Walter E. Williams and Ibram X. Kendi on Welfare Hypocrisy

Conservatives have long criticized welfare programs for being counterproductive. By providing unconditional handouts to the poor, the government encourages people to remain poor by removing their incentive to develop their human capital. Professor Ibram X. Kendi notes that those who take this position are hypocritical for remaining silent when it comes to government handouts for the middle and upper classes. Conservative politicians will blame social problems in the Black American community on government handouts, but at the same time who will say nothing “about rich White people who depended on the welfare of inheritances, tax cuts, government contracts, hookups, and bailouts…the New Deal, the GI Bill, subsidized suburbs, and exclusive White networks” (p. 154).

Libertarian-minded individuals have consistently agreed with Kendi’s critique. If government handouts are detrimental to the poor, then there is no reason why handouts to corporations would be any less deleterious. The economist Walter E. Williams, who was no ally of the political Left or anti-capitalist ideologies, likewise criticized Republicans who support corporate subsidies but oppose federal welfare schemes or student loan forgiveness on the grounds that such policies are too expensive or are immoral because they force one person to pay for the livelihood of another who did not earn it. If Republicans extended their critiques of the welfare state to include the tens of billions of dollars the federal government gives in corporate subsidies, then the nation might actually reduce federal spending. When Republicans were trying to reform welfare in the 1990s, Williams stated: “How can you possibly talk about slamming the handout door on a poor, lazy, good-for-nothing welfare recipient while at the same time sponsoring handouts for members of America’s Fortune 500?...Republicans would be on far greater moral...footing if their version of welfare reform included government corporate handouts” (p. 56-57) 

References

Ibram X. Kendi (2019). How to be an Antiracist. One World.

Walter E. Williams (1999). More Liberty Means Less Government: Our Founders Knew This Well. Hoover Institution Press.