“Now she is doing a college research paper on cause-effect. My assignment for her is to trace the cause and effect of free money, goods and services for the ‘poor’ and the ‘disabled’ on the family, the economy and the moral/ethical heart of our country.”
I encourage her to diagram such a complex model using a systems dynamics diagram like those in the book, Business Dynamics, by John Sterman. The kinds of relationships she is looking at are very hard to visualize. These diagrams were most likely created by leftists for leftists but I find them excellent tools for “discovering” how conservatism is a sustainable way to organize a societal system and leftism is an unsustainable, misery-producing system.
She should also point out that “free” is not free.