A revolution against Moocherism requires hard-headed distinctions between actual needs and things we want. For decades now, as George Lightbourn, president of the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, notes, “Our leaders surmised that if they did not swaddle every ugly problem in the comforting blanket of government, they had failed.”5
Instead, politicians will have to learn to say no—even to ideas that might seem attractive. Equally as important, so will the rest of us, even if the public trough seems both convenient and desirable.
The assault on the moocher culture is not a rejection of compassion, but it does require a redefinition of what we mean by a compassionate society.
A Compassionate Society
A compassionate society makes sure that people do not starve. It does not buy free lunch for everyone.
A compassionate society makes provisions so that the homeless or the otherwise destitute are not exposed to the elements. It does not provide no-down-payment, no-income loans so that people can buy unaffordable houses at inflated prices.
A compassionate society provides opportunities; it does not treat free cell phones or wireless Internet as an entitlement. It does not punish work or make it easier to be dependent than it is to get a job and improve yourself.
A compassionate society provides the opportunity and the freedom to travel. It does not compel you to buy your neighbor a new car.
A compassionate society provides a temporary safety net for the unlucky. It does not provide a soft mattress for a lifetime of dependency.
A compassionate society may cushion the worst effect of the business cycles. It does not provide billion-dollar bailouts to the business whose reckless bets go south.
A compassionate society takes care of those in need. It does not assume that we are all incapable of making it on our own.
A compassionate society does not infantilize its citizens or corrupt them by making them a nation of moochers.
Notes
Preface
1. P. J. O’Rourke, “A Nation of Moochers: Happy April 15,” The Weekly Standard, April 13, 2009.
2. William Baldwin, “What’s Your State’s Moocher Ratio?” Forbes magazine, November 30, 2009.
Scenes from Moocher Nation
1. Joe Hagan, “Tenacious G, Inside Goldman Sachs, America’s Most Successful, Cynical, Envied, Despised, and (in Its View, Anyway) Misunderstood Engine of Capitalism,” New York magazine, July 26, 2009.
2. Craig Schneider and Tammy Joyner, “Housing Crisis Reaches Full Boil in East Point; 62 Injured,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, August 11, 2010.
3. The Foundry, “Morning Bell: End Crony Capitalism,” the Heritage Foundation, August 18, 2010.
4. Los Angeles Times, “Millions in California Welfare Money Spent at Vacation Playgrounds,” October 3, 2010.
5. Thomas Frank, “Huge Losses Put Federal Flood Insurance Plan in the Red,” USA Today, August 26, 2010.
6. Associated Press, “Feds Wasted Millions in Utilities Program for Poor,” July 1, 2010.
7. Dan Morgan, Gilbert M. Gaul, and Sarah Cohen, “Farm Program Pays $1.3 Billion to People Who Don’t Farm,” Washington Post, July 2, 2006.
Chapter 1. A Nation of Moochers
1. Scott A. Hodge, “Once Self-Reliant, Now a Nation of Takers,” Investor’s Business Daily, April 7, 2010.
2. David Schmidtz, Elements of Justice (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 11.
3. Jeanne Sahadi, “47% Will Pay No Federal Income Tax: An Increasing Number of Households End Up Owing Nothing in Major Federal Taxes, but the Situation May Not Be Sustainable over the Long Run,” CNNMoney.com, October 3, 2009, http://money.cnn.com/2009/09/30/pf/taxes/who_pays_taxes/index.htm.
4. Stephen Ohlemacher, “Nearly Half of U.S. Households Escape Fed Income Tax,” Associated Press, April 7, 2010.
5. Hodge, “Once Self-Reliant.”
6. Stephen Moore, “We’ve Become a Nation of Takers, Not Makers,” Wall Street Journal, April 1, 2011.
7. Richard Wolf, “Record Number in Government Anti-poverty Programs,” USA Today, August 30, 2010.
8. William W. Beach and Patrick D. Tyrell, “The 2010 Index of Dependence on Government,” Center for Data Analysis, The Heritage Foundation, October 14, 2010.
9. Ibid.
10. Janet Novack and Stephanie Fitch, “When Work Doesn’t Pay for the Middle Class,” Forbes, October 5, 2009.
11. Brent T. White, “Underwater and Not Walking Away: Shame, Fear and the Social Management of the Housing Crisis,” Arizona Legal Studies, Discussion Paper No. 09-35, October 2009.
12. James R. Hagerty and Nick Timiraos, “Debtor’s Dilemma: Pay the Mortgage or Walk Away,” Wall Street Journal, December 17, 2009.
13. Dennis Cauchon, “Federal Workers Earning Double Their Private Counterparts,” USA Today, August 13, 2010.
14. Jason DeParle and Robert Gebeloff, “Food Stamp Use Soars, and Stigma Fades,” New York Times, November 28, 2009.
15. Wall Street Journal, “In U.S., 14% Rely on Food Stamps,” November 4, 2010.
16. Lindsey Tanner, “Food Stamps Will Feed Half of US Kids, Study Says,” Associated Press, November 2, 2009.
17. Dennis Cauchon, “Private Pay Shrinks to Historic Lows as Gov’t Payouts Rise,” USA Today, May 26, 2010.
18. Beach and Tyrell, “The 2010 Index.”
19. Brian Riedl, “Federal Spending by the Numbers 2010,” The Heritage Foundation, Special Report #78, June 1, 2010.
20. Ibid.
21. Projections were calculated by the Heritage Foundation using Congressional Budget Office, “The Budget and Economic Outlook: An Update,” August 2010, http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/117xx/doc11705/08-18-Update.pdf.
22. William Voegeli, Never Enough, America’s Limitless Welfare State (New York: Encounter Books, 2010), 7.
Chapter 2. Have We Reached the Tipping Point?
1. Rep. Paul Ryan, “Should America Bid Farewell to Exceptional Freedom?” Real Clear Politics, April 2, 2010. Congressman Paul Ryan delivered this speech to the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs in Oklahoma City on March 31, 2010.
2. Mancur Olson, The Rise and Decline of Nations (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 72.
3. Frederic Bastiat, The Law, trans. Dean Russell (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Foundation for Economic Education, 1998), 6–8.
4. Thomas Byrne Edsall, “The Obama Coalition,” The Atlantic, April 2010.
Chapter 3. The Rise of Moocher Nation
1. Heather Mac Donald, “The Sidewalks of San Francisco: Can the City by the Bay Reclaim Public Space from Aggressive Vagrants?” The City Journal, Autumn 2010.
2. Fred Siegel, The Future Once Happened Here (New York: The Free Press, 1997), 61.
3. Ibid.
4. MacDonald, “The Sidewalks.”
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Myron Magnet, The Dream and the Nightmare (New York: Encounter Books, 1993), 1.
8. Siegel, The Future, 10
9. Gareth Davies, From Opportunity to Entitlement: The Transformation and Decline of Great Society Liberalism (Lawrence, Kan.: University Press of Kansas, 1996), 3.
10. James Coleman, “Self-Suppression of Academic Freedom,” Address to the National Association of Scholars, New York, June 19, 1990.
11. Davies, From Opportunity, 9.
12. Ibid., 6.
13. Siegel, The Future, 57.
14. Ibid., 59.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid.
17. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action,” Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Labor, 1965.
18. William Ryan, Blaming the Victim (New York: Vintage Books, 1971), 122.
19. Lawrence Medd, “From Here to Intolerance,” The Economist, July 20, 1991.
20. Ryan, Blaming the Victim, 25
21. Charles J. Sykes, A Nation of Victims (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992), 109.
22. Quoted in Siegel, The Future, 50–51.
23. Ibid., 51.
24. Ibid., 60.
25. Ibid.
26. Davies, From Opportunity, 229.
27. Siegel, The Future, 52.
28. Quoted in Davies, From Opportunity, 118; Nick Kotz and Mary Ann Kotz, A Passion for Equality (New York: Norton, 1970), 183.
29. Quoted in Siegel, The Future, 53.
30. Davies, From Opportunity, 235.
Chapter 4. The Joys of Dependency
1. Roy Mark, “Feds Tapped Out of DTV Coupons,” Eweek.com, January 6, 2009, http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Government-IT/Feds-Tapped-Out-of-DTV-Coupons.
2. Paul Sims, “Why Work When I Can Get £42,000 in Benefits a Year AND Drive a Mercedes?” Daily Mail, April 13, 2010.
3. Anis Shivani, “New Rules for Writers: Ignore Publicity, Shun Crowds, Refuse Recognition and More,” Huffington Post, January 16, 2011, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anis-shivani/new-rules-for-writers_b_808558.html.
4. Vivian Ho, “Obama’s Aunt Says ‘System’ Was at Fault,” Boston Globe, September 21, 2010.
5. Robert Rector, “How Poor Are America’s Poor? Examining the ‘Plague’ of Poverty in America,” The Heritage Foundation, August 27, 2007.
6. Ibid.
7. Thomas Sowell, Economic Facts and Fallacies (New York: Basic Books, 2008), 129.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., 128.
10. Matt Richtel, “Providing Cellphones for the Poor,” New York Times, June 14, 2009.
11. Alfred Lubrano, “Advocates Say Poor Need Available Free Cell Phones,” Philadelphia Inquirer, June 14, 2010.
12. R. S. McCain, “Free Cellphones for the Poor!” TheOtherMcCain.com, October 9, 2008, http://rsmccain.blogspot.com/2008/10/free-cellphones-for-poor.html.
13. Kiki Bradley and Robert Rector, “Confronting the Unsustainable Growth of Welfare Entitlements, Principles of Reform and the Next Steps,” The Heritage Foundation, Backgrounder #2427, June 24, 2010.
14. Siegel, The Future, 46.
15. Voegeli, Never Enough, 9.
16. Kiki Bradley, “Expanding the Failed War on Poverty: Obama’s 2011 Budget Increases Welfare Spending to Historic Levels,” the Heritage Foundation, WebMemo #2838, March 21, 2010.
17. Ibid.
18. Beach and Tyrell, “The 2010 Index.”
19. Bradley and Rector, “Confronting the Unsustainable Growth.”
20. Ibid.
21. John Cassidy, “Relatively Deprived: How Poor Is Poor?” New Yorker, April 3, 2006.
22. Schmidtz, Elements of Justice, 118.
The Kindness of Strangers: A Moocher Manifesto
1. Helen Rubinstein, “Won’t You Be My Wireless Neighbor?” New York Times, January 13, 2011.
Chapter 5. Addicted to OPM (Other People’s Money)
1. Eric Lipton, “‘Breathtaking’ Waste and Fraud in Hurricane Aid,” New York Times, June 27, 2006.
2. Tim Reid, “Katrina Response Beset by Epic Fraud,” Times of London, February 13, 2006.
3. Ibid.
4. Spencer S. Hsu, “Waste in Katrina Response Is Cited; Housing Aid Called Inefficient in Audits,” Washington Post, April 14, 2006.
5. Hope Yen, “GAO Probes Katrina Credit Card Bills; Audits Examine Purchases by Federal Workers for Abuse, Overpayment,” Associated Press, December 27, 2005.
6. Mark Ballard, “Blanco Orders Remodeling Just After Storms,” The Advocate, December 31, 2005.
7. Shaila Dewan, “Storm Evacuees Remain in Grip of Uncertainty,” New York Times, December 6, 2006.
8. Matthew Philips, “A Very Late Checkout: New York’s Last Katrina Evacuees Prepare to Depart (Under Duress) from the JFK Airport Holiday Inn,” New York magazine, May 28, 2006.
9. Nicholas Confessore, “Storm Evacuees Seek Money for Vacating Queens Hotel,” New York Times, February 4, 2006.
10. Associated Press, “Oil Spill Adds to Housing Woes for Katrina Victims in Mississippi,” August 21, 2010.
11. Brendan Miniter, “LBJ’s Other Quagmire: Long Before Katrina, the Welfare State Failed New Orleans’s Poor,” Wall Street Journal, September 13, 2005.
Chapter 6. Feed Me
1. Alfred Lubrano, “In City Schools, Breakfast’s Now on the Principal; The Head of Each School Will Be Held Responsible for Ensuring That Students Are Well-fed,” Philadelphia Inquirer, October 8, 2009.
2. Martha Moore, “Breakfast in Class: Fight Against Kids’ Hunger Starts at School,” USA Today, September 15, 2010.
3. Ibid.
4. Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, “Evers Announces Winners of the Wisconsin School Breakfast Challenge,” press release, December 2, 2009.
5. University of Wisconsin Extension, “Attracting More Kids to School Breakfast Programs,” press release, April 9, 2010.
6. Liam Julian, “Why School Lunch Is ‘Nasty!’” Policy Review, Oct/Nov 2010.
7. Ibid.
8. Voegeli, Never Enough, 249.
9. Ibid., 3.
10. Associated Press, “Congress Sends Child Nutrition Bill to Obama,” December 3, 2010.
11. Moore, “Breakfast in Class.”
12. “Schools Encouraged to Take the Wisconsin School Breakfast Challenge,” WKOW-TV, November 11, 2008, http://www.wkow.com/Global/story.asp?S=9331100&clienttype=printable.
13. Rector, “How Poor Are America’s Poor?”
14. Ibid.
15. Wall Street Journal, “In U.S., 14% Rely” (see chap 1, n. 15).
16. DeParle and Gebeloff, “Food Stamp Use Soars” (see chap 1, n. 14).
17. Bradley and Rector, “Confronting the Unsustainable Growth.”
18. DeParle and Gebeloff, “Food Stamp Use Soars.”
19. Matthew Boyle, “Universities Encouraging Students to Receive Welfare Benefits,” The Daily Caller, December 7, 2010, http://dailycaller.com/2010/12/07/thedc-investigation-universities-encouraging-students-to-receive-welfare-benefits.
20. Jennifer Bleyer, “Hipsters on Food Stamps: They’re Young, They’re Broke, and They Pay for Organic Salmon with Government Subsidies. Got a Problem with That?” Salon.com, March 15, 2010, http://www.salon.com/life/pinched/2010/03/15/hipsters_food_stamps_pinched.
Chapter 7. Harvesting OPM
1. Alan Wirzbicki, “Is the Massachusetts Film Tax Credit Worth the Cost?” The Angle, Boston Globe blog, January 14, 2011, http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/blogs/the_angle/2011/01/film_tax_credit.html.
2. Steve Leblanc, “Mass. Tax Credits Used to Cover Movie Stars’ Wages,” Associated Press, January 12, 2011.
3. Robert Tannenwald, “State Film Subsidies: Not Much Bang for Too Many Bucks,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, December 9, 2010.
4. Michael Cieply, “States Weigh Cuts in Hollywood Subsidies,” New York Times, January 19, 2011.
5. Robert Tannenwald, “State Film Subsidies.”
6. John Stossel, Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), 140.
7. Ken Cook, “Government’s Continuing Bailout of Corporate Agriculture,” Environmental Working Group, May 2010.
8. Ibid.
9. Stossel, Give Me a Break, 141.
10. Cook, “Government’s Continuing Bailout.”
11. Morgan, Gaul, and Cohen, “Farm Program Pays” (see “Scenes from Moocher Nation,” n. 7).
12. Ibid.
13. Gilbert M. Gaul, Sarah Cohen, and Dan Morgan, “Federal Subsidies Turn Farms into Big Business,” Washington Post, December 21, 2006.
14. Gilbert M. Gaul, Dan Morgan, and Sarah Cohen, “No Drought Required for Federal Drought Aid,” Washington Post, July 18, 2006.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid.
17. Cook, “Government’s Continuing Bailout.”
18. Dan Morgan, Sarah Cohen, and Gilbert M. Gaul, “Growers Reap Benefits Even in Good Years,” Washington Post, July 3, 2006.
19. Cook, “Government’s Continuing Bailout.”
20. Stuart Butler, “Farmer Ba
ilouts Must Be Revised,” The Heritage Foundation, April 10, 2009.
21. Morgan, Gaul, and Cohen, “Farm Program Pays.”
22. Cook, “Government’s Continuing Bailout.”
23. Gilbert M. Gaul, “Claims Strain Federal Flood Insurance,” Washington Post, October 11, 2005.
24. Thomas Frank, “Insurance Underwater,” USA Today, August 26, 2010.
25. J. Scott Holladay and Jason A. Schwartz, “The Distributional Consequences of the NFIP,” Institute for Policy Integrity, Policy Brief No. 7, April 2010.
26. Frank, “Flood Insurance Claims.”
27. Holladay and Schwartz, “The Distributional Consequences.”
28. Ibid.
29. Frank, “Flood Insurance Claims.”
30. Holladay and Schwartz, “The Distributional Consequences.”
Chapter 8. Crony Capitalism (Big Business at the Trough)
1. David Boaz, “The Stimulus Lobbying Frenzy,” Cato Institute blog, February 2, 2009, http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/the-stimulus-lobbying-frenzy.
2. Jeffrey H. Birnbaum, “Mickey Goes to Washington,” Washington Post, February 17, 2008.
3. Wall Street Journal, “The Great Misallocators: What Barack Obama and General Electric Have in Common,” January 26, 2011.
4. George Stigler, “The Theory of Economic Regulation,” Bell Journal of Economics, Spring 1971.
5. Joseph L. Bast, “Why Regulate,” The Heartland Institute, policy brief, October 2010.
6. David Kocieniewski, “G.E.’s Strategies Let It Avoid Taxes Altogether,” New York Times, March 24, 2011.
7. Timothy P. Carney, “Barack Obama and the Miracle on K Street,” Washington Examiner, December 24, 2009.
8. Barry Ritholtz, Bailout Nation: How Greed and Easy Money Corrupted Wall Street and Shook the World Economy (Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley and Sons, 2009), 273.
9. Birnbaum, “Mickey Goes to Washington.”
10. Roger Yu, “Obama Signs New Law to Help Promote U.S. Tourism,” USA Today, March 4, 2010.
11. Birnbaum, “Mickey Goes to Washington.”
A Nation of Moochers Page 21