ArcaMax

It's the season for giving. I'll give! I'll donate to the Doe Fund, a charity that helps ex-cons find purpose in life through work. "Work works!" they say. It does. Doe Fund graduates are less likely to go back to jail. I'll donate to Student Sponsor Partners, which helps at-risk kids escape bad "public (government-run)" schools. SSP sends the kids to Catholic schools. I'm not Catholic, but I donate because the Catholic schools do better at half the cost. Thousands of families break the cycle of poverty thanks to SSP.

When I was young, I assumed government would lift people out of poverty. "Government programs, a 'war on poverty' will give a leg up to the poor," said my Princeton professors. I believed. But then I watched the programs fail.

Now I understand that government actions do as much harm as good. Sometimes, much more harm.

Take that "war on poverty." When it began, Americans were lifting themselves out of poverty. Year by year, the number of families below the poverty line decreased.

Then came our government bureaucrats with their rules and programs. So far, they've spent $25 trillion on programs for the poor.

The money helped some people. The poverty rate dropped for the first seven years of the "war."

But then progress stopped. Government's handouts encouraged people to became dependent on handouts.

Learned helplessness, it's called.

Welfare created an "underclass," generations of people who don't work. They'd lose benefits if they do.

Generations of people bear children but don't marry. They'd lose benefits if they do.

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