Bryan Caplan on the deserving poor:
... David Balan surprisingly endorsed the old-fashioned view that only the "deserving" poor are entitled to taxpayer assistance. As the debate proceeded, however, he admitted that in the real world, a lot of undeserving poor would receive support as well. The problem, if I understand his position correctly, is that we don't have the political will to distinguish the two.
I found this a rather cavalier admission. If the government taxes us to satisfy our obligation to the deserving poor, it seems like a gross breach of trust for the government to turn around help any Tom, Dick, or Harry who happens to have low income [my emphasis]. If a philanthropist gives you money to help war orphans, you've got a moral obligation to look before you hand over his money - to make a good faith effort to check whether the person you want to help is a bona fide war orphan.
His point seems to be related to the point I made here:
while the government may give the people what they want, what the people absolutely do not want is accountability. What they want from the government are freebies. As long as the government is long on freebies, it will prosper. But actual accountability, in the sense of, say, producing measurable benefits...? That's the opposite of what the people want from the government.
The common thread in both points is that the government's incentives to do "the right thing", vs just the easy and popular thing just aren't there.
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