Asking When Did Welfare Start Implies an Answer to When it Will End.

Welfare, in one form or another, is as old as man.

Even the Bible has stories of people giving welfare to others to help them in times of need.

It’s likely, though, that when someone asks “when did welfare start?” they are wanting to know when it started in government…specifically in the United States.

The United States Constitution itself contains the phrase “the general welfare” and this has been interpreted two ways.

The first interpretation says that this was alluding to the (then) forthcoming Bill of Rights and the protection those were to guarantee.

The second interpretation, of course, says that this means that whenever government believes it can help people, it should.

The latter is what the phrase is most often interpreted to mean and that, sadly, gives no implication of the protection of people from the well-meaning of others.

So, social welfare is born, without regard for who is hurt in order to help those in need.

Unwittingly, this creates a never-ending need that must be fulfilled, so an endless cycle is born in which things are taken from some in order to provide for the welfare of others, often causing the ones being taken from to end up in need themselves.

To boil this down to the average American’s economic situation: Americans, on average, pay about 54% of their income in taxes…local, state, and federal.

Most of that tax money goes to pay for some kind of social welfare program: schools, homeless shelters, animal rescues, public works projects, corporate bailouts, research and development, and more.

GOV’T INVOLVED IN WELFARE IS BAD

When did welfare start? It’s been around since governments began, since social welfare programs are, by and large, the easiest way for governments to take money from their subjects (tax) with the least amount of resistance and chance of retaliation.

Tax collectors who come around in the name of the King and tell you that you owe are hated, ostracized, and sometimes physically assaulted. Tax collectors who come around in the name of the King and tell you to help pay for the orphan’s fund are not so bad in comparison.

Nobody asks why the tax collector should exist at all and why they can’t just give their money to the orphans themselves. Often, the need to “be fair” or work a “complex situation” to “do it right” is used as the reasoning behind government involvement. As if government is capable of any of those things.

WHEN DID WELFARE START BEING THE EXCUSE?

No one knows when the first tyrant came up with the idea of robbing Peter to pretend to pay Paul, but it’s been around for a very long time. What we do know is that it has become standard fare in every style of government known to man. It’s as ubiquitous as a military and, well, taxation.

No government seems to exist without a military, a taxation scheme, or a welfare (redistribution) system. It appears that the three things are all what virtually define what a government is, really.

HOW DO WE GET OUT OF IT?

For the most part, the Founding Fathers hoped to get out of welfare schemes as part of their overall plan to get out of tyrannical government altogether. They’d also mandated that a standing army was a bad idea, too, and that taxes were inevitable, but should be minimized.

They did pretty good for a very short while, but it didn’t take long for that creepy “welfare of the People” phrase to start being seen in a new light by the less scrupulous amongst the Founders. Alexander Hamilton was likely the first one to use it.

So, the answer to how we get out of it is to forget asking when did welfare start, since that only asks how we’re justifying it through history. To get out of it, we need to dump it altogether, which means throwing out everything that is not fully authorized by the Constitution. Hopefully, without another bloody revolution.