Giveaways Are Destructive

Wisdom from a Kurdish-Swedish economist who studies immigration issues, as reported in Canada's The Globe and Mail.

It’s really very simple, Mr. Sanandaji explained. You can’t combine open borders with a welfare state. “If you’re offering generous welfare benefits to every citizen, and anyone can come and use these benefits, then a very large number of people will try to do that. And it’s just mathematically impossible for a small country like Sweden to fund those benefits.”

What Sanandaji says about Sweden is true of all countries: offer a free lunch and be inundated with takers. Frankly, it is wrong for both the country doing the offering and the people taking the offer, it bankrupts the offering country and destroys the initiative of the takers.

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The DrsC saw what such a policy did to the formerly self-sufficient Chamorro natives of Guam. Following the island's capture by the U.S. Navy in the 1898 Spanish-American war, the Navy basically issued food to the islanders to keep them happy, something the prior Spanish overlords never did.

It worked ... much too well. Guam's natives are proud U.S. citizens who have some of the highest food stamp usage anywhere under the U.S. flag. Also some of the highest unemployment.

Giving people things they formerly had to earn by the sweat of their brows destroys their initiative, makes them lazy, dependent, and improvident. And the blame lies with the donor, moreso than with the taker.