center in Indiana 95 00:10:55.000 --> 00:10:58.700 for forcing a fellow trainee to commit sodomy. 96 00:10:58.700 --> 00:11:03.740 In Austin, Texas, a trainee on leave from Camp Gary got stabbed in a fight. 97 00:11:03.740 --> 00:11:09.460 At Camp Breckenridge in western Kentucky, a food riot had to be quelled by Federal Marshals. 98 00:11:09.460 --> 00:11:12.860 Members of the Job Corps were charged with burglaries in Laredo, 99 00:11:12.860 --> 00:11:18.380 promiscuity in St. Petersburg, and window smashing in Kalamazoo. 100 00:11:18.380 --> 00:11:20.980 Okay, so that was the first, so once they start killing each other, 101 00:11:20.980 --> 00:11:25.380 once they stop killing each other and raping people, 102 00:11:25.380 --> 00:11:28.260 the program starts to settle down a little bit. 103 00:11:28.260 --> 00:11:44.260 and what the congressmen began to find is that in 1966 it seems to cost about as much to provide for a member of the Job Corps for a year as it would to send the person to Harvard 104 00:11:44.260 --> 00:11:48.260 and they wonder, you know, isn't that a little disappointing that that's all we have to show 105 00:11:48.260 --> 00:11:56.260 well as I say during its second year it starts to settle down but notice this now the typical Job Corps program lasts six to nine months 106 00:11:56.260 --> 00:11:59.060 This is not that difficult to ask of someone. 107 00:11:59.060 --> 00:12:02.660 Six to nine months, we're going to give you a skill that can get you a job. 108 00:12:02.660 --> 00:12:06.060 See, remember, you can't get a job. That's why you're here. 109 00:12:06.060 --> 00:12:10.160 So we're going to give you a free program to give you skills. 110 00:12:10.160 --> 00:12:13.260 Now, you'd think any normal person with a brain would say, 111 00:12:13.260 --> 00:12:15.460 I am completely unworthy of this. 112 00:12:15.460 --> 00:12:18.060 So yes, I'd be happy to finish this program. 113 00:12:18.060 --> 00:12:19.960 Okay. 114 00:12:19.960 --> 00:12:22.260 So here's the problem. 115 00:12:22.260 --> 00:12:27.780 Two-thirds of the people enrolled in the Job Corps quit before completing the program. 116 00:12:27.780 --> 00:12:30.900 More than half of them had quit before three months had elapsed. 117 00:12:30.900 --> 00:12:33.940 Now, remember, this is a free job training program. 118 00:12:33.940 --> 00:12:36.060 All you have to do is show up. 119 00:12:36.060 --> 00:12:36.700 That's it. 120 00:12:36.700 --> 00:12:38.460 And you get a free job training program. 121 00:12:38.460 --> 00:12:40.780 And they can't complete this. 122 00:12:40.780 --> 00:12:48.940 So it sort of seems like, again, I don't think you have to be Einstein to see that maybe this is why, 123 00:12:48.940 --> 00:12:53.460 One reason these people are having difficulty finding jobs and keeping them. 124 00:12:53.460 --> 00:12:57.860 They can't finish a free job training program. 125 00:12:57.860 --> 00:13:00.180 But nevertheless, OK, so we have this. 126 00:13:00.180 --> 00:13:04.860 Then we find that people who do graduate from the Job Corps, 127 00:13:04.860 --> 00:13:11.540 it turns out that their unemployment rates and wage rates are no better 128 00:13:11.540 --> 00:13:16.300 than for those of so-called no-shows, people who've been accepted to the Job Corps, 129 00:13:16.300 --> 00:13:18.100 but who never showed up. 130 00:13:18.100 --> 00:13:28.800 So, if you never showed up to the Job Corps, you'd be just as well as people who went through the whole program and risked getting stabbed and sodomized. 131 00:13:28.800 --> 00:13:32.300 So, that's the Job Corps. 132 00:13:32.300 --> 00:13:38.300 But even more than that, one can say that what kind of jobs are they being trained for? 133 00:13:38.300 --> 00:13:42.800 I mean, they don't have the skills to do very advanced, particularly advanced work. 134 00:13:42.800 --> 00:13:43.800 and Social Work. 135 00:13:43.800 --> 00:13:49.760 So they're being trained for simple jobs like cook or baker, janitor, things that you could 136 00:13:49.760 --> 00:13:54.760 pretty much get on the job training for, that people aren't necessarily going to hire job 137 00:13:54.760 --> 00:13:57.440 corps graduates for. 138 00:13:57.440 --> 00:14:02.840 But beyond that, other people were going to get these jobs anyway, regardless of whether 139 00:14:02.840 --> 00:14:04.040 there was a job corps or not. 140 00:14:04.040 --> 00:14:08.040 So the net effect of unemployment is zero. 141 00:14:08.040 --> 00:14:09.360 Somebody was going to get these jobs anyway. 142 00:14:09.360 --> 00:14:16.160 The only effect is that it slightly privileges one group of the disadvantaged at the expense of another. 143 00:14:16.160 --> 00:14:23.360 So there's the job corps. There's the great society. Beauty instead of barrenness. That's what we have. 144 00:14:23.360 --> 00:14:29.460 Well, the next example that I have is, and you know, incidentally, I had a student who said, 145 00:14:29.460 --> 00:14:34.660 but you know, if the job corps really were ineffective and it had no good results, 146 00:14:34.660 --> 00:14:37.860 you know, why would they continue the program? 147 00:14:37.860 --> 00:14:41.140 And I thought, you know what, I don't even know where to begin in answering that question. 148 00:14:41.140 --> 00:14:44.580 You know, you're right, I'm sure it would be abolished, 149 00:14:44.580 --> 00:14:48.820 because things are very, very often abolished when they don't work. 150 00:14:48.820 --> 00:14:55.340 Okay, the second thing is, I've got to keep my eye on this, 151 00:14:55.340 --> 00:15:01.780 there is some legislation also that Johnson favors 152 00:15:01.780 --> 00:15:06.500 for federal aid to elementary and secondary education. 153 00:15:06.500 --> 00:15:13.140 And this isn't meant as an education measure per se, as much as it is an anti-poverty measure, once again. 154 00:15:13.140 --> 00:15:22.540 Because these funds under this program will be targeted to the poorer school districts. 155 00:15:22.540 --> 00:15:29.700 Okay, so that's the idea, and we'll help them, because the idea is that poverty is a trap, and education is the cure-all. 156 00:15:29.700 --> 00:15:36.380 So if we can lift these people out with education, we can stop this cycle of poverty. 157 00:15:36.380 --> 00:15:40.220 and federal money is the way to go. 158 00:15:40.220 --> 00:15:41.180 And what did they find? 159 00:15:41.180 --> 00:15:45.620 Well, they found when you actually study the question, 160 00:15:45.620 --> 00:15:47.620 even when government agencies studied the question, 161 00:15:47.620 --> 00:15:51.740 they found that either they found absolutely no difference, 162 00:15:51.740 --> 00:15:56.500 none, in academic performance between students 163 00:15:56.500 --> 00:15:58.740 in poor areas that had received this money 164 00:15:58.740 --> 00:16:01.420 and students who had not, absolutely no difference 165 00:16:01.420 --> 00:16:03.580 in achievement, in those few cases 166 00:16:03.580 --> 00:16:10.580 is where they could pinpoint some initial improvement in the academic performance of low-income students. 167 00:16:10.580 --> 00:16:18.580 This advantage, however slight, this advantage had disappeared after the following summer going into the next academic year. 168 00:16:18.580 --> 00:16:23.580 So that was it. And billions and billions and billions of dollars over the years were poured into this. 169 00:16:23.580 --> 00:16:30.580 And interestingly, a study was conducted as part of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, 170 00:16:30.580 --> 00:16:37.780 carried out by several researchers under Professor Coleman of Johns Hopkins in 1966. 171 00:16:37.780 --> 00:16:45.100 And the study concluded this. Taking all these results together, one implication stands out 172 00:16:45.100 --> 00:16:50.180 above all that schools bring little influence to bear on a child's achievement that is independent 173 00:16:50.180 --> 00:16:55.020 of his background and general social context, and that this very lack of an independent effect 174 00:16:55.020 --> 00:17:00.140 means that the inequalities imposed on children by their home, neighborhood, and peer environment 175 00:17:00.140 --> 00:17:05.140 are carried along to become the inequalities with which they confront adult life at the end of school. 176 00:17:05.140 --> 00:17:14.140 That is to say, education does not seem to have, and marginal changes in the level of spending on education 177 00:17:14.140 --> 00:17:21.140 don't really seem to have much of an effect on children's performance and are destined not to have such an effect 178 00:17:21.140 --> 00:17:26.140 because of the impact on their home environment, for one thing. 179 00:17:26.140 --> 00:17:36.140 If you're living around degenerates all day and then you go to school and you get a fancier set of blocks than the other kid, it's really not going to be able to erase your difficulties. 180 00:17:36.140 --> 00:17:45.140 So once again, nothing to show for it, but again, nobody resigns, nobody is disgraced by this, no one feels sorry about it. 181 00:17:45.140 --> 00:17:50.140 Again, reminding us of Murray Rothbard's one of his laws that nobody ever resigns, nobody ever resigns. 182 00:17:50.140 --> 00:17:53.140 No matter how wrong you are, nobody ever resigns. 183 00:17:53.140 --> 00:18:01.140 So nobody resigned over that, my friends. In fact, though, the radical left at least did learn something from this. 184 00:18:01.140 --> 00:18:12.140 A number of people on the radical left noticed that precisely that education had so little effect on children and on erasing inequality in society, 185 00:18:12.140 --> 00:18:18.140 that Christopher Jencks, who was a leftist who wrote a book in 1972 called Inequality, 186 00:18:18.140 --> 00:18:24.740 One of the things he argued in that book is that since education is not going to work in order to equalize society better, as we've seen, 187 00:18:24.740 --> 00:18:30.340 radicals need to just focus simply on just crude redistribution of wealth now. 188 00:18:30.340 --> 00:18:35.540 Just take from the rich and give to the poor, because this intermediate thing of fixing up education isn't working. 189 00:18:35.540 --> 00:18:40.140 So let's just cut right to the chase and just start robbing people and giving them money. 190 00:18:40.140 --> 00:18:46.740 So, okay, a couple people picked up something. That wouldn't be quite the lesson that I would draw from this, but that's the lesson they drew. 191 00:18:46.740 --> 00:19:16.740 and the same thing can be said for Head Start by the way, Head Start is the sort of the counterpart to this for preschool children that again it's supposed to help them give them a boost give them an advantage and again the same results seem to to to obtain that after I think something like 44 billion dollars have been spent on Head Start and it's again it's one of these things where whatever marginal gains are observed are flushed out within about a year or so so you know thank you so much. Then there is something 192 00:19:16.740 --> 00:19:24.480 something called Medicare and Medicaid, somewhat less obscure program than these others. 193 00:19:24.480 --> 00:19:30.820 Now this is, along with social security, here's a classic way you take a segment of society 194 00:19:30.820 --> 00:19:36.400 that is, by temperament, the most conservative, the elderly, and you enlist them in the ranks 195 00:19:36.400 --> 00:19:40.880 of the welfare state, and you make them the greatest cheerleaders of all. 196 00:19:40.880 --> 00:19:50.880 the wealthiest, the wisest, and generally they are, but this, they've been compromised, my friend, some of them, 197 00:19:50.880 --> 00:20:01.880 and it actually brings to mind the Simpsons episode, I was talking about this, you should all be watching this program by the way, 198 00:20:01.880 --> 00:20:08.880 not because I'm going to argue it's free market or anything, sometimes it is, but it's just funny, and Paul Cantor of the University of Virginia 199 00:20:08.880 --> 00:20:14.880 Mises is going to be one of the great programs of all time, and he's a Mises adjunct scholar. 200 00:20:14.880 --> 00:20:18.880 He's got his PhD from Harvard, so obviously that means you have to listen to everything he says. 201 00:20:18.880 --> 00:20:25.880 But there's a Simpsons episode where the kids, Lisa and Bart, have been writing cartoon scripts 202 00:20:25.880 --> 00:20:30.880 and submitting them to a network, but they've been submitting them under an adult's name 203 00:20:30.880 --> 00:20:34.880 because they want to be taken seriously. So they've been submitting them under their grandfather's name. 204 00:20:34.880 --> 00:20:39.440 and he's been getting royalty checks, and so finally they said to him, 205 00:20:39.440 --> 00:20:44.480 there are two jokes, 206 00:20:44.480 --> 00:20:48.160 finally they said to him, well, grandpa, didn't you wonder why you were getting 207 00:20:48.160 --> 00:20:52.360 money for doing absolutely nothing? And he said, well, I just figured it was because the 208 00:20:52.360 --> 00:20:54.000 Democrats were in power again. 209 00:20:54.000 --> 00:21:00.280 Now, I had intended that for later because that sort of, 210 00:21:00.280 --> 00:21:04.600 you know, would that that were so, it doesn't really matter which party is in power, of course, 211 00:21:04.600 --> 00:21:06.320 That's a point that I'll return to. 212 00:21:06.320 --> 00:21:10.960 But a better example is, the grandfather is complaining one day 213 00:21:10.960 --> 00:21:14.240 that the young generation always wants to get something for nothing. 214 00:21:14.240 --> 00:21:15.480 They always want to get something for nothing. 215 00:21:15.480 --> 00:21:17.560 And as soon as he's finished making this complaint, 216 00:21:17.560 --> 00:21:19.680 he marches into the Social Security office and says, 217 00:21:19.680 --> 00:21:23.400 I'm old, gimme, gimme, gimme. 218 00:21:23.400 --> 00:21:25.520 Oh, gee. 219 00:21:25.520 --> 00:21:27.200 Well, here we have Medicare and Medicaid. 220 00:21:27.200 --> 00:21:32.480 The idea being that for Medicare, obviously we're talking about medical care 221 00:21:32.480 --> 00:21:35.760 for the Elderly and Medicaid for the Poor. 222 00:21:35.760 --> 00:21:37.800 Okay, here's a great program. 223 00:21:37.800 --> 00:21:39.840 Well, a couple of things to note about this. 224 00:21:39.840 --> 00:21:45.760 Obviously, if you're going to provide these kinds of services, 225 00:21:45.760 --> 00:21:48.720 as has been noted up here at least one other time, 226 00:21:48.720 --> 00:21:51.080 you're going to stimulate demand like crazy. 227 00:21:51.080 --> 00:21:54.240 People are going to continually use this over time. 228 00:21:54.240 --> 00:21:56.080 More and more and more, they're going to demand everything. 229 00:21:56.080 --> 00:22:00.560 Doctor, I'm 107 years old 230 00:22:00.560 --> 00:22:07.560 I feel fatigued and tired a lot. I have some aches. 231 00:22:07.560 --> 00:22:11.560 I'd like to run 17 tests to figure out what's wrong with me. 232 00:22:11.560 --> 00:22:14.560 Look, the answer is you're 107, I think. 233 00:22:14.560 --> 00:22:21.560 But there's no market test that's going to stop you from doing this, or not quite as much. 234 00:22:21.560 --> 00:22:27.560 And when you spend all this money on something, obviously you're going to get prices going up and up and up, 235 00:22:27.560 --> 00:22:46.560 Hospital prices had increased 7% the year before Medicare, and the year following it, they increased 14% and continued to increase at an accelerating and runaway rate. 236 00:22:46.560 --> 00:22:53.560 What's notable, though interestingly about Medicare, and here I'm citing another historian, is as follows. 237 00:22:53.560 --> 00:22:57.560 The average aged person was little better off. 238 00:22:57.560 --> 00:23:05.560 True, he paid only 29% of his medical bills directly out of pocket in 1975, compared to 53% before Medicare, 239 00:23:05.560 --> 00:23:08.560 but his total bill was also much higher. 240 00:23:08.560 --> 00:23:13.560 In a way, the price inflation created by Medicare erodes some of its benefits. 241 00:23:13.560 --> 00:23:24.560 The average beneficiary spent $237 out of pocket in the year before Medicare and $390 10 years later in constant dollars almost exactly the same. 242 00:23:24.560 --> 00:23:33.560 Likewise, then also the question of Medicaid, medical treatment for poor people. 243 00:23:33.560 --> 00:23:38.560 Well, it might be worth asking, what did poor people do before Medicaid? 244 00:23:38.560 --> 00:23:43.800 Medicaid, just everybody died or something. What did they do? What happened? They jumped 245 00:23:43.800 --> 00:23:50.120 off a cliff when they were sick. What happened? Well, generally what happened is doctors used 246 00:23:50.120 --> 00:23:56.320 to, in the days before medicine was bureaucratized, as much as it is now, would provide reduced 247 00:23:56.320 --> 00:24:02.480 cost or pro-bono services regularly for poor people, and the poor would try to pay what 248 00:24:02.480 --> 00:24:08.240 they could whenever that became possible. I would recommend, by the way, another book. 249 00:24:08.240 --> 00:24:13.320 I'm sorry, but you've got to be a lifelong reader. You should be reading. 250 00:24:13.320 --> 00:24:19.240 Okay. This one I won't check up on you on, but you really should do this. 251 00:24:19.240 --> 00:24:23.680 I'll erase my sweaty man. There we go. 252 00:24:23.680 --> 00:24:28.320 Still warm in here. Man, for some reason, the other rooms, it's... 253 00:24:28.320 --> 00:24:31.280 I feel like I'm living in a... Well, anyway, never mind. 254 00:24:31.280 --> 00:24:35.880 I feel like a piece on a meat hook or something. Okay. 255 00:24:35.880 --> 00:24:53.880 This is a really good book, and it's not written by a free marketeer, to my knowledge, but it's written by an honest scholar, and those pop up every now and then. 256 00:24:53.880 --> 00:25:02.880 And this is a scholar who's willing to say, look, if something is a big, stinking disaster, I'm going to admit it, and I'm going to document it. 257 00:25:02.880 --> 00:25:12.380 This book, The Unraveling of America, where I'm drawing the bit on Medicare and Medicaid, is useful, at least for the chapters on the Great Society. 258 00:25:12.380 --> 00:25:18.880 So if you're interested in any of these themes or you want to know how you can smash this stuff, I would recommend this book, my friends. 259 00:25:18.880 --> 00:25:23.880 Okay. Again, let me cite a bit of this. 260 00:25:23.880 --> 00:25:33.380 In the last year before Medicaid, the hospital admission rate for families with incomes below $3,000 was $107 per 1,000 families. 261 00:25:33.380 --> 00:25:39.480 For families with incomes $10,000 and above, it was only $89 per 1,000 families. 262 00:25:39.480 --> 00:25:50.280 Before Medicaid, the average low-income person visited a doctor 4.3 times a year, not dramatically less than the 5.1 visits made by high-income persons. 263 00:25:50.280 --> 00:25:56.280 Granted that the poor are more frequently ill, these figures do not sustain a thesis of gross inequality. 264 00:25:56.280 --> 00:26:06.280 And then he goes on, most of the government's medical payments on behalf of the poor compensated doctors and hospitals for services once rendered free of charge or at reduced prices. 265 00:26:06.280 --> 00:26:14.280 And he concludes that really this is a transfer program from essentially middle class taxpayers to middle class physicians. 266 00:26:14.280 --> 00:26:17.280 And that's your great society program. 267 00:26:17.280 --> 00:26:21.280 There's Medicare and Medicaid, mentioned that, mentioned all these other things. 268 00:26:21.280 --> 00:26:26.280 Okay, now there are a million points one could make, 269 00:26:26.280 --> 00:26:29.280 because there are so many great society programs. 270 00:26:29.280 --> 00:26:36.280 When Lyndon Johnson, when he actually announced that Medicare, 271 00:26:36.280 --> 00:26:40.280 he said, in part of his speech, he said, 272 00:26:40.280 --> 00:26:48.280 He said, thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother, to thy poor, to thy needy, in thy land, 273 00:26:48.280 --> 00:26:53.280 citing a biblical passage that does not exist, to my knowledge. 274 00:26:53.280 --> 00:26:58.280 Just invented that. 275 00:26:58.280 --> 00:27:00.280 I don't know. 276 00:27:00.280 --> 00:27:05.280 I don't know. If you're desperate, you just start making up things. 277 00:27:05.280 --> 00:27:09.280 Okay. Well, this is not the brightest guy in the world anyway, Lyndon Johnson. 278 00:27:09.280 --> 00:27:39.280 Well, okay, well then we see also that there is, and I don't want to belabor this because we've all heard a million times about the rise of the underclass, but this is a group of people, and it's hard to, you know, different researchers, you know, they differ on how many people there are in this group called the underclass, but we're talking about a group of people who are poor, but not simply poor, who have really pathological difficulties, that they don't understand the connection between work and money, or they don't understand... 279 00:27:39.280 --> 00:28:09.280 This is Michael Levin wrote a great article in the free market some years ago when he said that a lot of the times when Korean businesses will be attacked in cities that's because the local residents have been whipped up into a frenzy that somehow the Koreans have stolen things from them because there's only a fixed amount of wealth out there so how could they have all this stuff? They must have taken it from us in some way. That's a typical underclass pathology, an utter lack of understanding of how wealth is created 280 00:28:09.280 --> 00:28:12.280 How to live like a civilized human being. 281 00:28:12.280 --> 00:28:20.280 These are people for whom whether or not to commit a crime very often is simply a matter of cost-benefit economic analysis. 282 00:28:20.280 --> 00:28:24.280 So, what do you do with these people and where did they come from? 283 00:28:24.280 --> 00:28:35.280 Well, you may be familiar with this, but I'm going to erase these. 284 00:28:35.280 --> 00:28:48.280 This is such a familiar book that you're almost going to be disappointed that I mention it, but maybe some of you don't know about it, and it's a little neocony, but it's pretty good, actually. It still stands up, in my opinion. 285 00:28:50.280 --> 00:28:52.280 Okay, let's see. Here we go. 286 00:28:53.280 --> 00:28:56.280 Oh, it's Charles Murray, the big racist. 287 00:28:58.280 --> 00:29:00.280 I was being sarcastic. 288 00:29:00.280 --> 00:29:07.280 Okay. Yes, it's losing ground. You should get this. It's not bad. 289 00:29:07.280 --> 00:29:11.280 Yeah, it's got all the information you need to smash everybody. 290 00:29:11.280 --> 00:29:14.280 Yeah, that's the spirit. 291 00:29:14.280 --> 00:29:20.280 Because basically, as you all know, or some of you know, his basic thesis is that 292 00:29:20.280 --> 00:29:28.280 this rise of the underclass, this phenomenon by which the poor have become, 293 00:29:28.280 --> 00:29:40.280 have become, or at least a particular identifiable group of the poor, have become, in a sense, hooked on, you know, getting free handouts and all the rest of it. 294 00:29:40.280 --> 00:29:46.280 He says you can't hold the Great Society programs themselves altogether blameless in this case. 295 00:29:46.280 --> 00:29:54.280 In fact, he actually correlates the two. He says that the incentives that are being used here 296 00:29:54.280 --> 00:30:01.280 are going to tend to make people act like parasites and act in antisocial ways 297 00:30:01.280 --> 00:30:03.280 when you reward them for this behavior. 298 00:30:03.280 --> 00:30:06.280 And he has in this book actually a very interesting example 299 00:30:06.280 --> 00:30:10.280 which he was roundly criticized for but which I think works. 300 00:30:10.280 --> 00:30:13.280 I won't go into any detail because you should get it. 301 00:30:13.280 --> 00:30:18.520 There's a 10th anniversary edition that came out recently where he has a new introduction 302 00:30:18.520 --> 00:30:22.600 where he looks at the research in intervening years and he says, I don't change, I basically 303 00:30:22.600 --> 00:30:25.060 don't change the thing I said. 304 00:30:25.060 --> 00:30:29.480 But he gives an example of, he says that suppose we had a government anti-smoking program whereby 305 00:30:29.480 --> 00:30:31.800 we paid you a bounty to quit smoking. 306 00:30:31.800 --> 00:30:36.300 He said, I can demonstrate to you logically that the net result would be more people would 307 00:30:36.300 --> 00:30:37.720 be smoking at the end of the program. 308 00:30:37.720 --> 00:30:39.700 And you think, well how could that be? 309 00:30:39.700 --> 00:30:42.720 But yet he explains it and you read it and you say, you know he's right. 310 00:30:42.720 --> 00:30:45.840 it would work out that way and he said likewise that's the same thing for any 311 00:30:45.840 --> 00:30:49.360 social welfare policy because you for one thing there is something that 312 00:30:49.360 --> 00:30:54.280 economists refer to as the disutility of labor people would rather not work if 313 00:30:54.280 --> 00:30:59.360 they could get away with it so there's always this difficulty of how do you 314 00:30:59.360 --> 00:31:04.080 provide for people who are desperate without at the same time making the 315 00:31:04.080 --> 00:31:08.520 package so attractive that you make being desperate seem attractive you know 316 00:31:08.520 --> 00:31:12.400 I'd like to get free this and free that and especially when you consider that 317 00:31:12.400 --> 00:31:42.400 In many cases, the programs of the Great Society, the housing programs, the medical programs, the educational programs, the AFDC, which is originally a Franklin Roosevelt program, but greatly expanded in the Great Society, where you have additional children, you get more cash and everything else, well the result is, first of all, remember all these benefits are tax free, so you bear that in mind, it might not seem like that much money, but it's tax free. 318 00:31:42.400 --> 00:31:50.400 This package of benefits gave you an income that was well above what you'd get with a minimum wage job, 319 00:31:50.400 --> 00:31:54.400 and in some cases well above what you'd get at one and a half times the minimum wage. 320 00:31:54.400 --> 00:31:59.400 So a lot of people said, well, to heck with this, I guess I'll just get some free stuff, 321 00:31:59.400 --> 00:32:02.400 because that's what I'm entitled to and everything else. 322 00:32:02.400 --> 00:32:05.400 In fact, again, just the last Simpsons example I will give is Ned Flanders, 323 00:32:05.400 --> 00:32:08.400 the man you'd most like to punch in the face. 324 00:32:08.400 --> 00:32:37.400 Murray makes additional arguments that, at the same time that government is making it more and more attractive to be in and to remain in, 325 00:32:37.400 --> 00:32:41.240 in a completely pathetic position and not to lift oneself out of it 326 00:32:41.240 --> 00:32:44.280 and to give a bureaucratic solution to this whole thing. 327 00:32:44.280 --> 00:32:49.320 There are other signals that are being sent. Discipline in the schools is being destroyed. 328 00:32:49.320 --> 00:32:54.920 Crime, because of various developments, is not being punished 329 00:32:54.920 --> 00:32:58.920 as readily and as effectively, so that becomes more of a legitimate 330 00:32:58.920 --> 00:33:03.000 option, just simply from a rational economic calculation point of view. 331 00:33:03.000 --> 00:33:06.120 And he goes into this in some great detail. 332 00:33:06.120 --> 00:33:14.120 The usual argument against Murray is to say that, well, the reason you had this growth of the underclass was that there just weren't that many jobs for them. 333 00:33:14.120 --> 00:33:21.120 Okay, well, in some cases, there could be a little something to that. I don't really know. 334 00:33:21.120 --> 00:33:34.120 But, interestingly, Harvard economist Richard Freeman, in 1980, did a survey in which he asked out-of-work inner-city black youths about their job prospects. 335 00:33:34.120 --> 00:33:40.120 and over 70% of them said they could easily find a job, but they didn't. 336 00:33:40.120 --> 00:33:43.620 They completely dropped out of the labor force altogether. 337 00:33:43.620 --> 00:33:49.120 In 1989, it had risen to around 75% and said they could easily find a job, 338 00:33:49.120 --> 00:33:55.120 but minimum wage jobs now seem silly and ridiculous and like chump jobs. 339 00:33:55.120 --> 00:34:00.120 What's the point? Even though those are generally the first step for other things. 340 00:34:00.120 --> 00:34:22.120 The Catastrophic Rate at which young black men began to drop out of the labor force altogether took place at a time when the economy was booming. 341 00:34:22.120 --> 00:34:26.120 So it's a little difficult to argue that that was the explanation. 342 00:34:26.120 --> 00:34:36.120 There's also a controversy about Murray's claim that these programs encouraged more out of wedlock births. 343 00:34:36.120 --> 00:34:39.120 His argument is it's a simple economic calculation. 344 00:34:39.120 --> 00:34:44.120 He's not necessarily saying that a woman is sitting there saying, 345 00:34:44.120 --> 00:34:50.120 I get an extra $100, so I think I'll do something with this guy. 346 00:34:50.120 --> 00:34:54.120 They're not thinking that way, but they don't have to think in that way. 347 00:34:54.120 --> 00:35:08.120 And people just very often respond to incentives, but the preponderance of studies seems to demonstrate a correlation, at least, between the rise in these programs, and AFDC in particular, these payments and out-of-wedlock births. 348 00:35:08.120 --> 00:35:14.120 And there's certainly at least a logical correlation, and certainly these payments are not doing anything to discourage out-of-wedlock births. 349 00:35:14.120 --> 00:35:17.120 And indeed, why should these women get married in these cases? 350 00:35:17.120 --> 00:35:24.120 Because, as Charles Murray said, a welfare mother's child provides her with the economic insurance that a husband used to represent. 351 00:35:24.120 --> 00:35:26.120 You get children, you get more money. 352 00:35:26.120 --> 00:35:29.120 So you have all these difficulties going on. 353 00:35:29.120 --> 00:35:38.120 Well, and the pathology is so deep among the underclass that even if you argue that, 354 00:35:38.120 --> 00:35:46.120 Well, how can these unskilled people possibly get the skilled jobs that are becoming increasingly numerous in our sophisticated economy? 355 00:35:46.120 --> 00:35:49.120 How can you expect them to be employed in these areas? 356 00:35:49.120 --> 00:35:55.120 Well, I want to cite a little passage from another historian who says this. 357 00:35:55.120 --> 00:36:05.120 The so-called higher skills that one steel mill not far from Chicago needed recently to fill jobs that were going begging for lack of qualified applicants 358 00:36:05.120 --> 00:36:09.120 amounted to a little more than being able to divide 100 by 4 359 00:36:09.120 --> 00:36:15.120 and going one step further to understand the concept of 75%. 360 00:36:15.120 --> 00:36:21.120 It generally takes only basic math for a worker to handle the statistical process control 361 00:36:21.120 --> 00:36:25.120 that is one of the key recent technological advances in manufacturing. 362 00:36:25.120 --> 00:36:30.120 One didn't think of secretarial skills as being particularly elevated until recently 363 00:36:30.120 --> 00:36:34.120 when corporations in big cities found that increasing numbers of applicants lacked them. 364 00:36:34.120 --> 00:36:41.120 Now, anxious companies pay their employees bounties for bringing in qualified applicants for secretarial jobs. 365 00:36:41.120 --> 00:37:00.120 Anyone who wants her children to escape poverty needs only to make sure they learn basic literacy, computer typing, and polite business-like demeanor. 366 00:37:00.120 --> 00:37:06.120 How can a scarcity of unskilled jobs in steel mills explain why ghetto mothers don't do this? 367 00:37:06.120 --> 00:37:12.120 Okay, but there again, well, we need more job training programs, I guess. I don't know what the explanation is. 368 00:37:12.120 --> 00:37:15.120 But anyway, so we've got this and this and that. 369 00:37:15.120 --> 00:37:20.120 Well, in addition to Murray, there's been an additional argument that's been made that, 370 00:37:20.120 --> 00:37:26.120 that although these programs were probably a necessary component of the rise of this degeneracy, 371 00:37:26.120 --> 00:37:30.320 at the same time they may not have been completely sufficient they may have 372 00:37:30.320 --> 00:37:34.400 helped it but was going on simultaneously was a cultural battle in 373 00:37:34.400 --> 00:37:40.200 which the left was making a deliberate attempt to remove the stigma that had 374 00:37:40.200 --> 00:37:43.840 been traditionally attached to receiving government handouts you just wouldn't do 375 00:37:43.840 --> 00:37:48.200 it you had pride about it but now in the 60s people were being actively told that 376 00:37:48.200 --> 00:37:52.000 you had a right to this that that society owed this to you 377 00:37:52.000 --> 00:38:02.000 Sgt. Shriver said something like that he intended to institute a new grievance procedure between the poor and the rest of society 378 00:38:02.000 --> 00:38:07.000 because it probably is my fault that some bum doesn't have a job after all. 379 00:38:07.000 --> 00:38:11.000 I feel like I can say anything at this conference. 380 00:38:11.000 --> 00:38:19.000 But imagine, for instance, even as late as the early 1960s, imagine an America in which, for instance, in Philadelphia, 381 00:38:19.000 --> 00:38:22.360 Half of the applicants for welfare were rejected. 382 00:38:22.360 --> 00:38:29.320 In New York City, welfare workers are still being told that withholding assistance is just 383 00:38:29.320 --> 00:38:32.280 as if not more important than granting it. 384 00:38:32.280 --> 00:38:33.280 Things like this. 385 00:38:33.280 --> 00:38:37.560 Or there are still attempts made to try to contact relatives and to tell families, maybe 386 00:38:37.560 --> 00:38:41.240 you want to play a role in supporting this person. 387 00:38:41.240 --> 00:38:43.120 All these types of things. 388 00:38:43.120 --> 00:38:47.080 Applicants still had to verify their eligibility with marriage and birth certificates and so 389 00:38:47.080 --> 00:38:48.840 on. 390 00:38:48.840 --> 00:38:54.120 Unwed mothers very often had to promise not to have any male collars coming to my home 391 00:38:54.120 --> 00:38:59.640 or meeting me elsewhere under improper conditions and likewise that they would not knowingly 392 00:38:59.640 --> 00:39:05.600 contribute or be a contributing factor to shaming their children by their conduct. 393 00:39:05.600 --> 00:39:10.680 But these attitudes change because remember the left, they despise bourgeois morality, 394 00:39:10.680 --> 00:39:14.480 they despise the work ethic, they despise the connection between work and reward, they 395 00:39:14.480 --> 00:39:17.880 They despise the capitalist system, and boy, this is just great. 396 00:39:17.880 --> 00:39:23.280 For some reason, the left always seems to identify with the most degenerate aspects of society, 397 00:39:23.280 --> 00:39:25.380 and there are many, many examples of this. 398 00:39:25.380 --> 00:39:31.880 But for instance, at Columbia University, which I mentioned just at random, 399 00:39:31.880 --> 00:39:36.780 at their School of Social Work, in the, around the mid-60s, 400 00:39:36.780 --> 00:39:41.480 they published a famous monograph at the School of Social Work, 401 00:39:41.480 --> 00:39:44.760 Citing Old and New Testament passages in favor of this. 402 00:39:44.760 --> 00:39:47.520 I think these were real ones in this case. 403 00:39:47.520 --> 00:39:50.480 And they were saying there should be no penalty or stigma 404 00:39:50.480 --> 00:39:54.380 for any competent and able-bodied individuals who, 405 00:39:54.380 --> 00:39:58.840 just for whatever reason, don't seem capable of holding a job. 406 00:39:58.840 --> 00:40:01.080 And that, in fact, social justice, 407 00:40:01.080 --> 00:40:04.400 said these social workers at Columbia University, 408 00:40:04.400 --> 00:40:06.280 meant that we couldn't really scrutinize 409 00:40:06.280 --> 00:40:09.840 the behavior of the poor, because really, quote, 410 00:40:09.840 --> 00:40:15.200 The origin of economic or social need is far less important than the fact of its existence. 411 00:40:15.200 --> 00:40:19.480 And this just goes on and on and on. 412 00:40:19.480 --> 00:40:27.800 The National Welfare Rights Organization is founded and again and again emphasized an emphasis on rights. 413 00:40:27.800 --> 00:40:35.640 A key instrument in advancing this new approach were a thousand governmental neighborhood service centers 414 00:40:35.640 --> 00:40:38.840 funded by the Office of Economic Opportunity 415 00:40:38.840 --> 00:40:43.640 and were basically aimed at agitating among the poor and getting them to recognize that 416 00:40:43.640 --> 00:40:47.000 that welfare payments were a right that they had. 417 00:40:47.000 --> 00:40:52.520 The New York Times spoke of a new philosophy of social welfare that seeks to establish 418 00:40:52.520 --> 00:40:57.400 the status of welfare benefits as rights based on the notion that everyone is entitled to 419 00:40:57.400 --> 00:40:59.720 a share of the commonwealth. 420 00:40:59.720 --> 00:41:03.160 You know, incidentally libertarians are accused all the time of, you know, they don't care 421 00:41:03.160 --> 00:41:04.160 about community. 422 00:41:04.160 --> 00:41:05.160 They break down community. 423 00:41:05.160 --> 00:41:07.760 All they care about is individuals, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. 424 00:41:07.760 --> 00:41:13.520 Well, but then look at this, look at what I talked about yesterday, look at this today. 425 00:41:13.520 --> 00:41:19.200 The left thinks absolutely nothing of destroying community standards about handouts, about 426 00:41:19.200 --> 00:41:25.980 hard work, busing people's kids around all the time, destroying the little local patriotisms 427 00:41:25.980 --> 00:41:28.680 that used to exist in cities and towns. 428 00:41:28.680 --> 00:41:31.820 They think nothing of this, but we're the ones who destroy communities by just leaving 429 00:41:31.820 --> 00:41:33.320 everybody the hell alone. 430 00:41:33.320 --> 00:41:37.320 Anyway, I felt like mentioning that. 431 00:41:37.320 --> 00:41:40.320 I had already mentioned this guy. 432 00:41:40.320 --> 00:41:44.320 The National Welfare Rights Organization is always an interesting thing to note. 433 00:41:44.320 --> 00:41:53.320 It's interesting that observers at their meetings were always struck by welfare mothers coming to their meetings, 434 00:41:53.320 --> 00:41:57.320 and they still had this old-fashioned idea that they really shouldn't be receiving state aid, 435 00:41:57.320 --> 00:42:02.320 but they kept hearing the word rights, rights, rights over and over again, and it got through to them. 436 00:42:02.320 --> 00:42:13.320 One of the members of the NWRO conceded regretfully that the initial attempt, anyway, to pull in the black churches was actually unsuccessful. 437 00:42:13.320 --> 00:42:15.320 So thus this passage. 438 00:42:15.320 --> 00:42:27.320 We met with Whitney Young, director of the Urban League, and he gave us a long speech about how it was more important to get one black woman into a job as an airline stewardess than it was to get 50 poor families onto welfare. 439 00:42:27.320 --> 00:42:31.320 By the way, there are two... sorry, I have to just give these to you. I can't resist. 440 00:42:31.320 --> 00:42:38.320 And you might find them useful. I don't know if you're interested in these topics, but I'll give them to you anyway. 441 00:42:38.320 --> 00:42:43.320 There are two books that are pretty good, pretty good. 442 00:42:43.320 --> 00:42:48.320 This one's sort of pretty good because it's irritatingly neo-Khani here and there, 443 00:42:48.320 --> 00:42:56.320 but it's got enough incriminating quotations that that alone makes it worth something. 444 00:42:56.320 --> 00:43:01.320 I mean, it's fine, but, you know, there are parts of it where you're just groaning. 445 00:43:01.320 --> 00:43:08.320 The subtitle of this book is something like the 60s legacy to the underclass. 446 00:43:08.320 --> 00:43:14.320 Okay. It's pretty good, because he goes into some depth about this deliberate attempt to undermine 447 00:43:14.320 --> 00:43:21.320 the standard view of government handouts as a prerequisite to this explosion in handouts. 448 00:43:21.320 --> 00:43:25.320 Second book I would mention, there's just one chapter that's pertinent to this, 449 00:43:25.320 --> 00:43:41.320 And that's this guy. Again, I'm not saying this is a perfect individual who's never made any mistakes in his life, faith-based charities, but he's still worth looking at in this case. 450 00:43:45.320 --> 00:43:53.320 He's got one chapter in this book that's really good. Well, I don't know, I just mean that it's very good on this topic. 451 00:43:55.320 --> 00:44:05.320 I would recommend these. And as I say, this one, if you're interested in the Great Society, there's just one chapter that you'll like. 452 00:44:05.320 --> 00:44:07.320 Okay. 453 00:44:07.320 --> 00:44:23.320 I don't want to talk about that. And also, the Federal Office of Economic Opportunity, also, many of the lawyers that worked for it helped the NWRO, 454 00:44:23.320 --> 00:44:30.760 National Welfare Rights Organization in its class action suits and legal cases and so for instance, 455 00:44:30.760 --> 00:44:38.020 and this is from Magnet, rules that welfare officials without extensive hearings could declare a person employable 456 00:44:38.020 --> 00:44:44.320 and require him to take a job, struck down thanks to left-wing government lawyers. 457 00:44:44.320 --> 00:44:49.920 Rules that women receiving AFDC could not have a man in the house, struck down. 458 00:44:49.920 --> 00:44:59.920 Rules that recipients suspected of fraud had to answer questions or else face possible loss of subsidy, struck down, et cetera, et cetera, and it just goes on and on and on. 459 00:44:59.920 --> 00:45:07.920 So in other words, radicals are going around in various communities organizing the poor to go into the courts and demand their rights. 460 00:45:07.920 --> 00:45:16.920 And also what they would do is that these OEO attorneys would encourage the poor to just keep requesting more hearings all the time from local welfare officials 461 00:45:16.920 --> 00:45:22.120 so as to increase their caseload impossibly and just force them to give in, which is what they would do. 462 00:45:22.120 --> 00:45:25.120 Or have sit-ins in these people's offices and they don't know what to do. 463 00:45:25.120 --> 00:45:27.720 I'm just a local state bureaucrat. I don't know what to do about this. 464 00:45:27.720 --> 00:45:31.620 I'll just approve your damn application. I'll just do whatever you want me to do. 465 00:45:31.620 --> 00:45:37.120 Again and again and again, sleep-ins, sit-ins and so on. 466 00:45:37.120 --> 00:45:44.520 So about, now just one little statistic and then I will more or less wrap up after one more example. 467 00:45:44.520 --> 00:45:51.020 During the 1950s, the AFDC rolls rose by 100,000 families, or 17%. 468 00:45:51.020 --> 00:45:56.620 During the 1960s, the increase was 107%, or 800,000 families, 469 00:45:56.620 --> 00:46:02.220 with about three quarters of that increase occurring from 1965 to 1968 alone, 470 00:46:02.220 --> 00:46:07.720 which was not a time of terrible economic conditions by any means. 471 00:46:07.720 --> 00:46:12.920 The overall AFDC population increased from 4.3 million in 1965 472 00:46:12.920 --> 00:46:16.120 to $10.8 million in 1974. 473 00:46:16.120 --> 00:46:20.040 Well, the last thing I would mention is the evil Michael Harrington 474 00:46:20.040 --> 00:46:23.040 wrote a book in 1962, I think. 475 00:46:23.040 --> 00:46:25.280 It was called The Other America. 476 00:46:25.280 --> 00:46:27.840 And you probably have to read it in school. 477 00:46:27.840 --> 00:46:30.440 And he's arguing, Michael Harrington, I mentioned him 478 00:46:30.440 --> 00:46:35.040 because this is one more example of a leftist attempting 479 00:46:35.040 --> 00:46:38.960 to give some other explanation for the existence of the poor. 480 00:46:38.960 --> 00:46:41.560 And he's saying that it's just structural things in the economy, 481 00:46:41.560 --> 00:46:43.800 that it can't be helped. 482 00:46:43.800 --> 00:46:46.640 So for instance, Harrington, by the way, when he died, 483 00:46:46.640 --> 00:46:49.680 I think he died in 1989, was president of the Democratic 484 00:46:49.680 --> 00:46:53.400 Socialists of America, and he helped to oversee the Great 485 00:46:53.400 --> 00:46:54.480 Society programs. 486 00:46:54.480 --> 00:46:58.720 He was the one who stirred the consciences of America. 487 00:46:58.720 --> 00:47:01.640 He says, the other Americans are the victims of the very 488 00:47:01.640 --> 00:47:04.240 inventions and machines that have produced a higher living 489 00:47:04.240 --> 00:47:06.520 standard for the rest of the society. 490 00:47:06.520 --> 00:47:10.000 As the society becomes more technological, more skilled, 491 00:47:10.000 --> 00:47:14.120 Those who learn to work the machines, who get the expanding education, move up. 492 00:47:14.120 --> 00:47:17.760 Those who miss out at the very start find themselves at a new disadvantage, 493 00:47:17.760 --> 00:47:20.640 condemned to an economic underworld. 494 00:47:20.640 --> 00:47:25.840 Now obviously, if you're going to say that poverty is being caused by the economic system, 495 00:47:25.840 --> 00:47:30.240 there's no longer any distinction between the deserving and the undeserving poor. 496 00:47:30.240 --> 00:47:32.760 You know, some guy who just doesn't feel like going to work, 497 00:47:32.760 --> 00:47:37.920 well, you know, one of the reasons he may not feel like it is because he's overcome by despair 498 00:47:37.920 --> 00:47:43.920 at his situation. It's not because he's lazy, in some cases, because none of them are lazy. 499 00:47:43.920 --> 00:47:50.920 It's that they just overcome by despair. So he even says that even if a person is unfit for work 500 00:47:50.920 --> 00:47:56.920 because he's drunk or a drug addict, you know, don't be so quick to condemn this person 501 00:47:56.920 --> 00:48:03.920 because this is not because of vice. It's at despair, at his powerlessness to advance in this economy 502 00:48:03.920 --> 00:48:08.920 The Causality is reversed or something. 503 00:48:08.920 --> 00:48:18.920 Poverty is something that gets inside people, transforms them, stamps them with a distinctive personality, he goes on to say. 504 00:48:18.920 --> 00:48:27.920 So therefore, we have to have big programs, because there's no way to expect these people to advance. 505 00:48:27.920 --> 00:48:33.920 and but beyond this there's no there's no way and it's not even desirable to 506 00:48:33.920 --> 00:48:38.520 attempt to distinguish among different classes of the poor all of them are 507 00:48:38.520 --> 00:48:44.200 equally worthy of these payments and of course over time the the result has been 508 00:48:44.200 --> 00:48:48.120 what we have now now if you're interested in anything having to do with 509 00:48:48.120 --> 00:48:51.360 welfare and you want all the statistics on it you know but how much has been 510 00:48:51.360 --> 00:48:55.680 spent and what has happened what are the outcomes the book it's not that well 511 00:48:55.680 --> 00:48:58.680 It's all written, but it doesn't matter. It gives you the data. 512 00:48:58.680 --> 00:49:00.680 There's this Michael Tanner book, The End of Welfare. 513 00:49:00.680 --> 00:49:02.680 At least it's got all the data in there. 514 00:49:02.680 --> 00:49:04.680 It's written from a free market point of view. 515 00:49:04.680 --> 00:49:07.680 And the other, so that would be one thing. 516 00:49:07.680 --> 00:49:10.680 The other thing you might have some interest in, 517 00:49:10.680 --> 00:49:14.680 it's not his best book by any means, but it makes a reasonable, 518 00:49:14.680 --> 00:49:17.680 it's sort of useful, another Charles Murray book, 519 00:49:17.680 --> 00:49:24.680 and that is his book In Pursuit of Happiness and Good Government. 520 00:49:24.680 --> 00:49:28.680 And I mention this because in here, he's got an interesting graph. 521 00:49:28.680 --> 00:49:36.680 He plots, he looks at the growth or decline in private charitable giving. 522 00:49:36.680 --> 00:49:38.680 And then he plots it against time. 523 00:49:38.680 --> 00:49:44.680 And he's showing that during periods where the government is increasing its social welfare expenditures, 524 00:49:44.680 --> 00:49:47.680 private charity declines. 525 00:49:47.680 --> 00:49:52.680 Whereas during periods in which at least the impression is that the government is cutting back, 526 00:49:52.680 --> 00:50:19.280 5.5 trillion dollars spent, nothing to show for it other than devastation and destruction, 527 00:50:19.280 --> 00:50:24.880 This is what the left refers to as a great society. 528 00:50:24.880 --> 00:50:26.480 Thank you very much, my friends. 529 00:50:26.480 --> 00:50:33.880 All right, let's see. 530 00:50:33.880 --> 00:50:35.480 I've got about six minutes. 531 00:50:35.480 --> 00:50:37.680 If anybody has a question or a comment 532 00:50:37.680 --> 00:50:40.180 or would like to add something to what I said. 533 00:50:40.180 --> 00:50:43.880 To get back to your civil rights and connect with this, 534 00:50:43.880 --> 00:50:48.080 the black people are vastly overrepresented on this. 535 00:50:48.080 --> 00:50:52.080 Is there any particular reason for that? 536 00:51:10.080 --> 00:51:16.080 Do you know anything about the tax rate right before the advent of your society? 537 00:51:18.080 --> 00:51:24.080 Where do we get the money to fund all these things? 538 00:51:48.080 --> 00:52:18.080 When the title of the thing is The Republican Warfare, what did they do to solidify the later Nixon War? 539 00:52:18.080 --> 00:52:25.740 programs, but every time, like when Newt Gingrich was around, he was constantly being accused 540 00:52:25.740 --> 00:52:31.160 of wanting to abolish Medicare. He's going to abolish Medicare, he's going to cut it significantly, 541 00:52:31.160 --> 00:52:39.160 and he constantly said the opposite. He constantly said, I'm not going to do that. So my argument 542 00:52:39.160 --> 00:52:43.240 always was, well look, no matter what you say, the press is going to say you're abolishing 543 00:52:43.240 --> 00:52:47.120 Medicare, so you may as well do it. You may as well cut it back, because they're always 544 00:52:47.120 --> 00:52:52.120 I think he's going to accuse you of cutting it back because they're dishonest in the way they talk about cuts and things. 545 00:52:52.120 --> 00:52:57.120 Well, the Republican position basically has been to consolidate things. 546 00:52:57.120 --> 00:53:06.120 So, for instance, we'll go back even further. Eisenhower came in and he was not a terribly ideological person. 547 00:53:06.120 --> 00:53:15.120 And he, for instance, he added more people to the Social Security roles, I think self-employed people and some farmers and some other things 548 00:53:15.120 --> 00:53:18.120 and some other things, because Truman had expanded the Social Security rules. 549 00:53:18.120 --> 00:53:21.120 He increased the minimum wage. 550 00:53:21.120 --> 00:53:29.120 He made some beginnings of efforts for some other welfare state programs. 551 00:53:29.120 --> 00:53:38.120 And then, of course, Nixon, you know, Nixon really is in large part responsible for the beginnings of goals and timetables in affirmative action. 552 00:53:38.120 --> 00:53:43.120 We shouldn't fail to give him the credit for that. 553 00:53:43.120 --> 00:53:47.560 But in large part, they continued to fund these things at ever higher levels. 554 00:53:47.560 --> 00:53:55.640 And also Nixon, to his everlasting shame, nearly established a guaranteed income program in 555 00:53:55.640 --> 00:54:00.360 the United States, the Family Assistance Plan, that would guarantee everybody a minimum income, 556 00:54:00.360 --> 00:54:05.160 which probably would have had some effects on people's labor patterns if that had passed. 557 00:54:05.160 --> 00:54:09.000 And in his defense, the best he can say is, well, you know, I mean, I'm more interested 558 00:54:09.000 --> 00:54:15.400 in Foreign Policy, and I sort of think that the domestic front can run itself. 559 00:54:15.400 --> 00:54:19.040 But then, you know, and especially as you just look down, I mean, the budget doubled 560 00:54:19.040 --> 00:54:26.520 under Reagan, and I mean, Reagan actually added a cabinet position of Veterans Affairs, 561 00:54:26.520 --> 00:54:27.680 and you know, and so it goes. 562 00:54:27.680 --> 00:54:33.380 And I remember in 1994, Dick Armey saying, you know, we're going to think about privatizing 563 00:54:33.380 --> 00:54:36.160 the post office, and that'll be just the beginning. 564 00:54:36.160 --> 00:54:41.000 okay and it was just the end too because it never happened they thought about it 565 00:54:41.000 --> 00:54:45.160 or a couple of them and then nothing so it it sort of makes me think that people 566 00:54:45.160 --> 00:54:49.720 say well our position is completely unrealistic we'll never get to it but you 567 00:54:49.720 --> 00:54:52.800 know like for instance that like like Hans's position or Murray Rothbard's 568 00:54:52.800 --> 00:54:56.880 position of a stateless society well it's completely unreasonable it'll never 569 00:54:56.880 --> 00:55:00.880 happen but well I mean do you think the abolition of these programs is ever 570 00:55:00.880 --> 00:55:05.080 going to happen I mean so I mean in a way the only way any of this is ever 571 00:55:05.080 --> 00:55:07.580 is ever going to be cut back. 572 00:55:07.580 --> 00:55:10.120 It's not going to be because some politician wins office. 573 00:55:10.120 --> 00:55:11.680 That should be obvious by now. 574 00:55:11.680 --> 00:55:13.400 It's not going to happen. 575 00:55:13.400 --> 00:55:16.680 There's going to have to be some crisis that shakes the system 576 00:55:16.680 --> 00:55:18.000 to its foundations. 577 00:55:18.000 --> 00:55:20.440 And I would rather, the thing that 578 00:55:20.440 --> 00:55:22.560 attracts me about the stateless position 579 00:55:22.560 --> 00:55:24.560 is that when that crisis comes, it 580 00:55:24.560 --> 00:55:27.320 would be nice to have a well-articulated alternative 581 00:55:27.320 --> 00:55:30.640 view to begin to pick up the pieces with. 582 00:55:30.640 --> 00:56:00.640 because I don't see with a world filled with CNN and you know where we see every day they'll pick out the one really hard case and everybody assumes that's the common example of what happens with welfare and it's just and there's just no way to go around explaining it but jeez you know I sometimes think by the way sometimes libertarians say technology is such a great thing it's going to be a wonderful avenue for liberty maybe it is in some some extremely restricted cases 583 00:56:00.640 --> 00:56:06.140 But for crying out loud without television, I actually think we'd have a much easier time of it. 584 00:56:06.140 --> 00:56:12.640 A constant propaganda device in everybody's home, training them to think the same way, and this is a device for liberty? 585 00:56:12.640 --> 00:56:17.640 I mean, it could be used for liberty if, you know, if any of our people could get into the thing. 586 00:56:17.640 --> 00:56:20.640 You know, other than John Stossel. How about somebody else? 587 00:56:20.640 --> 00:56:22.640 Okay, I'm sorry, go ahead. 588 00:56:22.640 --> 00:56:29.280 Do you often hear these statistics that although inner-cities, Blacks, Mexicans are overrepresented population-wise, 589 00:56:29.280 --> 00:56:35.920 still 60% or something of social welfare goes to poor, rural whites, and first of all, is that true? 590 00:56:35.920 --> 00:56:40.080 And second of all, if so, do we have the same morally hazardous effect that you see in the inner-city? 591 00:56:40.080 --> 00:56:48.720 Yeah, good question. Yeah, it is true that most of the recipients are white, but again, you know, there are percentages and proportions here that are relevant. 592 00:56:48.720 --> 00:57:09.720 Well, I mean, I don't know. In some environments, I think everywhere it has a certain deleterious effect, because the mere fact that it's an outside state agency means that it can't really have any kind of real personal oversight of individual cases. 593 00:57:09.720 --> 00:57:20.720 And secondly, precisely because the word entitlement is used in all cases, I think that undermines an older, better view of these things. 594 00:57:20.720 --> 00:57:35.720 But on the other hand, I do think that in some environments it just adds fuel to an already blazing fire because it increases a sense of victimization. 595 00:57:35.720 --> 00:57:40.720 You know, I remember one time, I'll be honest with you, I'm going to make a confession I shouldn't make, 596 00:57:40.720 --> 00:57:46.720 but I applied for some fellowship many years ago, some sort of Christian thing, and I didn't get it. 597 00:57:46.720 --> 00:57:50.720 And I concluded from this, the reason was because I'm a Catholic, and these Protestants, you know, 598 00:57:50.720 --> 00:57:53.720 they think I worship statues and all this nonsense, and I thought, 599 00:57:53.720 --> 00:57:56.720 boy, those bastards, I can't believe they robbed me of this fellowship. 600 00:57:56.720 --> 00:58:01.720 And I suddenly realized, you know, boy, if I do this even once, it must be so easy to go through life, 601 00:58:01.720 --> 00:58:07.220 to go through life, thinking that every slight, everything is due to race or something like that. 602 00:58:07.220 --> 00:58:16.120 And anything that encourages that, anything that encourages the idea that the society is inherently unjust, 603 00:58:16.120 --> 00:58:24.120 and you therefore are entitled to a kind of an ongoing reparation payment, is going to be culturally very destructive. 604 00:58:24.120 --> 00:58:27.120 Okay, I've already gone over my time. Thank you very much. 605 00:58:27.120 --> 00:58:29.120 Thank you very much.