When you give something for free to a living creature, the creature can come to expect more of the same. This is why park rangers urge people in, say, the Tahoe area or Yosemite not to feed bears. If the animals become dependent on humans to give them food, they may lose the ability to hunt, and make human-bear interactions worse than ever.
The same logic has always been used in criticism of welfare. You all know the aphorism about teaching a man to fish, right? It applies to humans, too, and to their relationship with their government. A certain amount of welfare was warranted during the Great Depression, and Franklin Roosevelt was smart enough to realize it. (Whether or not he “saved capitalism” is another conversation.) But when Lyndon Johnson started getting into big trouble over Vietnam and made the decision to create a second New Deal with “The Great Society,” he may have, in retrospect, gone too far.
I’m not complaining about my Medicare, mind you. That program has saved millions of Americans from falling into poverty (and, after all, we paid into it), and I hope and trust it’s here to stay. Not even Trump would dare mess with Medicare! But I do believe that there are limits to what government can, or should, do for people. As I made clear yesterday, affordable housing is not the responsibility of government. There are many other goals that may be worthy in themselves, but which government should refrain from pursuing.
Chief among these is the goal of “equity”. It’s true that there can be huge discrepancies in outcome when it comes to the different races. More Black people are arrested than any other race. Black people are inordinately poor compared to other races. Fewer Black youngsters graduate from high school and attend college. Black people have a very low rate of home ownership and thus are compelled to rent. These are all outcomes that progressives allege are caused by racism, and can be abrogated through governmental laws and regulations. Progressives who believe that government is the solution for these and so many other problems are sincere in their thinking. But they happen to be wrong.
Decades ago Bill Clinton announced that “the era of big government is over.” He was a bit premature, but I know what he meant, and it’s what I’m saying now. Minorities have got to understand that government had done all it can to assist them. America has spent the last 70 years investing its wealth into minority communities; the results can be seen by looking around. Whether this investment was worth it, isn’t for me to say. It is what it is. But whether America, or California, or Oakland should continue to pour its vast fortunes into minority communities is easy to answer: No. At some point, enough is enough. At some point, when government has ensured that everyone is gathered at the starting line, they should shoot the gun and let the race begin. We’ve reached that point. Everyone now has an equal opportunity in America to do well.
Clearly, there are people who will be disadvantaged. If I’m in a wheelchair, I can’t expect to compete against a professional runner. There are things government can mandate around the edges to make my wheelchair life a little easier, but government can’t guarantee that my outcome in the race will be consonant with a sprinter’s. John F. Kennedy was famous for observing, “Life isn’t fair.” No, it’s not. Some people are born with all the advantages. Others are behind the eight ball from the start. It sucks, I know. If I were Master of the Universe I might have designed it to be a happier, fairer and more equitable place. But that’s not how things are.
My warnings—to the Democratic Party, to liberals, to Oakland—are simple. You’ve achieved a great deal, politically speaking, but you’ve reached the limit of what can realistically be done. People must now realize that ultimately it’s up to themselves to achieve whatever they can in life, without asking or demanding help from society at large. If you’re indigent, no one can make you wealthy. If you’re too uneducated or unmotivated to have a good job, no government on earth can create one for you, with a single exception: a Communist government with a command economy, which as an Eastern European worker once observed, “pretends to pay us, and we pretend to work.” It would be a nicer, fairer universe if we didn’t have to earn our keep with the sweat of our brows. But we do, and not even the most well-meaning progressive politician can change that.
Steve Heimoff