Welfare State Quotes

• The welfare state is not really about the welfare of the masses. It is about the egos of the elites.

  Thomas Sowell

  Ego, Politics, Welfare

  Thomas Sowell (2013). “Ever Wonder Why?: and Other Controversial Essays”, p.23, Hoover Press

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• The welfare state has always been judged by its good intentions, rather than its bad results.

  Thomas Sowell

  Good Intentions, Welfare, States

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• The welfare state shields people from the consequences of their own mistakes, allowing irresponsibility to continue and to flourish among ever wider circles of people.

  Thomas Sowell

  Mistake, Circles, People

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• Libertarians know that a free country has nothing to fear from anyone coming in or going out - while a welfare state is scared to death of poor people coming in and rich people getting out.

  Harry Browne

  Country, People, Going Out

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• The welfare state is the oldest con game in the world. First you take people's money away quietly, and then you give some of it back to them flamboyantly.

  Thomas Sowell

  Games, People, Giving

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• The Welfare State is merely a method for transforming the market economy step by step into socialism.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Steps, Socialism, Welfare

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• The welfare state inhibits the maturation of its young citizens into responsible adults

  Dennis Prager

  Adults, Citizens, Welfare

  Dennis Prager (2012). “Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph”, p.42, Harper Collins

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• We must recognize that personal freedoms diminish as the welfare state grows. The price of more and more public programs is less and less private freedom.

  Caspar Weinberger

  Wisdom, Politics, Welfare

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• Compassion is good but politicians have turned compassion into the welfare state.

  Thomas Sowell

  Compassion, Welfare, Politician

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• A well-designed welfare state can actually encourage people to take chances with their jobs and be more, not less, open to changes.

  Ha-Joon Chang

  Jobs, People, Chance

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• Doing good with other people's money has two basic flaws. In the first place, you never spend anybody else's money as carefully as you spend your own. So a large fraction of that money is inevitably wasted. In the second place, and equally important, you cannot do good with other people's money unless you first get the money away from them. So that force - sending a policeman to take the money from somebody's pocket - is fundamentally at the basis of the philosophy of the welfare state.

  Milton Friedman

  Philosophy, Two, People

  Milton Friedman (1978). “Tax limitation, inflation and the role of government”, Fisher Inst

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• Healthcare is the cornerstone of the socialist state. It is the crown jewel of the welfare state.

  Monica Crowley

  Jewels, Crowns, Healthcare

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• The black family survived centuries of slavery and generations of Jim Crow, but it has disintegrated in the wake of the liberals' expansion of the welfare state.

  Thomas Sowell

  Black, Crow, Expansion

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• What we’re putting forward is the most radical reform of the welfare state… for 60 years. I think it will have a transformative effect in making sure that everyone is better off in work and better off working rather than on benefits.

  David Cameron

  Thinking, Years, Benefits

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• The welfare state is an assault on families.

  Larry Elder

  Welfare, States, Assault

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• Our expensive welfare state is fueled by the destructive notion that 'greed' is when you want to keep your own money but 'compassion' is when you want to take somebody else's.

  Lawrence Reed

  Compassion, Greed, Want

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• To have created a Welfare State was a great achievement; but we must go on to create a Welfare Planet.

  George Mikes

  Achievement, Stupidity, Goes On

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• I want to increase our spending on research and development by 25%. That's something the U.S. does very well. That dynamism alongside a welfare state in the European community - that's the synthesis I want to achieve.

  Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero

  Research And Development, Community, Want

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• The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools.

  Herbert Spencer

  Silly, Humor, Men

  'Essays' (1891) vol. 3 'State Tamperings with Money and Banks'

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• The problem of how we finance the welfare state should not obscure a separate issue: if each person thinks he has an inalienable right to welfare, no matter what happens to the world, that's not equity, it's just creating a society where you can't ask anything of people.

  Jacques Delors

  Thinking, Creating, Issues

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• There are people who believe in expanding the welfare state across the spectrum of races and ethnicities and creeds.

  Jeb Bush

  Believe, Race, Ethnicity

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• Is there any possibility of getting the super Welfare State's honey and avoiding the sting?

  C. S. Lewis

  Honey, Welfare, Possibility

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• You cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state.

  Milton Friedman

  Immigration, Welfare, States

  "Milton Friedman, Immigration, and the Welfare State" by Kerry Howley, reason.com. June 10, 2008.

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• Stripped of its academic jargon, the welfare state is nothing more than a mechanism by which governments confiscate the wealth of the productive members of a society to support a wide variety of welfare schemes.

  Alan Greenspan

  Government, Support, Political

  "Greenspan’s Testimony: Will the ‘Maestro’ Face the Music?" by Richard (RJ) Eskow, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 5, 2010.

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• The biggest and most deadly 'tax' rate on the poor comes from a loss of various welfare state benefits - food stamps, housing subsidies and the like - if their income goes up.

  Thomas Sowell

  Loss, Income, Benefits

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