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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• 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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• 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 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• Welfare states on both sides of the Atlantic have discovered that largesse to losers does not reduce their hostility to society, but only increases it. Far from producing gratitude, generosity is seen as an admission of guilt, and the reparations as inadequate compensations for injustices - leading to worsening behavior by the recipients.

  Thomas Sowell

  Gratitude, Generosity, Guilt

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

  Thomas Sowell

  Compassion, Welfare, Politician

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• Citizens of liberal welfare states become increasingly narcissistic

  Dennis Prager

  Citizens, Narcissistic, Welfare

  Dennis Prager (2012). “Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph”, p.41, 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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• 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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• The welfare state is an assault on families.

  Larry Elder

  Welfare, States, Assault

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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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• 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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• 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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• Whether we want to own up to it or not, the welfare state has done what Jim Crow, gross discrimination and poverty could not have done. It has contributed to the breakdown of the black family structure and has helped establish a set of values alien to traditional values of high moral standards, hard work and achievement.

  Walter E. Williams

  Hard Work, Achievement, Crow

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• A welfare state, properly conceived, can be an integral part of a conservative society.

  Irving Kristol

  Conservative, Welfare, States

  "Reflections of a Neoconservative: Looking Back, Looking Ahead". Book by Irving Kristol, 1983.

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• The welfare state corrupts family life. Even Democrats have acknowledged the destructive consequences of the welfare state on the underclass. It has rendered vast numbers of male unnecessary to females, who have looked to the state to support them and their children (and the more children, the more state support) rather than to husbands. In effect, these women took the state as their husband.

  Dennis Prager

  Children, Husband, Numbers

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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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