Be on Guard Against the Welfare State

In recent years, I have noticed that Singaporean bloggers who write about politics in a manner critical of the government also show a tendency to support increased government spending on welfare transfer payments. There is a similar tendency amongst the opposition parties such as the Reform Party and the Singapore Democratic Party.

That there should be such support of a welfare state amongst Singaporeans at a time when such a system is on the brink of fiscal and social collapse in the US, Europe and Japan is somewhat disheartening to me, a symptom perhaps of a lack of understanding and critical, independent thinking. The underlying premise amongst welfare state supporters such as the Reform Party appears to be that we are smart enough to avoid the pitfalls of the West. Being Singaporean, I think we are not smarter or dumber than the rest of the people in the world, and given similar economic incentive structures, we will exhibit the same kind of bad behaviour that has made welfare states the failures that they are.

As this is not the place to enter into a serious discussion about the ills of the welfare state, let me introduce to you the writings of American blogger Charles Hugh Smith and his oftwominds blog. Charles has done a very extensive analysis of the social ills plaguing the US currently, and I was actually inspired to write this blog post because of his article entitled The Normalization of Sociopathology in America. In this article, he gives examples of how being honest and hardworking actually means being financially worse off in the welfare state.

Now, I am not against helping other people who get into trouble through no fault of their own (I grew up very near the poverty line myself). However, instead of showing the typical Singaporean 'the government should take care of this problem' mentality, we should perhaps ask ourselves this - why can't I do something about the poor myself? As an advocate of preparedness and self-reliance, I believe that the government's role should not move beyond setting the rules so that we the citizens can use our own money to the best of our own judgement, and spend that money on welfare causes that we personally deem are worthy. There should not be a need for the government to act as the middlemen between us and the poor, deciding for us what is good or bad. Working through voluntary welfare organisations is, to my mind, a far superior way of helping the poor than through a likely rule-based, impersonal government bureaucracy.