The welfare state

With all the money handouts by our fine government leaders and a new administration promising more 'piggy bank' bashing I found the following quotes and questions from Ropke interesting:

"The welfare state not only lacks automatic brakes and not only gathers impetus as it moves along, it also moves along a one-way street in which it is, to all intents and purposes, impossible or, at any rate, exceedingly difficult to turn back. What is more, this road undoubtedly leads to a situation where the center of gravity of society shifts upwards, away from genuine communities, small human, and warm, to the center of impersonal public administration and the impersonal mass organizations flanking it. This implies growing centralization of decision and responsibility and growing collectivization of the individual's welfare and design for life."

"What is the effect on production if individuals are relieved of the consequences of bad performance but at the same time also deprived of incentives for good performance, especially performance entailing some risk?"

"What happens to the birth rate, which in the past was limited, to some extent, by the fact that the individual remained responsible for his own family, whatever its size, whereas now he is relieved of that responsibility or even allowed to cash in on procreation?"

At the same time I keep waiting for that government helicopter to fly over my house and dump some of those recessionary fighting dollars into my yard so that I may payoff some of my personal debts from bad decisions I made a few years back.