“One of the big problems I see in this discussion is that the people who are against tax increases don’t spell out where the spending problems really are. After reading diatribe after diatribe, I think I’m starting to see the shape of the failure cascade:”
Yes, the author in his article says:
“Rather than expanding programs that didn’t work from the start, and never did, rather than funneling handouts to the poor, rather than financing bloated bureaucracies wedded to their systemic failures, those resources should be channeled to initiatives that create the educational and training opportunities, not to mention the economic conditions and incentives, for people to transcend and overcome poverty.
If you have a persistent ailment, and the high-priced medicine the doctor keeps prescribing doesn’t work, what do you do? Do you just take more as the doctor wants you to, throwing ever more money away, or do you try a different protocol of treatment?
The smart thing to do is try something different. In medicine, treatments that depart from establishment orthodoxy most often cost less and prove successful – for example, the VA hospitals’ rejection of expensive specialty drugs for less costly workhorse drugs that help to render that system so successful.
And so it goes. We could unchain the doors of failed public schools, which lock so many of the poor in cells of failure, and empower families with school choice, at about the half the price of public education. We could lower tax rates and regulatory burdens to create a flow of job-creating capital into poor communities from the private rather than the public sector. We could limit the duration of benefits to disincentivize dependency.”
These are precisely the purpose of the programs. They create a permanent underclass and a large stable of handlers all committed to keeping their benefactor party in power.
...those resources should be channeled to initiatives that create the educational and training opportunities, not to mention the economic conditions and incentives, for people to transcend and overcome poverty.
That is, of course, the stated purpose of such programs. Even those laudable goals, however, are leftist doctrine. We need to stand in direct conflict with creating and enlarging entitlement programs.
Never forget, the Constitution does not provide for welfare entitlement. These were always considered the prerogative of the private sector. It was when federal executives determined, as per Marx, that the government IS society that all this changed.
If we are to ever return to Constitutional government and a free society we must disabuse leftists and each other of the notion that they can use government to advance their societal agenda.