By Bill Haley 

​It is far superior for someone in need of help to ask for help versus being able to demand help. The “ask,” demonstrates humbleness, where the “demand” demonstrates entitlement.  A government welfare program must, if the law so dictates, provide benefits even if the help, harms the person in need.  A charity can look at the heart of those in need and determine if benefits entrap a family in entitlement or enhance their chances of independence.

Many conservatives and Libertarians often want to differentiate themselves from liberals by saying that government should ONLY help someone AFTER they have gone to family, friends, the church, and charities.  Only then, if those people/groups cannot solve the issue, should the government step up and take care of the unfulfilled need.  This ‘government help as a last resort,’ simply is not possible; the law does not work that way.

The government cannot force family, friends, the church, or charities to help and should not try to force them.  An essential function of helping is the ability to say ‘NO’ to someone.  The ability to demand help if someone meets certain conditions is one of the significant harms inherent in government welfare programs.  Too often that demand does harm.

Family, friends, the church, and charities need their ‘NO’ to mean ‘NO.’  Often, those requesting help made bad life choices.  The ‘NO” almost always comes with ‘because you will not make better life choices.’  A typical human desire is to control others, and people should try to avoid that desire on the most part, however, when someone is asking for help, it is wise to examine why they are in that situation.  

The 'NO' will often change to a ‘YES’ if they study versus play video games; if they stop drugs and become responsible; if they are seeking employment versus hanging out; if they volunteer versus being lazy; if they turn away from sin and seek God; if they are kind and not cruel; if they spend wisely versus being wasteful; if they are helpful and not a burden.  Most people do not say no because they are selfish or greedy.  They know actions and attitudes that lead to bad results and believe subsidizing it will do harm.

People understand that those asking for help, do not need to be perfect.  However, they usually need to progress in the right direction.  If someone is dealt a bad hand because of an accident, disease, or another’s actions, people are much more willing to help.  Every situation is different, and statistics cannot determine if help is needed.  It takes a human with philosophical understanding, wisdom, and experience.  

If Government is the helper of last resort, peoples’ ‘No’ is undermined.  If people meet the governmental standards to get help, then they can DEMAND the help, not ask for the help.  The difference is profound.  People are therefore encouraged not to work or to limit their work so as not to lose benefits.  Benefit cliffs are real and are holding people down and entrapping them in poverty.   

Also, whenever the government gives a certain type of help, charities step back from that type.  They might switch to a different kind of help, but government crowds out non-government aid.  Before the great society of the 60s, many charities existed.  Those charities rapidly dwindled when the government took over.  Charities now try to fill in the gaps, however, are a shell of what they once were.  

The sense of entitlement began to take over in the recipients of welfare.  The feeling that they were owed became too common.  People also became aware of what they needed to do to receive the help.  Single parenthood homes rose sharply as a result of wage-earning fathers causing ineligibility of welfare benefits.  A father out of the home is the most significant cause of adverse social effects.  

Under the Haley2024’s Welfare to Charity reform, Assessor Organizations will play this role.  They will look into a person’s life to determine the right path and changes if necessary.  The biggest asset an Assessor will have is the ability to require work and education from those seeking help.  The structure of Competitive Ratings Agencies and choices of everyone will safeguard against abuses within the Charity System.

Walter E. Williams Sunday

1. In the video above George Mason economist Walter E. Williams talks to John Stossel about the “state against blacks.”

2. In this segment as guest host of the Rush Limbaugh show, Walter explains why he “loves greed.”

3. In this segment, Professor Williams examines the “racial double standards” in 2012 when Obama launched his racially divisive “African Americans for Obama” campaign to help him get re-elected. Walter asks, “Could Romney have launched a ‘Whites for Romney’ campaign without a national media uproar?”

4. Here’s Walter E. Williams’s “Proclamation of Amnesty and Pardon Granted to All Persons of European Descent” so that “they can stand straight and proud knowing they are without guilt and thus obliged not to act like damn fools in their relationships with Americans of African ancestry.”

5. Here’s the website “Suffer No Fools” for an upcoming public television documentary about the life of Walter E. Williams, produced by the Free to Choose Network:

On the major social and political issues of our time, Walter Williams is one of America’s most important and provocative thinkers. He is black, yet he opposes affirmative action. He believes that the Civil Rights Act was a major error, that the minimum wage actually creates unemployment and that occupational and business licensure and industry regulation work against minorities and others in American business. Perhaps most importantly he has come to believe that it has been the welfare state that has done to black Americans what slavery could never do: destroy the black family. Walter Williams expresses all of these provocative ideas and more in this new public television documentary produced by Free To Choose Network.