“Government has an important role in helping develop a country’s economic foundation. But the critical test is whether government is genuinely working to liberate individuals by creating incentives to work, save, invest, and succeed.”

Ronald Reagan said and believed this with every fabric of his being. He believed that “There are no such things as limits to growth, because there are no limits on the human capacity for intelligence, imagination and wonder.”

It’s a part of the Conservative movement that people cannot understand. They see a push for welfare reform and think it is a plot to protect the bank account’s of the rich while starving the poor.

This is not the case. History of any welfare state where the unemployed is subsidized has never brought about a turn for the better in matters of economic depravity. An example is Sweden’s welfare state. It has evolved into a tax burden for the common worker with 60 percent of his pay going to the government while upwards of forty percent of the population is unemployed.

Nima Sanandaji, President of the Swedish pro-market organization Captus said, “The Swedish welfare state has systematically destroyed personal responsibility and work ethics. There is a point where so many people start taking advantage of the system that each individual understands that they will be on the losing side if they don’t maximize their own utility. A system that pays people not to work eventually creates a mentality where many people choose not to work. In the coming years the citizens of the European welfare systems will probably wake up to this reality.”

Reagan felt that “welfare’s purpose should be to eliminate, as far as possible, the need for its own existence.”

How can the unemployed, or if you want to give the benefit of the doubt, the unemployable make it in a capitalist society if not for government handouts.?

To that I answer with my solution to my own financial crunches. Having no money to build wealth with, and knowing that you need to spend money to make money, I rented a booth for six dollars a day on the weekends at a local flea market. I sold used items. Anything, a cornucopia of other peoples garbage.

I literally have driven around and pulled high chairs out of the trash, cleaned out peoples garages, and have placed all extra clothing I could get my hands on for sale on my table. I made over a hundred dollars every time. I sell other things on EBay which requires no money to begin and can be done at a library with free internet access.

We live in a free market capitalist economy and I made profit from nothing. Welfare is necessary, single mothers, families, and children hit hard times. There needs to be a safety net to protect people. Government though, is not the solution to anything long term in the conservative mindset. Conservatives simply want the relief to have an expiration and a plan for the recipients to climb higher on there own.

Education is a perfect example of the Conservative philosophy. We are skeptical of throwing more money at public education in this country. Public education in this country has failed over and over.

The left likes to say that the wealthy send there children to private school, hence the reason they don’t mind poor school districts falling by the wayside. What they fail to mention is that Conservatives believe in school vouchers for the poor. That would allow parents who feel that public school is failing there children to send them to the same private schools the rich are sending their children. A school that competes for the money has no choice but to provide excellent benefits. Public schools have no such incentive.

Teachers unions and with them all unions hate the idea of vouchers. The liberal politicians hate school vouchers because the victims would be the teachers in the schools that are under serving our children. They trade votes from the millions of union members while hindering educational growth in economically repressed communities. There solution, to the problem, more money for salaries to unionized teachers.

The teachers have an excellent system to protect their union. They vote in large numbers. Most voting precincts, if available, have their booths set up at a public school. Not only can a teacher simply vote before they go home, they get half days on election day. I always found it odd that schools do not have the whole day off. Someone realized the importance of having the teachers there that day.

If money went to programs not salaries that introduced children to desires to succeed and learn as better school districts and private schools do, then conservatives in this country could vote for higher educational budgets. But higher salaries that do little to benefit failing school districts is fiscally irresponsible.

We have a solution aimed specifically at targeting low income areas and we don’t care if that costs votes at the ballot box.

Reagan said it best when he stated, “Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it; foster productivity, not stifle it.

Public servants say, always with the best of intentions, “What greater service we could render if only we had a little more money and a little more power.” But the truth is that outside of its legitimate function, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector.

Yet any time you and I question the schemes of the do-gooders, we’re denounced as being opposed to their humanitarian goals. It seems impossible to legitimately debate their solutions with the assumption that all of us share the desire to help the less fortunate. They tell us we’re always “against,” never “for” anything.