WEBVTT NOTE Welfare Programs and the Great Society 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.240 Today, I want to talk about welfare programs in the great society. 2 00:00:05.240 --> 00:00:07.080 And this seems like, oh, good grief, right? 3 00:00:07.080 --> 00:00:10.480 We all know these are bad and they cause problems and they're expensive 4 00:00:10.480 --> 00:00:13.160 and they haven't worked and, you know, so what? 5 00:00:13.160 --> 00:00:17.880 But I want to go beyond that level of analysis and try to explain why it is 6 00:00:17.880 --> 00:00:22.840 that there has been so little success in terms of reducing poverty 7 00:00:22.840 --> 00:00:26.840 by means of these various programs that have been instituted 8 00:00:26.840 --> 00:00:34.440 and enlarged since the 60s and when I say that they have not been successful what I mean is 9 00:00:34.440 --> 00:00:41.480 from about 1950 to 1968 the poverty rate was decreasing by about a percentage point per year 10 00:00:42.120 --> 00:00:47.960 and these so-called great society programs of Lyndon Johnson didn't really actually start getting 11 00:00:48.600 --> 00:00:56.200 major funding until around the late 60s so this is all this decrease in poverty is taking place 12 00:00:56.840 --> 00:01:01.840 basically before any of these programs either exist or were funded in any serious way. 13 00:01:01.840 --> 00:01:06.840 And then there's basically been stagnation and even a little retrogression over the years 14 00:01:06.840 --> 00:01:13.840 in spite of literally trillions of dollars spent on these various programs. 15 00:01:13.840 --> 00:01:21.840 So what I want to do then is begin by pointing out a book that is very influential. 16 00:01:21.840 --> 00:01:25.840 What I have here is the 10th anniversary edition from about 1995 17 00:01:25.840 --> 00:01:30.840 and it's a book I make mention of in my own book, it's called Losing Ground by Charles Murray 18 00:01:30.840 --> 00:01:36.840 and the subtitle is American Social Policy 1950 to 1980. 19 00:01:36.840 --> 00:01:43.840 Now I am asking just out of curiosity not to put anybody on the spot or anything like that 20 00:01:43.840 --> 00:01:49.840 but I just am curious to know if there's anybody in the room who has first of all heard of this book. 21 00:01:49.840 --> 00:01:53.840 Is anybody familiar with Charles Murray's book or at least heard of it before? 22 00:01:53.840 --> 00:01:56.840 Have you heard of it? Has anybody read the thing? 23 00:01:56.840 --> 00:02:02.840 Okay, and I don't in any way mean that this counts as a demerit against you in any way, 24 00:02:02.840 --> 00:02:07.840 but that makes me feel better that I'll be imparting something that you don't know or have not heard before. 25 00:02:07.840 --> 00:02:12.840 That's actually useful. But it actually is a great book. It's really worth reading. 26 00:02:12.840 --> 00:02:16.840 It's really worth reading. You hear a summary of it and you think, okay, that's all I need to know about it. 27 00:02:16.840 --> 00:02:19.840 But I'm telling you, this is an enormously useful book, 28 00:02:19.840 --> 00:02:23.480 And it's very, very rare that a book on social policy 29 00:02:23.480 --> 00:02:26.080 would not only still be in print years later, 30 00:02:26.080 --> 00:02:29.560 but actually come out in a brand new 10th anniversary edition. 31 00:02:29.560 --> 00:02:33.560 It was cited all over the place in the 1990s 32 00:02:33.560 --> 00:02:35.800 when welfare reform was on the table. 33 00:02:35.800 --> 00:02:37.920 Everybody was pointing to Charles Murray 34 00:02:37.920 --> 00:02:41.000 and his thesis in this book as being simply obvious. 35 00:02:41.000 --> 00:02:43.080 But believe me, when it came out in the mid-80s, 36 00:02:43.080 --> 00:02:44.320 nobody said it was obvious. 37 00:02:44.320 --> 00:02:46.120 Everybody said Charles Murray is a big hater 38 00:02:46.120 --> 00:02:48.400 and he's evil and wicked and he hates the poor 39 00:02:48.400 --> 00:03:02.400 But then in the 90s, everybody pretended that they already knew all this, of course, so something happened, somehow, something happened over the course of those years to confirm the Murray thesis in people's minds. 40 00:03:02.400 --> 00:03:11.400 So what I'd like to do is refer to this book. As I say, it's enormously influential. I mean, you know, Reagan read it. He didn't apparently act on it, but he read it. 41 00:03:11.400 --> 00:03:18.400 A lot of influential people have read it. If you look at the blurbs on the back, they're all major people. 42 00:03:18.400 --> 00:03:28.400 So I want to talk about this book because Murray in here advances a couple of arguments that at first glance are shocking to hear. 43 00:03:28.400 --> 00:03:34.400 Now they don't seem so shocking to us in 2007 because we started to hear them. They started to become mainstream. 44 00:03:34.400 --> 00:03:37.400 But when they came out, these arguments were certainly shocking. 45 00:03:37.400 --> 00:03:45.400 The first of them is his argument that the stagnation that has become evident in the poverty level, 46 00:03:45.400 --> 00:03:50.400 or even the deterioration of the poverty level, so that it's gotten even worse, 47 00:03:50.400 --> 00:03:58.400 has taken place in large part because of some of the welfare programs that have been instituted and not in spite of those programs. 48 00:03:58.400 --> 00:04:10.400 Now that is a stunning claim and Murray is going to assemble an enormous amount of empirical evidence to try to support this conclusion. 49 00:04:10.400 --> 00:04:15.400 Now as I say, this became the conventional wisdom. 50 00:04:15.400 --> 00:04:21.400 By the 1990s people were saying that the programs are in some way themselves the problem. 51 00:04:21.400 --> 00:04:26.400 So that even Bill Clinton could say that these programs are themselves the problem. 52 00:04:26.400 --> 00:04:32.400 Now, it should be noted that when Bill Clinton ended welfare as we know it, which is how he touted this, 53 00:04:32.400 --> 00:04:36.400 he didn't include the 99 other programs that are included in welfare. 54 00:04:36.400 --> 00:04:40.400 He just got rid of aid to families with dependent children, 55 00:04:40.400 --> 00:04:46.400 and he replaced that with a program that would be administered more on the state level on a temporary five-year basis. 56 00:04:46.400 --> 00:04:53.400 But the safety net in terms of food stamps and unemployment insurance and medical care and all this, 57 00:04:53.400 --> 00:04:59.400 Medical Care and all this, all that was still in place, so it wasn't a complete abolition of welfare by any means. 58 00:04:59.400 --> 00:05:03.400 But the second claim that Murray makes is even more shocking. 59 00:05:03.400 --> 00:05:11.400 Murray argues that it is in effect impossible to design a wealth transfer program 60 00:05:11.400 --> 00:05:17.400 that is a government program by which some people are taxed and their money goes to other people. 61 00:05:17.400 --> 00:05:24.400 It's impossible to devise a program like that, that will not produce net harm. 62 00:05:24.400 --> 00:05:29.400 Now that was particularly shocking because social policy makers, of course, this is exactly what they want to do. 63 00:05:29.400 --> 00:05:35.400 They want to design programs like this, that take from some people, give to others and solve social problems that way. 64 00:05:35.400 --> 00:05:38.400 Murray is saying it is impossible to do that. 65 00:05:38.400 --> 00:05:45.400 Well again, a very stunning claim and he's going to have to have some serious analysis to justify it. 66 00:05:45.400 --> 00:05:50.400 Well, his analysis begins with a thought experiment that I find very useful. 67 00:05:50.400 --> 00:05:54.400 He says, let us suppose that we identify some social problem. 68 00:05:54.400 --> 00:05:56.400 He said, let's take smoking. 69 00:05:56.400 --> 00:06:00.400 Okay, now smoking is the most politically correct social problem there is. 70 00:06:00.400 --> 00:06:03.400 Smokers are despised and hated by everybody. 71 00:06:03.400 --> 00:06:06.400 But let's take smoking because it's a useful example. 72 00:06:06.400 --> 00:06:10.400 Let's suppose the government wants to reduce smoking. 73 00:06:10.400 --> 00:06:12.400 They want to cut down on the number of smokers 74 00:06:12.400 --> 00:06:15.700 and or they want to cut down on the amount of smoking that smokers are doing. 75 00:06:15.700 --> 00:06:19.300 One way or the other they want to discourage smoking. 76 00:06:19.300 --> 00:06:20.400 Well, how are they going to do this? 77 00:06:20.400 --> 00:06:26.500 Let's suppose they establish a program, the anti-smoking program. 78 00:06:26.500 --> 00:06:31.700 Obviously people aren't going to quit smoking if you offer them, say, two dollars. 79 00:06:31.700 --> 00:06:34.500 Here's two dollars, go ahead and quit smoking. 80 00:06:34.500 --> 00:06:38.500 That would not be a sufficient inducement for most people. 81 00:06:38.500 --> 00:06:45.500 However, I think there's hardly anybody on earth who wouldn't consider quitting smoking if you said I'll give you two trillion dollars to quit smoking. 82 00:06:45.500 --> 00:06:47.500 Certainly everybody would quit there. 83 00:06:47.500 --> 00:06:54.500 So Murray's point is that if you're going to establish an anti-smoking program, and later on we'll see how this applies to welfare, 84 00:06:54.500 --> 00:07:01.500 you have to offer a sufficient inducement to people to get them to stop doing the undesirable behavior, namely smoking. 85 00:07:01.500 --> 00:07:07.500 So you have to give them obviously more than two dollars, but at the same time there are limits in this world. 86 00:07:07.500 --> 00:07:17.500 You can't offer $2 trillion to everybody. You've got to come up with some reasonable figure that will be a sufficient inducement to discourage people from engaging in the undesirable behavior. 87 00:07:17.500 --> 00:07:26.500 So Murray suggests, let's suppose we use the figure $10,000. We'll give you $10,000 if you quit smoking. 88 00:07:26.500 --> 00:07:36.500 Now this is back in, his book came out in 1985, so this is in 1985, so maybe it's $20,000 now, but let's just use the $10,000 figure. 89 00:07:36.500 --> 00:07:41.500 So we'll pay you $10,000 for quitting, but you have to stick with it for a year. 90 00:07:41.500 --> 00:07:45.500 You can't quit for an hour, get the $10,000 and then go back. 91 00:07:45.500 --> 00:07:50.500 You have to quit for a full year and then you get the $10,000. 92 00:07:50.500 --> 00:07:57.500 Now, he wants to leave aside, just for the sake of simplicity, the possibility that people will quit for the year 93 00:07:57.500 --> 00:08:00.500 and then have relapses and maybe even go back to smoking. 94 00:08:00.500 --> 00:08:04.500 He says, for the sake of argument, let's just eliminate that possibility. 95 00:08:04.500 --> 00:08:15.500 Now, when we are designing our program, once we pinpoint the dollar figure that we're willing to reward people with for ceasing the undesirable behavior, 96 00:08:15.500 --> 00:08:20.500 we then have to consider the class of people to which this reward will apply. 97 00:08:20.500 --> 00:08:28.500 For instance, we can't give $10,000 to somebody who started smoking yesterday and then quit for a year so he could get the $10,000. 98 00:08:28.500 --> 00:08:35.500 10,000. Obviously that would not be useful. So we can't apply it if you just started yesterday. 99 00:08:35.700 --> 00:08:41.860 So let's say we just arbitrarily say, if you've been smoking for five years, and if you've 100 00:08:41.860 --> 00:08:46.080 been smoking not just once a week for five years, but let's say you've been smoking 101 00:08:46.080 --> 00:08:51.580 a pack a day for five years, then you're part of a core of smokers that we really want to 102 00:08:51.580 --> 00:08:55.600 gear this to. So if you've been smoking at least a pack a day for at least five years 103 00:08:55.600 --> 00:09:01.040 and you quit for a full year, we'll give you ten thousand dollars. 104 00:09:01.040 --> 00:09:05.720 Well Murray then proceeds to lay out for us several, I think plausible scenarios 105 00:09:05.720 --> 00:09:08.120 regarding what is likely to happen 106 00:09:08.120 --> 00:09:12.200 and all of these scenarios would be occurring simultaneously. 107 00:09:12.200 --> 00:09:16.560 He says let's consider people who are in their fourth year and eleventh month of 108 00:09:16.560 --> 00:09:19.640 smoking when this program is instituted. 109 00:09:19.640 --> 00:09:23.000 Well what incentive do they have to not just continue for another month? 110 00:09:23.000 --> 00:09:24.440 Obviously they would. 111 00:09:24.440 --> 00:09:29.240 Just smoke for one more month, quit for a year, you get $10,000. Who wouldn't do that? 112 00:09:29.240 --> 00:09:34.840 So anybody who's already been smoking four years and 11 months is just going to carry on doing it for another month. 113 00:09:34.840 --> 00:09:39.200 Or let's imagine somebody who has been smoking for four years and 10 months. 114 00:09:39.200 --> 00:09:42.500 For just two more months you smoke, you can get $10,000. 115 00:09:42.500 --> 00:09:45.100 Or imagine somebody's been smoking just four years. 116 00:09:45.100 --> 00:09:51.640 So the four-year, 11-month people, four-year, 11-month and 29-day people, 117 00:09:51.640 --> 00:09:55.840 They're likely to just carry on just for the sole purpose of getting the reward. 118 00:09:55.840 --> 00:10:00.540 Now that's less true when you get down to people who have been smoking for four or three or two years. 119 00:10:00.540 --> 00:10:05.940 But that incentive is still there, albeit somewhat diminished. 120 00:10:05.940 --> 00:10:10.940 So imagine, again, you've been smoking for four years, if you smoke for one more year you get $10,000. 121 00:10:10.940 --> 00:10:15.840 Now this is before we had the kind of high cigarette taxes we have now, 122 00:10:15.840 --> 00:10:19.340 where smoking for another year might cost you $10,000. 123 00:10:19.340 --> 00:10:23.420 So let's just eliminate that. 124 00:10:23.420 --> 00:10:28.340 Well, let's remember, first of all, that it's much more difficult to kick the habit 125 00:10:28.340 --> 00:10:31.020 once you've been smoking for five years. 126 00:10:31.020 --> 00:10:33.300 So in a way, it's like welfare dependency. 127 00:10:33.300 --> 00:10:38.060 You think, well, I'll just start in on this program and surely I'll be able to wean myself off it years from now. 128 00:10:38.060 --> 00:10:41.700 But you find that it's actually much more difficult to do so. 129 00:10:41.700 --> 00:10:49.220 So that, let's say, let's say you were a teenager and you started smoking partially thinking, 130 00:10:49.220 --> 00:10:54.220 I think I'll start this destructive behavior just to collect $10,000 five years from now. 131 00:10:54.220 --> 00:11:00.220 They get five years from now and they realize that $10,000 is no longer a sufficient inducement to get them to quit. 132 00:11:00.220 --> 00:11:02.220 It's got too much of a hold on them. 133 00:11:02.220 --> 00:11:08.220 But meanwhile, you've enticed them into smoking and you've enticed the most vulnerable people 134 00:11:08.220 --> 00:11:12.220 who were at the point of their lives when they were really going to make fundamental life decisions 135 00:11:12.220 --> 00:11:15.220 And you've enticed the most vulnerable people 136 00:11:15.220 --> 00:11:19.220 who were at the point of their lives when they were really going to make fundamental life decisions, 137 00:11:19.220 --> 00:11:22.220 now they've begun smoking. 138 00:11:22.220 --> 00:11:26.220 Now, what about people who are smoking a half a pack a day? 139 00:11:26.220 --> 00:11:30.220 Well, what incentive do they not have to just begin smoking a pack a day 140 00:11:30.220 --> 00:11:33.220 so that they qualify for the reward? 141 00:11:33.220 --> 00:11:36.220 Or imagine somebody smoking 19 cigarettes a day. 142 00:11:36.220 --> 00:11:40.220 Obviously that person will start smoking 20, so as to qualify. 143 00:11:40.220 --> 00:12:05.220 So this reward of $10,000 would be the factor that would make the marginal nonsmoker become a smoker, and when I say marginal nonsmoker, the word marginal in this sense means somebody who is only this close to being a nonsmoker, this person is this close to being a smoker. 144 00:12:05.220 --> 00:12:15.220 So, if I say, if I'm talking about marginal farmers, I mean somebody who is just barely making it, and if anything unexpected happens, he's just ruined. 145 00:12:15.220 --> 00:12:22.220 Okay, he's just on the margin there. Well, likewise for smokers, somebody who is marginal could go either way, doesn't really care. 146 00:12:22.220 --> 00:12:28.220 You suddenly offer $10,000, these marginal folks are likely to do it. 147 00:12:28.220 --> 00:12:34.220 Well, if you suddenly start saying $10,000 five years down the road, well, the marginal people may go for that. 148 00:12:34.220 --> 00:12:45.220 So the difficulty facing a policy analyst is that you need to come up with sufficient inducement to get people to stop doing what you want them to stop doing. 149 00:12:45.220 --> 00:12:56.220 But the inducement cannot be so great that it will encourage other people to either begin this activity or increase this activity. 150 00:12:56.220 --> 00:13:00.220 Now let me quote a bit from Charles Murray's book here. 151 00:13:00.220 --> 00:13:06.720 He says, now, if 90% of the population had been smoking for five years when the program began, 152 00:13:06.720 --> 00:13:11.220 we might still argue that the program would show a net reduction in smoking. 153 00:13:11.220 --> 00:13:16.220 But only about 15% of the adult population smokes a pack a day or more. 154 00:13:16.220 --> 00:13:22.220 Let us estimate that a third of this number have been smoking at that rate for more than five years. 155 00:13:22.220 --> 00:13:28.220 If so, our plan has the potential for reducing smoking among 5% of the adult population 156 00:13:28.220 --> 00:13:33.220 and the potential for increasing smoking among 95% of the adult population. 157 00:13:33.220 --> 00:13:38.220 It is exceedingly difficult to attach numbers to the considerations we have just reviewed 158 00:13:38.220 --> 00:13:42.220 without coming to the conclusion that the program as specified 159 00:13:42.220 --> 00:13:46.220 would have the net effect of increasing both the number of cigarettes consumed 160 00:13:46.220 --> 00:13:50.220 and the number of smokers. 161 00:13:50.220 --> 00:13:55.220 At this point Murray challenges his readers to think up an alternative to his program. 162 00:13:55.220 --> 00:14:03.220 If you think that maybe the reason my program on net probably increases smoking is that I've just designed it badly, then you recommend something that would be better. 163 00:14:03.220 --> 00:14:15.220 And he said every recommendation you can come up with is going to contain the same kind of moral hazard, the same kind of inadvertent enticement to begin this conduct that his own program has. 164 00:14:15.220 --> 00:14:22.220 So it disproportionately attracts people to this behavior rather than to discontinue it. 165 00:14:22.220 --> 00:14:32.220 Murray then lays out for us several what he calls laws of designing social welfare programs. 166 00:14:32.220 --> 00:14:41.220 And these are laws that are based not on, they're not laws like axioms and geometry that simply recommend themselves 167 00:14:41.220 --> 00:14:51.220 on the basis of their clear and obvious nature, but these are laws I think that are based on empirical generalization over time. 168 00:14:51.220 --> 00:15:05.220 And his first such law is what he calls the law of imperfect selection and he says any objective rule that defines eligibility for a social transfer program will irrationally exclude some persons. 169 00:15:05.220 --> 00:15:15.220 Well what does that mean? Well I think we all can think of examples of people who were really in terrible, terrible circumstances but somehow didn't qualify for any assistance at all, right? 170 00:15:15.220 --> 00:15:19.940 at all, right, because they, for some reason, either just the wording of the legislation 171 00:15:19.940 --> 00:15:24.980 didn't quite apply to them, or they weren't clever enough to figure out how to become 172 00:15:24.980 --> 00:15:29.740 eligible for something, but we all know cases of people, I think, where they just didn't 173 00:15:29.740 --> 00:15:33.980 apply for anything, they weren't able to get anything, whereas we also know people who 174 00:15:33.980 --> 00:15:38.740 clearly didn't deserve anything, who have spent years and years living on the public 175 00:15:38.740 --> 00:15:42.540 dole, so there is going to be this imperfect selection. 176 00:15:42.540 --> 00:15:45.100 How do we cope with this imperfect selection? 177 00:15:45.100 --> 00:15:50.700 Any program we institute is going to inadvertently exclude some people who should be covered 178 00:15:50.700 --> 00:15:51.700 by it. 179 00:15:51.700 --> 00:15:53.700 So how do we deal with that? 180 00:15:53.700 --> 00:15:59.420 Well in the old days, the way you would deal with it is you would rather than say, let's 181 00:15:59.420 --> 00:16:05.740 broaden the eligibility requirements so as to make sure that every single person who 182 00:16:05.740 --> 00:16:09.620 could possibly need help will definitely be covered. 183 00:16:09.620 --> 00:16:11.460 That would be one way of dealing with it. 184 00:16:11.460 --> 00:16:16.900 But in the old days I think the attitude would have been more likely to say it would be better 185 00:16:16.900 --> 00:16:24.740 actually to have a few worthy people not actually get it than to increase the eligibility requirements 186 00:16:24.740 --> 00:16:30.820 so much as to be sure to cover everybody because when you begin to do that you undermine community 187 00:16:30.820 --> 00:16:36.700 values about work and about the necessity not to live off your fellow man. 188 00:16:36.700 --> 00:16:41.020 So it would be better to just keep the eligibility requirements perhaps irrationally restricted 189 00:16:41.020 --> 00:16:47.220 Then to just make them more broad, whereas beginning in the 60s the opposite conclusion 190 00:16:47.220 --> 00:16:48.780 began to hold. 191 00:16:48.780 --> 00:16:53.700 Because you began to hear much more often the argument that poverty is a problem with 192 00:16:53.700 --> 00:16:54.700 the system. 193 00:16:54.700 --> 00:16:56.100 It's a systemic problem. 194 00:16:56.100 --> 00:16:58.900 It's a problem inherent in the market economy. 195 00:16:58.900 --> 00:17:00.820 Nobody is to blame for it. 196 00:17:00.820 --> 00:17:04.060 And I don't mean to say that everybody who's poor has only himself to blame because he's 197 00:17:04.060 --> 00:17:05.060 just a bum. 198 00:17:05.060 --> 00:17:07.660 I don't mean to suggest that at all. 199 00:17:07.660 --> 00:17:11.340 But certainly I think it's reasonable to say that some people are poor because they're 200 00:17:11.340 --> 00:17:16.460 very bad money managers or they're buying $300 sunglasses the day before their rent 201 00:17:16.460 --> 00:17:18.820 is due, that sort of thing. 202 00:17:18.820 --> 00:17:23.380 These people do exist, there are people like this in the world. 203 00:17:23.380 --> 00:17:28.380 But the argument began to be in the 60s that people are poor because it's inherent in 204 00:17:28.380 --> 00:17:35.280 the system, it's in no way, they have no personal responsibility whatsoever. 205 00:17:35.280 --> 00:17:40.060 So there's no shame, in that view, there's no shame in taking welfare because it's in 206 00:17:40.060 --> 00:17:44.840 no way your fault, you bear no responsibility for the condition you're in. 207 00:17:44.840 --> 00:17:48.480 So if that's your working assumption, then you're going to be more likely to deal with 208 00:17:48.480 --> 00:17:53.360 this problem by saying, well, let's make the eligibility requirements even broader. 209 00:17:53.360 --> 00:17:59.600 The second law that Murray identifies for us, he calls the law of unintended rewards. 210 00:17:59.600 --> 00:18:01.320 I think this is the key. 211 00:18:01.320 --> 00:18:08.320 He says any social transfer, that is expropriation of one person to benefit another, increases 212 00:18:08.320 --> 00:18:12.820 the net value of being in the condition that prompted the transfer. 213 00:18:12.820 --> 00:18:21.020 So that is to say, if there's going to be a transfer to me of $10,000 for quitting smoking, 214 00:18:21.020 --> 00:18:25.940 this increases the net value for me of becoming a smoker, of being in the condition that prompts 215 00:18:25.940 --> 00:18:27.920 the transfer. 216 00:18:27.920 --> 00:18:44.920 Secondly, in this law of unintended rewards, the program that seeks to change behavior must offer an inducement that unavoidably either adds to the attraction of or reduces the penalties of engaging in the behavior in question. 217 00:18:44.920 --> 00:18:49.920 Then finally, number three, the law of net harm. 218 00:18:49.920 --> 00:18:56.920 Now this one is not immediately obvious. I'm actually going to read a brief paragraph of Murray's book to you on this. 219 00:18:56.920 --> 00:19:03.480 But he says, the less likely it is that the unwanted behavior will change voluntarily, 220 00:19:03.480 --> 00:19:08.120 the more likely it is that a program to induce change will cause net harm. 221 00:19:08.120 --> 00:19:13.280 Now let me refer to Murray himself here. 222 00:19:13.280 --> 00:19:21.000 As inducements become large, as they must if the program is dealing with the most intractable problems, 223 00:19:21.000 --> 00:19:26.160 and here he's talking about problems that are the least likely to change voluntarily. 224 00:19:26.160 --> 00:19:29.360 So we're talking about when you're dealing with the most intractable problems, 225 00:19:29.360 --> 00:19:34.120 as inducements to overcome these problems become larger and larger, 226 00:19:34.120 --> 00:19:39.280 the more attractive they become to people who were not in need of help in the first place. 227 00:19:39.280 --> 00:19:43.800 We do not yet know how large they must finally become. 228 00:19:43.800 --> 00:19:49.520 We do know from experience, however, that quite generous experimental programs have provided 229 00:19:49.520 --> 00:19:56.960 extensive counseling, training, guaranteed jobs and other supports, and failed. 230 00:19:56.960 --> 00:20:02.120 We can only guess at what would be enough, perhaps a matter of years of full-time residential 231 00:20:02.120 --> 00:20:08.720 training, followed by guaranteed jobs at double or triple the minimum wage, we do not know. 232 00:20:08.720 --> 00:20:14.180 Whatever they are, however, consider their effects on the people not in the program. 233 00:20:14.180 --> 00:20:19.200 At this point, it appears that any program that would succeed in helping large numbers 234 00:20:19.200 --> 00:20:26.200 The authors of the Hardcore Unemployed will make Hardcore Unemployment a highly desirable state to be in. 235 00:20:26.200 --> 00:20:28.200 That's what he means by that. 236 00:20:28.200 --> 00:20:33.200 Now, again, these are not the sorts of things you read in the New York Times, 237 00:20:33.200 --> 00:20:36.200 but nevertheless, they're interesting points, 238 00:20:36.200 --> 00:20:44.200 and there is, in fact, a substantial body of empirical data that I think makes them all the more plausible. 239 00:20:44.200 --> 00:20:52.400 Let's suggest this one criterion, for example, will now go from smoking to welfare programs. 240 00:20:52.400 --> 00:20:58.840 We know that in the 1960s, the eligibility requirements for aid to families with dependent 241 00:20:58.840 --> 00:21:05.920 children were loosened, and the program came to cover more and more people. 242 00:21:05.920 --> 00:21:09.640 When Franklin Roosevelt established the program in the 30s, he envisioned this as something 243 00:21:09.640 --> 00:21:14.000 to help widows who were with eight children, what in the world are they going to do? 244 00:21:14.000 --> 00:21:26.000 That was the thinking. But now it became much more broad and in effect it became, as some people have said, it became a negative inducement to marriage. 245 00:21:26.000 --> 00:21:35.000 Because if you had a full-time working head of household in the house, you don't get the payments anymore. So the inducement is not to marry or to stay married. 246 00:21:35.000 --> 00:21:43.000 Now some people have said, that's far too simplistic, nobody makes marriage decisions on the basis of welfare policy. 247 00:21:43.000 --> 00:21:53.000 Well, they've actually been able to study this to the point that you can almost make an absolute statement that it is true that these programs do have that definite effect. 248 00:21:53.000 --> 00:22:01.000 It's not simply that they exist side by side. The program seems to have this outcome with regard to marriage. 249 00:22:01.000 --> 00:22:10.000 And from about the late 60s to the late 70s, for about 10 years, there was a series of experimental programs carried out in various cities across the country 250 00:22:10.000 --> 00:22:17.000 to see what kind of effect there would be if people were offered a guaranteed minimum income. 251 00:22:17.000 --> 00:22:23.000 Would it decrease the amount of hours they worked and would it make them less likely to get or stay married? 252 00:22:23.000 --> 00:22:31.000 And what they found was that family breakup was much higher in the families that were getting the guaranteed income 253 00:22:31.000 --> 00:22:37.000 because in effect the state became the father, so the family structure was dispensable. 254 00:22:37.000 --> 00:22:44.000 What was interesting was that in Gary, Indiana, however, there was no effect observed on marriages. 255 00:22:44.000 --> 00:22:47.000 So what was going on in Gary? Were they having a religious revival of some kind? 256 00:22:47.000 --> 00:22:50.000 Why is it that in Gary there were no observed effects? 257 00:22:50.000 --> 00:22:54.000 Well, it's because the people in Gary misunderstood the program. 258 00:22:54.000 --> 00:23:00.000 They thought that if they got divorced or something, they would lose the money. 259 00:23:00.000 --> 00:23:03.000 But no, you don't lose the money. It's a guaranteed income. 260 00:23:03.000 --> 00:23:06.120 Oh, that's the only reason that there's no effect. 261 00:23:06.120 --> 00:23:08.240 So they stayed married in Gary. 262 00:23:08.240 --> 00:23:09.600 Okay, so I mean, there it is. 263 00:23:09.600 --> 00:23:11.120 I mean, there's plenty of evidence of this. 264 00:23:11.120 --> 00:23:13.560 And there's also, there's overwhelming evidence 265 00:23:13.560 --> 00:23:16.560 that the number of hours worked declined. 266 00:23:16.560 --> 00:23:17.400 Because there are people who say, 267 00:23:17.400 --> 00:23:19.360 well, welfare doesn't discourage work. 268 00:23:19.360 --> 00:23:21.160 Well, if you're getting a guaranteed minimum income, 269 00:23:21.160 --> 00:23:23.320 which is what this program was all about, 270 00:23:23.320 --> 00:23:26.360 you know, it seems like you could at least get by. 271 00:23:26.360 --> 00:23:28.040 You could get by at a standard of living 272 00:23:28.040 --> 00:23:30.680 that's higher than three quarters of the world. 273 00:23:30.680 --> 00:23:33.560 you know three-quarters of the world are living worse than that so a lot of 274 00:23:33.560 --> 00:23:38.680 people did but particularly young men just beginning their lives on the job 275 00:23:38.680 --> 00:23:45.360 market began got trapped in this and and and work the least of anybody so now 276 00:23:45.360 --> 00:23:50.800 people who should be learning work ethic and all this are diverted into socially 277 00:23:50.800 --> 00:23:55.680 destructive behavior because they realize well if I get rewarded for not 278 00:23:55.680 --> 00:24:00.800 not doing anything, so it's more desirable to be in this situation. 279 00:24:00.800 --> 00:24:04.680 So they actually have been able to do studies that have, they've had a control group that's 280 00:24:04.680 --> 00:24:09.280 not getting this guaranteed income and a group that is, and there's just no comparison in 281 00:24:09.280 --> 00:24:14.360 terms of family breakdown and disincentive to work and so on. 282 00:24:14.360 --> 00:24:17.760 It's quite widespread. 283 00:24:17.760 --> 00:24:27.760 Okay, well, this is obviously the analysis that we started here in the 1990s about aid to families with dependent children, 284 00:24:27.760 --> 00:24:34.760 that it was discouraging family life and obviously family life with a mother and father present is a good, 285 00:24:34.760 --> 00:24:40.760 I mean the reason that we want this is that it's a good staple environment for children. 286 00:24:40.760 --> 00:24:46.760 You find that without that father figure the children have a lot more difficulty and in particular they wind up joining gangs half the time, 287 00:24:46.760 --> 00:25:16.760 I remember poor Dan Quayle who was not exactly one of my favorite people in the world, but I remember that trouble he got into in the late 80s when he made some comment about Murphy Brown, or was it early 90s, because Candace Bergen's character on television was having a child out of wedlock and they were treating this as just a wonderful thing to do and Dan Quayle said, you know, you're very much papering over all the difficulties that people who are in that situation have, you're making a lot of money, you're making a lot of money. 288 00:25:16.760 --> 00:25:18.360 I think it seemed like, oh, this is just a breeze. 289 00:25:18.360 --> 00:25:19.520 Everybody should just do this. 290 00:25:19.520 --> 00:25:20.520 That's hard work. 291 00:25:20.520 --> 00:25:22.280 It's very difficult to do. 292 00:25:22.280 --> 00:25:24.880 And it's very hard on the kids half the time, 293 00:25:24.880 --> 00:25:27.640 particularly when it's a mother, because it's very hard for her 294 00:25:27.640 --> 00:25:30.400 oftentimes to find work, and you've got to get child care. 295 00:25:30.400 --> 00:25:31.800 It's very, very hard. 296 00:25:31.800 --> 00:25:34.520 And everybody, of course, ridiculed stupid Dan Quayle 297 00:25:34.520 --> 00:25:36.080 because he can't spell potato. 298 00:25:36.080 --> 00:25:38.600 So we don't care what he has to say about anything. 299 00:25:38.600 --> 00:25:40.280 And as typical in these situations, 300 00:25:40.280 --> 00:25:44.480 Quayle totally backed down and sent a stuffed animal 301 00:25:44.480 --> 00:26:13.480 The Great Society programs of the 60s were not just confined to making AFDC payments more easily available to people. 302 00:26:13.480 --> 00:26:19.480 It was also additional funding to education for people coming from the least advantaged households. 303 00:26:19.480 --> 00:26:22.480 It was massive programs for job training. 304 00:26:22.480 --> 00:26:25.480 For example, the Job Corps that I mentioned in the book. 305 00:26:25.480 --> 00:26:30.480 Medical care, for example, was established, like the Medicaid and Medicare programs. 306 00:26:30.480 --> 00:26:33.480 All these things are also part of the Great Society. 307 00:26:33.480 --> 00:26:39.480 But as I'm suggesting in the book, they have not had the outcomes that people might hope. 308 00:26:39.480 --> 00:26:46.480 I hope that money is not necessarily the reason that, for example, some schools are not doing well. 309 00:26:46.480 --> 00:26:52.480 If you were to walk into some of the schools in New York City, some of the high schools in New York City, 310 00:26:52.480 --> 00:26:55.480 I guarantee you, you would not walk, just walk through the hall. 311 00:26:55.480 --> 00:26:58.480 Don't even go in the classroom and see what's going on. 312 00:26:58.480 --> 00:27:02.480 Just walk down the hall and observe the behavior and then say to yourself, 313 00:27:02.480 --> 00:27:07.480 is the thing holding this school back the fact that we don't have 1.7 computers per student? 314 00:27:07.480 --> 00:27:14.480 It seems to me that with chalk and a chalkboard, you could really accomplish a lot in some of these places. 315 00:27:14.480 --> 00:27:18.480 It's not that, well, my goodness, we need to be spending $25,000 per student. 316 00:27:18.480 --> 00:27:24.480 We've had a dramatic increase in per-pupil expenditure, and we still have all this dysfunction. 317 00:27:24.480 --> 00:27:28.480 Half of it has to do with the family background of the students who are coming there. 318 00:27:28.480 --> 00:27:34.480 Obviously, if you've got all kinds of problems at home, that's going to be reflected in your academic performance. 319 00:27:34.480 --> 00:27:42.480 and Performance. Whereas if you have a supportive household that's interested in what you're doing and demands standards of you, you're going to have much more success. 320 00:27:42.480 --> 00:27:50.480 But in a lot of places you don't have that. So billions of dollars were poured into these programs, but they had very, very little to show for them. 321 00:27:50.480 --> 00:27:58.480 The one program that people do point to as being successful along these lines is the Head Start Preschool Program. 322 00:27:58.480 --> 00:28:03.480 It turns out that this program had billions and billions of dollars spent on it. 323 00:28:03.480 --> 00:28:07.480 It turns out that any gains that a student gets from the Head Start program, 324 00:28:07.480 --> 00:28:10.480 as soon as they start the next year of school, all those benefits are gone. 325 00:28:10.480 --> 00:28:13.480 They've disappeared. They're not there. They don't persist. 326 00:28:13.480 --> 00:28:17.480 So, again, the thinking is that if we just spend money, everything will be fine. 327 00:28:17.480 --> 00:28:21.480 It will show how generous we are, but not necessarily so. 328 00:28:21.480 --> 00:28:24.480 I mentioned the example of the Job Corps program. 329 00:28:24.480 --> 00:28:27.480 The reason people are unemployed is they just don't have enough opportunity. 330 00:28:27.480 --> 00:28:32.480 So the job corps was going to take hardcore unemployed young people, 100,000 of them, 331 00:28:32.480 --> 00:28:35.480 and go and give them job training and this and that. 332 00:28:35.480 --> 00:28:38.480 And what was found was that, well, first of all, 333 00:28:38.480 --> 00:28:42.480 violence keeps breaking out in these job training programs. 334 00:28:42.480 --> 00:28:45.480 You wind up with the situation where you're paying about as much 335 00:28:45.480 --> 00:28:48.480 to send every one of these students to Harvard 336 00:28:48.480 --> 00:28:51.480 as to actually participate in the program. 337 00:28:51.480 --> 00:28:54.480 You find that people who complete the program, 338 00:28:54.480 --> 00:28:59.480 By the way, two-thirds of the people didn't even bother to complete a free job training program, so hello. 339 00:28:59.480 --> 00:29:06.480 But if you do complete it, it turns out that you didn't do any better on the job market in terms of wages 340 00:29:06.480 --> 00:29:10.480 than people who were accepted to the job corps but never showed up for it. 341 00:29:10.480 --> 00:29:18.480 So again, you've now spent the equivalent of a Harvard tuition and you have exactly zero results, zero, nothing. 342 00:29:18.480 --> 00:29:21.480 The job corps has consistently been like this, isn't it? 343 00:29:21.480 --> 00:29:25.480 I think they've had years where they've said, hey, this year the Job Corps did really well. 344 00:29:25.480 --> 00:29:30.480 But yeah, this is the one program that gets funded more and more every year. 345 00:29:30.480 --> 00:29:35.480 Every senator wants to say, look what I brought home, it's the Job Corps for my constituents. 346 00:29:35.480 --> 00:29:38.480 My colleague Mark Thornton, who's another senior fellow here, was telling me, 347 00:29:38.480 --> 00:29:44.480 I don't remember all the details, but he was telling me about in Alabama there was some job training program 348 00:29:44.480 --> 00:29:50.480 and for one year they wanted to study how many people went through the job training program, 349 00:29:50.480 --> 00:29:56.480 and then entered a field for which they had been trained and the answer was 1. 350 00:29:56.480 --> 00:30:01.480 That was the answer. So anyway, that's another matter we can get Mark back in here, some of you know him. 351 00:30:01.480 --> 00:30:07.480 Alright, so I already told you about all the different manifestations of welfare. 352 00:30:07.480 --> 00:30:16.480 It's also the case that in order to stay out of poverty, there are relatively simple things people can do. 353 00:30:16.480 --> 00:30:26.480 Even if you keep a minimum wage job for a year, which typically, on average, you're not earning minimum wage after a year, you're almost always bumped up from that. 354 00:30:26.480 --> 00:30:34.480 But even if you had a minimum wage job for a year and you stay married for a year and you've completed high school, then you have almost no chance of being poor. 355 00:30:34.480 --> 00:30:44.480 But again, the incentives that are produced by some of these programs are such that they make it much easier for people not to take that very first important step. 356 00:30:44.480 --> 00:30:50.480 The key point to remember, I think, is that human beings are not naturally inclined toward hard work. 357 00:30:50.480 --> 00:30:56.480 They have a disinclination to do hard work. Economists speak of the disutility of labor. 358 00:30:56.480 --> 00:31:01.480 Albert J. Nock and others have pointed out the obvious fact about human nature, 359 00:31:01.480 --> 00:31:07.480 that human beings are anxious to seek after wealth with the least possible exertion. 360 00:31:07.480 --> 00:31:12.480 And Nock then goes on to, I just might note incidentally, 361 00:31:12.480 --> 00:31:16.880 make the point that this is why government can be such a dangerous institution 362 00:31:16.980 --> 00:31:21.280 because given that people prefer to work and get remuneration 363 00:31:21.380 --> 00:31:23.780 with the least effort possible, 364 00:31:23.880 --> 00:31:28.680 well, people would much rather get their loot and get their money 365 00:31:28.780 --> 00:31:30.980 through no exertion at all 366 00:31:31.080 --> 00:31:34.280 or through using political means to get the government 367 00:31:34.380 --> 00:31:35.980 to take some people's money and give it to them. 368 00:31:36.080 --> 00:31:38.280 I mean, that's much easier than going out and working. 369 00:31:38.380 --> 00:31:41.780 We all have this inclination to do that, and I don't just mean poor people. 370 00:31:41.780 --> 00:31:53.780 A lot easier than competing on the market is filing an antitrust suit with the Justice Department, or getting some special subsidy, or crippling your competitors through the government. 371 00:31:53.780 --> 00:32:00.780 So the government is always there to make it possible for you to get stuff without really working for it. 372 00:32:00.780 --> 00:32:30.780 And so the danger here, and this is what Murray is pointing out, is that any time you say, well we need to give free this and free that, free this and free that to everybody, and then after that we have to give 17 more free things, every time you do that, you take people who are only marginally in the workforce, who are this close to just dropping out and just saying, heck with it, I'll get the free payments. Every time you expand that, a whole other class of people drops out of the labor force. 373 00:32:30.780 --> 00:32:34.780 I was only barely willing to do this in the first place, now I'm not doing it. 374 00:32:34.780 --> 00:32:39.780 The more generous it becomes, the less work gets done, the fewer people want to do it. 375 00:32:39.780 --> 00:32:48.780 Now I tried to make mention in the book, I tried to at least quote a couple of passages from the Murray book 376 00:32:48.780 --> 00:32:52.780 because I think these are really, really valuable passages. 377 00:32:52.780 --> 00:32:58.780 Murray points out that in the 1960s a lot of the incentives changed. 378 00:32:58.780 --> 00:33:02.780 and he says that all the changes in the incentives pointed in the same direction. 379 00:33:02.780 --> 00:33:05.780 It was easier to get along without a job. 380 00:33:05.780 --> 00:33:08.780 It was easier for a man to have a baby without being responsible for it. 381 00:33:08.780 --> 00:33:11.780 For a woman to have a baby without having a husband. 382 00:33:11.780 --> 00:33:13.780 It was easier to get away with crime. 383 00:33:13.780 --> 00:33:17.780 Because it was easier for others to get away with crime, it was easier to obtain drugs. 384 00:33:17.780 --> 00:33:21.780 Because it was easier to get away with crime, it was easier to support a drug habit. 385 00:33:21.780 --> 00:33:26.780 Because it was easier to get along without a job, it was easier to ignore education. 386 00:33:26.780 --> 00:33:30.780 Because it was easier to get along without a job, it was easier to walk away from a job 387 00:33:30.780 --> 00:33:35.780 and thereby accumulate a record as an unreliable employee. 388 00:33:35.780 --> 00:33:40.780 Well, there is also the fact that the 60's saw the promotion of what became known as 389 00:33:40.780 --> 00:33:44.780 the welfare rights approach, that people should not only not be ashamed, 390 00:33:44.780 --> 00:33:48.780 but they should positively, they should consider it a positive good 391 00:33:48.780 --> 00:33:50.780 to receive welfare because they are entitled to it. 392 00:33:50.780 --> 00:33:55.780 It's not something that society grudgingly accords them, but they are entitled to it as a right. 393 00:33:55.780 --> 00:34:03.780 So Murray says that this idea is incredibly destructive because it undermines what he called status rewards. 394 00:34:03.780 --> 00:34:14.780 So he says that at least the working poor family used to, if they had nothing else, they had the dignity of knowing that they were not being a burden to their neighbors and they were supporting themselves. 395 00:34:14.780 --> 00:34:22.780 Now, under this new philosophy that they're entitled to get welfare payments, now they just seem stupid for not doing it. 396 00:34:22.780 --> 00:34:30.780 So, again, Murray says, once these highly functional sources of status are removed, the vaunted work ethic becomes highly vulnerable. 397 00:34:30.780 --> 00:34:37.780 The notion that there is an intrinsic good in working, even if one does not have to, may have impressive philosophical credentials, 398 00:34:37.780 --> 00:34:43.780 but on its face it is not very plausible, at least not to a young person whose values are still being formed. 399 00:34:43.780 --> 00:34:48.780 To someone who is not yet persuaded of the satisfactions of making one's own way, 400 00:34:48.780 --> 00:34:55.780 There is something laughable about a person who doggedly keeps working at a lousy job for no tangible reason at all. 401 00:34:55.780 --> 00:35:02.480 And when working no longer provides either income or status, the last reason for working has truly vanished. 402 00:35:02.480 --> 00:35:07.480 The man who keeps working is, in fact, a chump. 403 00:35:07.480 --> 00:35:13.080 Now, it has been alleged that people are on welfare because there just aren't enough jobs for them. 404 00:35:13.080 --> 00:35:20.880 But black unemployment really began taking off in the 1960s. 405 00:35:20.880 --> 00:35:24.580 A number of people on welfare began exploding in the 1960s. 406 00:35:24.580 --> 00:35:28.280 And so people always say, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's because there just aren't enough jobs. 407 00:35:28.280 --> 00:35:32.880 Well, actually, there was a jobs boom in the 1960s. 408 00:35:32.880 --> 00:35:35.080 And New York was particularly prosperous. 409 00:35:35.080 --> 00:35:39.680 And yet New York has got tremendous increase in the welfare rules at that time. 410 00:35:39.680 --> 00:35:41.180 So what exactly is going on? 411 00:35:41.180 --> 00:35:46.480 Well, some of the incentives that I've described, I think, are plainly in effect. 412 00:35:46.480 --> 00:35:51.480 It's also the fact that, by the way, if you ask people who are jobless at that time, 413 00:35:51.480 --> 00:35:54.480 are you jobless because you can't find work? 414 00:35:54.480 --> 00:35:58.480 Three-quarters of them said no. Three-quarters of them said no. 415 00:35:58.480 --> 00:36:01.480 And what's also interesting, by the way, is that 416 00:36:01.480 --> 00:36:04.380 I don't know if you've ever seen any of these studies where they ask people, 417 00:36:04.380 --> 00:36:06.080 do you recycle? 418 00:36:06.080 --> 00:36:09.780 Of course, everybody says, yes, I recycle because they don't want to go to jail. 419 00:36:09.780 --> 00:36:13.780 But when you ask them, do you think your neighbor recycles? 420 00:36:13.780 --> 00:36:16.380 The answer is overwhelmingly no. 421 00:36:16.380 --> 00:36:19.780 Well, everybody is somebody's neighbor, so somebody's lying here. 422 00:36:19.780 --> 00:36:25.880 Okay, well, similarly, there have been studies where people have asked the poor or unemployed 423 00:36:25.880 --> 00:36:30.680 or there have been studies just in the black community where they will ask people, 424 00:36:30.680 --> 00:36:34.680 you know, are you, you know, what, how would you describe yourself? 425 00:36:34.680 --> 00:36:38.680 And they say, well, you know, industrious, whatever, responsible. 426 00:36:38.680 --> 00:36:41.240 Now, can you describe your neighbor? 427 00:36:41.240 --> 00:36:44.400 Oh, he's a bum, you know, whatever, doesn't do anything, 428 00:36:44.400 --> 00:36:46.440 he just sits back and collects money. 429 00:36:46.440 --> 00:36:48.160 Well, again, everybody is somebody's neighbor, 430 00:36:48.160 --> 00:36:49.320 so somebody's lying here. 431 00:36:49.320 --> 00:36:51.600 So it's interesting that even the poor will say, 432 00:36:51.600 --> 00:36:58.240 you know, I'm surrounded by people who just refuse to do legitimate work. 433 00:36:58.240 --> 00:36:59.920 But New York City is a classic example. 434 00:36:59.920 --> 00:37:03.200 I mean, I came from Massachusetts. 435 00:37:03.200 --> 00:37:05.240 I lived in New York for quite some time. 436 00:37:05.240 --> 00:37:12.560 And between 1945 and 1960, the number of people on welfare increased by 47,000. 437 00:37:12.640 --> 00:37:19.000 But from 1960 to 1965, just a five-year period, it grew by more than 200,000. 438 00:37:19.080 --> 00:37:23.400 By 1971, after a decade of extraordinary prosperity, 439 00:37:23.480 --> 00:37:25.800 great prosperity ever since World War II, 440 00:37:25.880 --> 00:37:31.080 there were nearly 1.2 million people on welfare in New York City alone, 441 00:37:31.160 --> 00:37:35.120 which means that there were more people on welfare in New York City 442 00:37:35.120 --> 00:37:40.020 Then the entire populations of 15 states of the Union. 443 00:37:40.120 --> 00:37:43.220 And one can go on about the various jobs that were available. 444 00:37:43.320 --> 00:37:45.520 Jobs that were going unfilled in the 1980s 445 00:37:45.620 --> 00:37:48.220 were jobs that simply required you to be able to understand 446 00:37:48.320 --> 00:37:54.420 how to divide 100 by 4 or understand what 75% means. 447 00:37:54.520 --> 00:37:56.220 These were going unfilled. 448 00:37:56.320 --> 00:37:59.720 So, again, why not? 449 00:37:59.820 --> 00:38:03.220 What could possibly be the reason that a self-respecting human being 450 00:38:03.220 --> 00:38:09.220 Couldn't take these jobs or if you didn't know those things why couldn't you teach yourself simple things like that? 451 00:38:09.220 --> 00:38:17.220 Well, I'll just finally end up with the note, just to elaborate a bit on something else in the Great Society, 452 00:38:17.220 --> 00:38:25.220 Lyndon Johnson and Kennedy chapter, is that there was in fact in the 60s founded an organization called 453 00:38:25.220 --> 00:38:32.220 the National Welfare Rights Organization and they actually ended up getting some federal money to promote their ideas 454 00:38:32.220 --> 00:38:43.220 And one of the things they did was that if people were turned down for various welfare programs they would just counsel them on how to break the bureaucracy down until they finally are just so tired of you that they cave in and give it to you. 455 00:38:43.220 --> 00:38:54.220 And so they would stage sit-ins and whatever and just overload the bureaucracy with more paperwork than they could possibly deal with and so they just finally broke down and gave in. 456 00:38:54.220 --> 00:39:01.220 Well, I'm just going to conclude again with the ideas that Murray gives us. 457 00:39:01.220 --> 00:39:05.220 He says that people are not naturally hardworking and moral, 458 00:39:05.220 --> 00:39:10.220 and that only a nexus of economic incentives, moral exhortation and social stigma 459 00:39:10.220 --> 00:39:13.220 encourages responsible, upright behavior. 460 00:39:13.220 --> 00:39:16.220 When those things are undermined, it is only natural to expect 461 00:39:16.220 --> 00:39:20.220 that people's natural inclinations to choose leisure over work 462 00:39:20.220 --> 00:39:25.220 and immediate gratification over responsibility and good sense come to the surface 463 00:39:25.220 --> 00:39:29.220 and it is much easier to lure people into this kind of behavior 464 00:39:29.220 --> 00:39:33.220 since our natural inclination is to want to exert the least possible effort 465 00:39:33.220 --> 00:39:36.220 than it is to teach them responsibility and self-sufficiency 466 00:39:36.220 --> 00:39:42.220 once they have become acclimated to the values and lifestyle that the welfare system encourages. 467 00:39:42.220 --> 00:39:48.220 One absolutely final note is that a gentleman I've had some correspondence with 468 00:39:48.220 --> 00:39:52.220 David Beto, University of Alabama, 469 00:39:52.220 --> 00:39:54.220 has written a book on... 470 00:39:54.220 --> 00:39:57.220 Gosh, the title of it is escaping me now, 471 00:39:57.220 --> 00:39:59.220 but it will come to me. 472 00:39:59.220 --> 00:40:03.220 But B-E-I-T-O wrote a book on... 473 00:40:03.220 --> 00:40:09.220 It's called From Something to Welfare State. 474 00:40:09.220 --> 00:40:10.220 I can't remember what it is. 475 00:40:10.220 --> 00:40:14.220 But he did a study of fraternal organizations in American history. 476 00:40:14.220 --> 00:40:20.500 American History. And these voluntary associations in the old days provided a lot of the services 477 00:40:20.500 --> 00:40:25.540 that now the welfare bureaucracy provides. They provided to their members assistance 478 00:40:25.540 --> 00:40:32.300 during emergencies or help with burial expenses or things of that nature. These organizations 479 00:40:32.300 --> 00:40:36.580 provided them. They were able to get, by pooling their resources together, they were able to 480 00:40:36.580 --> 00:40:43.280 get group discounts on medical care, get very inexpensive medical care. But Beto and others 481 00:40:43.280 --> 00:40:46.920 have pointed out, and Murray in another one of his books called In Pursuit of Happiness 482 00:40:46.920 --> 00:40:51.620 and Good Government have both pointed out that one of the results of these massive welfare 483 00:40:51.620 --> 00:40:57.480 bureaucracies is that they, sometimes we use this term, they crowd out private initiatives 484 00:40:57.480 --> 00:41:03.000 to help the poor because, you know, well, if I'm already paying my taxes and I'm getting 485 00:41:03.000 --> 00:41:07.240 these things from the government, what's the point of having the elks or the moose lodge 486 00:41:07.240 --> 00:41:08.240 or something help me? 487 00:41:08.240 --> 00:41:10.780 There's no point in having that now that the government's doing it. 488 00:41:10.780 --> 00:41:15.980 So a lot of what had been done in the past was simply not done anymore as a result. 489 00:41:15.980 --> 00:41:21.140 So these private approaches were crowded out because the government then kind of takes 490 00:41:21.140 --> 00:41:22.140 over. 491 00:41:22.140 --> 00:41:26.140 There's less and less for these other groups to do and they wind up not exercising these 492 00:41:26.140 --> 00:41:32.540 functions anymore and society becomes more dependent on government, less independent 493 00:41:32.540 --> 00:41:33.300 than it used to be.