George Will on Welfare States

Conspicuously absent from George Will’s “Welfare States Must Reform or Collapse” (Column Right, Dec. 17) is any sense of history before Reaganomics (which doubled our national debt while enriching military contractors), as well as any sense of social justice and environmental economics.

Will bemoans strikes as “weak weapons” in the face of more powerful economic forces. Surely Will must have learned in his college history classes about the 60-hour workweek that was standard in America throughout much of the 19th century, to say nothing of the exploitative wages and unsafe working conditions. Unions like the American Federation of Labor, and, yes, strikes, helped change all of this for the betterment of workers and their families.

The welfare state, with all of its imperfections, is the greatest social achievement of 20th century America; it is the moral equivalent of freeing the slaves. As long as our society is committed to capitalism, social justice requires a powerful national safety net for those who are unable to care for themselves.

THOMAS J. OSBORNE

Professor of History

Rancho Santiago College

Santa Ana

* Whether welfare is administered by direct aid or with block grants to the states, the source is all borrowed money and another unwanted and unnecessary debt forced upon our posterity. What was originally a good idea, to temporarily help widows with dependent children during bad economic times, turned into a monstrously stupid concept that has created generations of involuntary and socially deficient freeloaders.

Any system of aid that stifles the work ethic and family values by disenfranchising fathers, promoting the birth of unwanted children, teenage pregnancy, survival fraud and hopelessness in the futures of unfortunate people, is simply sick and inexcusable social policy. There is no reason for Americans to be unreasonably destitute, especially children. There must be a way for the less fortunate to become working members of their communities, rather than being looked upon and feeling like parasites.

The core of any solution lies in the dignity of people working for a living, and providing for their families. Fathers cannot do that if they’re excluded from any system of assistance. Mothers cannot do it if they’re penalized for it. Decent living incomes are not difficult to determine in any given area. Those who can work, should, and they should be supplemented to a decent living income level by working for their local community. If they cannot find work, they should work full-time for their local community and receive a paycheck for it. What better way for their children to learn the ethics and dignity of working for a living?

DANIEL B. JEFFS

Apple Valley