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.

A community beyond shame indeed

To all the people who think that things are about as bad as they can get in America I present you with this story from Belgium. Courtesy of The Brussels Journal:

Serge Régnier (as some readers may remember) is a 47-year old Belgian with three wives and thirty children. In 1986 Régnier married Christine Wuest (who is now 38). They have fifteen children, between 19 years and 11 months old. A couple of years later, Christine’s homeless sister Karine Wuest (now 35 years old) came to live with the couple. Soon she fell in love with Serge. Christine consented in her husband taking her sister as a second wife. Serge and Karine have six children, between 10 years and 10 months old.

All that time, Serge had been meeting his former girlfriend Judith De Leenheer (now 38 years old). When Judith’s marriage broke up – which was not altogether surprising since all her children were Serge’s rather than her husband’s – Serge asked his two wives whether they would mind taking her in. They did not mind. Serge and Judith have nine children, between 18 years and 10 months old. They all live together in Serge’s house in Marcinelle, a town in Wallonia, the French-speaking South of Belgium.

The Belgians call Régnier, a stocky, balding man with a fringe of beard, the “Marcinelle bull.” Non-Belgians wonder perhaps how he provides for his large family. Here is the answer.

Régnier applied for and received the status of an invalid from Wallonia's generous welfare authorities. He consequently receives a welfare check of over €1,000 a month. His three wives are all unemployed. Hence, they each get €800 in unemployment benefits. On top of this the family receives €4,000 in child allowances. This makes a grand total of more than €7,400 a month ($9,700 or £4,960) – all of it provided by Belgium’s taxpayers. All the money matters in the household are taken care of by Serge. His wives are only interested in children. They have told the press that they each hope to have another baby in 2007.

[. . .]

Indeed, last Tuesday the Belgian paper Gazet van Antwerpen wrote that there are marital problems in the Régnier household. His three wives complain that their husband is often away from home, while they do not know where he is. They suspect there is a fourth woman. “We are partners, friends. There is no jealousy here, at least not between us three,” they told the paper. But while four is a marriage, five is a crowd. The wives are also increasingly frustrated because Serge does not seem prepared to give them another baby yet. “Judith, Karine and I each want three more children,” says Christine. “So did Serge a few months ago, but suddenly no more. What must we make of that?” she asks. Régnier, however, denies he is cheating on his wives. “They will get their children, but not for the moment,” he says.

The wives are also cross because Régnier often withdraws into his room, locking the door. He is the only one to have a room of his own in the house. There he has a television set and a small fridge. The women complain he sits there watching football and drinking beer, while they cook, wash and iron and take care of the children. Régnier ignores their complaints, and tells the journalist: “I do not know whether you are married but if you have one wife you can imagine what it is like to have three.”

A story like Régnier’s is probably only possible in the south of Belgium, where a man can spend his life in idleness while the taxpayers provide him with enough income to sustain three women and thirty children. Wallonia is a Socialist stronghold which is subsidized by Flanders, the Dutch-speaking northern half of the country. Belgium is a country in which any major government decision requires approval in both Flanders and Wallonia. The Constitution stipulates that every major change requires a majority in both parts of the country. This has doomed the country to inertia and it has inevitably led to the corruption of Wallonia.

[. . .]

In Flanders, which has a strong freemarket culture, there is a large political majority to change the present welfare system. The Flemish want to lower taxes and to reform social security to reduce abuse. But Wallonia blocks all reforms and the Walloon Socialist party guarantees voters that, as long as they support the Socialists, money from Flemish taxpayers will keep flowing to the nearly 50% of the Walloons who are employed or subsidized by the government, including “invalids” like Serge Régnier.

In 2006 the 6 million Flemings subsidized the 4 million Walloons at a rate of €11.5 billion (an enormous amount of money compared to the €14 billion which is the U.S.’s annual spending on foreign aid). Among the frustrated Flemings there is a growing call for secession from Belgium. This has begun to worry the Belgian establishment. This became particularly apparent after a hoax television news item last week in which the end of Belgium was announced.

When Caroline De Gruyter, a journalist from the Netherlands, visited Wallonia five years ago she was amazed to meet several families that had been on the dole for three generations and did not have a single relative who was officially employed. The families liked it that way. They all voted for the Socialist Party, because it guaranteed that Flemish money would keep flowing to Wallonia. They described the attitude of Flemish nationalists “who do not want to pay taxes to support the Walloon jobless” as “unsocial behaviour!” One of the things that struck De Gruyter was that they admitted to having no shame. It prompted her to call them “a Community beyond Shame.”

See, it can always get worse.

And make no mistake American leftists are reading stories like this out of Europe and growing enraged at how "backward" the US is because we don't have a welfare system as generous as Belgium's.

Now that their party controls congress rest assured that they will try to "fix" that.

Merry Christmas.