Safety Net

Libertarians are often asked how we would provide a social safety net with the Constitutionally-limited government we advocate.  My answer is that there is only one reliable social safety net – a job.

Our first obligation to each other is to be economically autonomous, to produce more than we consume.  We cannot be our brother’s keeper if we can’t even keep ourselves, and there is no reason to believe that only some of us are capable of carrying our own weight.  Libertarians believe that every able-bodied person is capable of self-reliance and independent living – we don’t consider ourselves to be gifted or special.

To be economically autonomous we must become employable; that is our own responsibility.  We are not born that way; we are born helpless and dependent, our only native skill is annoying someone more capable until they give us what we want.  Some people spend a lifetime perfecting that craft.

Last month, Wisconsin’s employment fell by 4,000 jobs.  And yet, 20,000 job openings were added to the state’s job bank website.  Job boards overflow with open positions that require vocational training, certificates, credentials, and professional expertise. A company seeking a certified lab tech to test for hydraulic fluid contamination will not hire a public high school graduate with 39% math proficiency, a union foundry worker with 30 years experience, or a person with a masters’ degree in 19th century Lithuanian atheist literature.

Liberals’ pro-job rhetoric never turns into reality because they defend the policies that produce mediocre public school graduates, protect union privilege and subsidize occupational obsolescence, and have raised academic irrelevance in post-secondary education to an art form.   Employment starts with being employable.

Employers complain of shortages of skilled trade workers, and also report candidates who decline employment offers in order to take advantage of extended unemployment benefits.  We have been conditioned to think that everyone wants to work, and that unemployment is a misfortune visited upon a person by luck.  But for many, if not most, extended unemployment is a choice – a very bad choice.  

Because a job does not merely provide income; a job also delivers self-esteem, pride, respect, confidence, and responsibility.  It is the uninterrupted aggregation of job experience over a long career that prepares one for the highest-paying positions. Over time, a job instills discipline, imparts wisdom, teaches teamwork and compromise, and gives a sense of community.

The great fallacy of the progressive movement is the notion that government could deliver any those things.  Government can only take money from one person and give it to another; it cannot transfer pride, or responsibility, or confidence.  It cannot turn boys into men, girls into women, apprentices into masters, existence into prosperity.  The value of a dollar given evaporates when it is spent, while the value of a dollar earned compounds forever. 

It is the job that turned us boys into men; that prepared us for fatherhood, marriage, community service.  It is where we learned accountability, consequence, the pride of achievement, the confidence that we can grow and learn and teach.  It is how we learned to control our tempers, to self-regulate, to self-motivate, to leave the party early, and to get up before the alarm goes off.  It is the place we discovered our parents were right all along.  It is where we started to take things seriously.

It was the truly disgusting, awful jobs we did that motivated us to gain the skills that make us employable in more comfortable surroundings.  It was the realization that we had nothing to offer worth even minimum wage that pushed us to learn how to become more valuable. It was the long-ago discovery of the pride of pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps that keeps us yanking on our wingtips today.

It is a job that sparks the entrepreneurial spirit that drives people to self-employ, to invent, to change the world.  Jobs teach valuable life skills: courtesy, problem-solving, persuasion, negotiation, judgment, decision-making, urgency, time management, prioritization, handling disappointment.  Is there a course in the public schools that can teach even a fraction of that? 

In reality, the so-called safety net of the modern welfare state is a snare that captures and binds the spirit.  It is no coincidence that communities most highly dependent on the “safety net” are afflicted with all manner of social pathologies and dysfunctions.  It is the workplace, not the welfare office, which stabilizes families and builds vibrant communities; in no sense is perpetuating dependence on government welfare charitable.

To think that compassion can only be measured by the amounts spent on government programs ignores thousands of years of history and denies the role that families, churches, fraternal orders, clubs, and communities play in the development of whole persons. A whole person needs to work, or support the spouse who does.   

Employers are the most charitable of citizens; we not only provide income, we provide the opportunity for people to discover how high is up for them.  We provide a place for them to develop their character, to become skilled, to produce in surplus, to be part of something bigger than themselves, to create, to add value.

A handout won’t do that; a government check won’t do that; a temporary make-work job funded by a government agency won’t do that.  Do you want to help your fellow man?  Then lift the burdens that government has imposed on employers in this country – excessive taxation, regulation, and permission – and let more of our neighbors and friends become whole persons again.   

“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website http://www.timnerenz.com to find your moment.