Why Welfare States Don't Work

George Will’s French facts: 1) “France's 2006 growth rate was lower than that of 21 of the (then) 25 members of the European Union,” and; 2) “During the 25 years that the French left and some right-wing nationalists have spent reviling ‘cold, heartless impoverishing Anglo-American capitalism,’ France's per capita GDP has slumped from seventh in the world to 17th.”

But what Will has truly nailed is the contradictions of welfare states such as France, which Will treats as an updated version of the liberal Daniel Bell’s “cultural contradictions of capitalism:”

Capitalism flourishes because of virtues that its flourishing undermines. Its success requires thrift, industriousness and deferral of gratifications, but that success produces abundance, expanding leisure and the emancipation of appetites, all of which weaken capitalism's moral prerequisites.

The cultural contradictions of welfare states are comparable. Such states presuppose economic dynamism sufficient to generate investments, job-creation, corporate profits and individuals' incomes from which come tax revenues needed to fund entitlements. But welfare states produce in citizens an entitlement mentality and a low pain threshold. That mentality inflames appetites for more entitlements. . .

Voilà! Citizens mired in entitlement mentalities don’t generate wealth.