The price of socialism

From The Brussels Journal:

A quote from Oskari Juurikkala at Mises.org, 24 January 2007

“People will always have children,” assured Konrad Adenauer, the German Chancellor, in 1957. He was convinced that the future of the brave new pay-as-you-go social security system would not be undermined by demographic changes. Adenauer was as wrong as ever. […] [S]ocial security replaces children and the family as the main support in old age by literally socializing the traditional duties of the family. Why have children when the state will take care of you in your old age? […]

Every kind of socialism creates perverse incentives, and socialism directed to the family perverts the family.

This is true and it goes beyond couples deciding to have children together. It also applies to young women and the decision to marry. Why should a young woman seek a husband when the state will take over the traditional husband's duty of providing a living for his woman and children?

Through welfare of all sorts, housing assistance, medical care, subsidized food and direct cash payments the government provides a more secure living for a single mother and her children than an uneducated young man could. Once a young woman had to consider her future security when deciding on sexual activity. A careless affair could leave her pregnant and single with few prospects. The incentives were to wait until she had found a responsible man who would commit to her and their children before breeding.

Today the generous nature of Western European and American social services makes single motherhood the safer bet. Since she can continue living in her subsidized apartment, eating her subsidized food and spending her free money while allowing a man to live with her, satisfying her desire for (what passes for) romance there is no down side to remaining single.

Of course the effect upon the young men of this state of affairs is pronounced. The primary civilizing force on young men is the need to settle down and provide for their wives and children. Take the very purpose which he was put upon this earth to fulfill away from and young man and replace him with a government check, or debit card, and he finds himself filled with a rage whose source he scarcely understands.

Since there is no force in his life which he is prepared to listen to pressuring him to behave responsibly he follows the path of least resistance and behaves irresponsibly. Crime and substance abuse are the predictable consequences of having his purpose stolen from him. The target for his hopeless fury often becomes the woman whose infidelity (she may sleep with him, but the government is her true husband) has psychologically emasculated him.

This witches brew of factors is largely responsible for the massive dysfunction within the inner city black community.