A Nation of Moochers (7 page)

By 1972, writes Gareth Davies, the entitlement mentality had come to dominate elite liberalism, crowding out notions of reciprocal obligation and personal responsibility as well as the idea that the poor would best be served by opening the doors of opportunity. By then, he writes, “it had become more common for liberals to define dignity as freedom from both hardship and from the stigma hitherto attached to dependency.… Dependency, in the old sense, was almost equated with independence in the new.”
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Welfare reform in the 1990s came largely as a reaction to the excesses of the earlier period, and the rhetoric of entitlement is seldom voiced quite so explicitly now among the political classes. But the attitudes that shaped the embrace of the entitlement culture remain beneath the surface of much of our modern welfare state. Despite political setbacks that lay ahead, the sixties marked a dramatic shift in American culture.

Moocher Nation was born.

Chapter 4

THE JOYS OF DEPENDENCY

The converter boxes may not have been a tipping point, but they were surely a milestone in the willingness of Americans to rely on a beneficent government to provide them with all things good and beautiful, or just marginally convenient.

In 2009, the federal government spent nearly $2 billion on coupons to help consumers buy digital converter boxes for their television sets. Several years earlier, the federal government had mandated that television signals switch over from analog to digital and broadcasters spent millions of dollars warning viewers to make the necessary changes. Viewers who had cable or satellite TV were unaffected, as were those who had late-model television sets; but there were uncounted throngs who still relied on the older over-the-air sets. For them to be able to watch
Dancing with the Stars,
they would need to buy a box that would convert the signal to digital.

The problem was simple enough, but members of Congress were so fearful that they would be blamed for the disruption and swamped by enraged constituents who were confronted with digital snow that they came up with a taxpayer-funded giveaway so that people would be able to continue to watch their favorite soap opera on their old analog television sets. Each TV owner who applied was to be given a $40 taxpayer-funded coupon to buy the converter box. The coupons did not pay the full cost of the converter boxes, but they were sweeteners, and millions of viewers grabbed for them.

Interestingly, the spending and the handout were not even especially controversial: The government was handing out free money, so who was there to object? Demand was so great that the government announced in January 2009 that its $1.34 billion coupon fund was exhausted (more than 24 million households had requested approximately 46 million coupons).
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Not only did Congress extend the date for the transition from analog to digital, but it also provided another $490 million for the freebies as part of the massive stimulus package passed that year. By August 2009, consumers had cashed in nearly 34 million taxpayer-funded coupons (suggesting that millions of the free coupons went unused).

In other words, tens of millions of American tapped in to the federal treasury to pay for something that most of them could have easily afforded to pay for on their own. Millions more were lining up for Cash for Clunkers credits, weatherization credits, and subsidies for new home purchases. But it was only later that anyone seemed to wonder: How had we gotten to the point where Americans thought it was the responsibility of the government to pay for their TVs?

“If the Government Wants to Give Me Money…”

Less squeamish than their American counterparts, the British media routinely publishes exposés of that country’s entrenched entitlement culture. What makes the accounts striking is not merely the extent and cost of the welfare state, but also the unapologetic attitudes the system of dependency has engendered among the moocher class. The
Daily Mail
, for example, profiled the upstanding Davey family, whose £815-a-week handout (roughly $1,270 U.S.
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) pays for a four-bedroom house, top-of-the-line modern conveniences, and two vehicles, including a Mercedes van.
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Courtesy of the government, the family also enjoys a forty-two-inch flat-screen television, a Wii games console, Nintendos, a computer, and four cell phones.

So generous are the benefits that Peter, the paterfamilias of the family of nine, quit work because he figured he could make more on the dole. And was he grateful for the generosity of the working taxpayers who made his lifestyle so bountiful and easy? Hardly.

Even with an annual income equivalent to $66,587 (U.S.), the couple, reported the
Mail
, still were not happy. With child number eight on the way, they demanded that taxpayers provide them a larger house. Unapologetically.

“It doesn’t bother me that taxpayers are paying for me to have a large family,” explained Mrs. Davey. “We couldn’t afford to care for our children without benefits, but as long as they have everything they need, I don’t think I’m selfish.” She added: “I don’t feel bad about being subsidized by people who are working. I’m just working with the system that’s there. If the government wants to give me money, I’m happy to take it. We get what we’re entitled to. I don’t put in anything because I don’t pay taxes, but if I could work I would.”

Despite filing for bankruptcy just eighteen months earlier after running up £20,000 of debt on mail-order catalogs, the couple routinely spends £2,000 ($3,170) on Christmas gifts alone. And why not? It is not, after all, their own money.

Although this is a tale from across the Atlantic, it provides a useful glimpse of what a successful product of the entitlement culture looks like. And indeed, it is hard to imagine a purer expression of the dependency lifestyle than the Daveys, who live the good life courtesy of Other People’s Money without any sense of embarrassment or shame, their self-respect so firmly intact that they are looking for ways to expand their dependency, especially since the government appears so willing to continue to give them money.

There is an inevitability about all of this, since dependency tends to beget dependency rather than either self-reliance or gratitude. Even if the rather bald-faced cadging of the Davey family might be embarrassing to the original advocates of the welfare programs, the family illustrates how the war against the stigma of dependency can bear impressive fruit.

Yearning for the Dole

The same is true on this side of the pond, and the yearning for the dole is not confined to the poor. An article on
The Huffington Post
advises would-be writers to embrace their inner moocher: “Find ways to be unemployed, doing nothing, finding enough time on your hands, after you’ve met your basic needs, to wander into unknown realms of thought and imagination. You can’t do it when you’re busy working like everyone else … Avoid this gentle poison by figuring out
ways you can mock the system by taking from it what it needs to give you to maintain your writing, and give it nothing back in return.
”
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*
(Emphasis added.)

In other words, if not Mom or Dad or the trust fund, find someone else to cadge off of while you think about writing something.

Gratitude need not be part of the plan.

When a Boston television station, WBZ, interviewed President Obama’s aunt, Zeituni Onyango, the reporter seemed taken aback at her unapologetic sense of entitlement. Despite being an illegal immigrant at the time, Aunt Zeituni had been receiving disability checks of up to $700 a month while living in taxpayer-subsidized public housing. She explained: “I didn’t ask for it. They gave it to me. Ask your system. I didn’t create it or vote for it. Go and ask your system.”
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And, indeed, if the government is handing out money, why not? When WBZ asked Aunt Zeituni whether, considering all that she has been given, she owes this country anything, she “said flatly that she owes this country nothing in return.”

“But it’s given you so much?” the reporter asked. She responded: “So? It’s a free country under God.”

The Problem of Poverty

The problem of poverty is that poor people in America have so much stuff.

According to Census Bureau data, 91 percent of poor households have color TVs; 89 percent have microwave ovens; 98 percent have a video recorder or DVD player; nearly two out of three have cable or satellite television; nearly a quarter have big-screen TVs; 72 percent own a car or truck; almost a third own two or more cars; 47 percent have dishwashers; more than a third have personal computers. According to census data, 43 percent of “poor” households actually own their own homes, and the average home is a three-bedroom house with one and a half baths, a garage, and a porch or patio.
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As analyst Robert Rector notes: “The average poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens, and other cities throughout Europe.”

To put this in even more perspective: 80 percent of poor households have air conditioning, a convenience enjoyed by just 36 percent of Americans as recently as 1970.

This doesn’t mean that there is not genuine deprivation and need, but it does mean that the definition of “poor” is elastic and occasionally counterintuitive. Notes Rector: “The typical American defined as ‘poor’ by the government … is able to obtain medical care. His home is in good repair and is not overcrowded. By his own report, his family is not hungry and he had sufficient funds in the past year to meet his family’s essential needs. While this individual’s life is not opulent, it is equally far from the popular images of dire poverty conveyed by the press, liberal activists, and politicians.”
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As Thomas Sowell writes, “Most people defined as poor had possessions once considered part of the middle class lifestyle.… Yet the rhetoric of the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ continues, even in a society where it might be more accurate to refer to the ‘haves’ and the ‘have lots.’”
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So what exactly constitutes being poor? At any given time the statistics are a snapshot that label as “poor” groups that may be merely passing through periods of low income, like medical students, individuals who graduate midyear and only have a partial year’s income, children of the affluent who may be living with Mom and Dad, wives of rich men who earn no income, and retirees who may have considerable assets.
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As Sowell notes, the official poverty statistics do not distinguish between “people whose current incomes are low and people who are genuinely poor in the sense that they are an enduring class of people whose standards of living will remain low for many years or even for life.…”
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Within a year, a remarkable 40 percent of the “poor” at any given time no longer meet the criteria.

One notable incongruity in the definitions: The “poor” spend roughly $1.75 for every dollar they get in income. The paradox is easily explained: Most poverty statistics
leave out
all of the transfer payments the poor receive from various government programs, ranging from subsidized housing to food stamps. Since the lowest fifth of earners receive more than three quarters of their income from transfer payments and in-kind transfers, this omission significantly distorts the picture of poverty. Sowell notes that in 2001 such payments and transfers constituted 77.8 percent of the economic resources of the bottom fifth of earners. “In other words,” he concludes, “the alarming statistics on their income so often cited in the media and by politicians
count only 22 percent of the actual economic resources at their disposal.
”
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(Emphasis in original.)

Call Me

The free cell phones are a good example. Fifty-two-year-old Leon Simmons and his wife make only about $1,600 a month after taxes. Out of that, they are able to pay $159 a month for a landline telephone, high-speed Internet access, and cable television.

But under a new program of “wireless welfare,” they get their cell phone for free, complete with caller ID, call waiting, and voice mail. In a story on the rapid growth of the program, Simmons told
The New York Times
that he thought people walking around talking on cell phones look “silly.” But, he says, he’ll use his new one, and why not?

“It’s free,” he explained. And indeed it is, along with government-backed free text messaging.
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Low-income residents in a number of states are eligible to get free phones with limited minutes as long as they qualify for programs like Medicaid, food stamps, housing assistance, or other welfare programs and have an income up to 135 percent of the poverty level.
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Few programs illustrate the “mission creep” of antipoverty programs as clearly as the phone program, or reveal how far many of those programs have drifted from their original focus on providing basic needs to the destitute. Medicaid for the sick, shelter for the homeless, food for the starving … cell phones for the unconnected? How far we’ve come. (A 2010 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 73 percent of adults listed as living in poverty nonetheless now own cell phones.)
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