Everyone’s heard the song about the old lady who swallowed a fly. To get rid of the problem she swallows a spider. The spider solves the problem but creates a new one. She does not want a spider inside her. So she swallows a cat, which leads to swallowing a dog and so on. In the process of solving one problem she creates whole new ones. The story shows the concept of unintended consequences. For every action there is a reaction. Often times the reaction does not solve the problem and makes it worse. Sure swallowing a cat might solve the problem of the bird. However, a cat’s a lot bigger then the bird. In essence you have the same problem in a larger scale.
Almost every time the government goes beyond protecting life, liberty and property the government creates a bigger problem. The idea is that every action creates reactions. These reactions give unintended consequences. This principal can be best illustrated through welfare. People that support welfare usually have the best intentions. What they do not understand is that the unintended consequences make the situation worse.
The first unintended consequence is that it decreases the opportunities for people to work. To support welfare people and companies are taxed. That tax money goes through two levels of bureaucracy to get to the people. While it is going through the state and federal bureaucracies money is lost to keep those bureaucracies going. That money could have been used to give someone a job. Secondly individuals are taxed and that too decreases the opportunities available to the poor. Instead of spending the money or investing it, the money is being sent to the two levels of bureaucracies by which their very existence will use the money to keep them existing and not helping the poor. If the money had been spent or invested then more job opportunities could have been created. Companies would invest their additional profits and money made from more people buying their stocks. They could take advantage of lower interest rates that are created when people invest their money. Jobs are being lost because the unintended consequence of welfare is to decrease job opportunities.
The second and more important unintended consequence is that people become dependent on welfare money. If the government will support you why should you support yourself? In 1996 the government passed Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, which stopped the government from just handing out money and forced states to try and reform. According to the National Center for Policy Analysis, the states that are most successful in decreasing welfare recipients are the ones that stress welfare to work programs. However, as long as we have welfare we still have a problem. Welfare does not solve the real problem. The real problem is why don’t people have jobs to begin with? To solve this problem with welfare is like swallowing a spider to catch the fly. You are only making the problem worse.
The National Libertarian party has a four-step plan to solve the real problem of people not having jobs. The first step is to end welfare because it is not helping solve unemployment and because it is actually making the unemployment worse by taking away job opportunities as seen above. Second let people get a dollar-to-dollar tax credit for contributions to private charity. There are people who truly need welfare for a little while to get back on their feet. By letting people get a dollar-to-dollar tax credit for contributions to charity, the void of welfare can be filled in my more efficient private charities. The third step is to get rid of barriers that hurt people from starting businesses. There are so many regulations and taxes out there that you have to be rather well off to start a business. In turn people who could have started a business and get off welfare cannot possibly do so. Not all regulations are bad but there are so many now, its preventing the poor from helping themselves. The last step is for reforms in education. There are many possible solutions like ending the public school monopoly on education.
We need to stop swallowing horses to solve the problem of the cows in our stomach. The time is now to actually start helping the poor. There will always be people less fortunate then others. However, shouldn’t the government give everyone the best possible chance for success? It’s time to solve problems and not make them inadvertently worse.