When it comes to socialism, you don't jump in the deep end, in most cases. You start in the shallow end and wade until you are under water.
Example: When I was an editorial page editor, Gov. Lawton Chiles tried to persuade me that it would be a good idea for the state to increase a subsidy for families with children.
Naturally, I balked, but he succeeded in convincing me and we supported his effort. (As hard as it is to believe, editorial writers make mistakes.)
The argument always is that it is unfair to those just above the threshold for the subsidy.
Maybe so. But every time you raise it, guess what? There's more unfairness still looming over the horizon.
If someone making $20,000 gets a subsidy from the government worth $1,100, then he becomes better off than someone making $21,000 who does not get that subsidy.
You could carry it on until you are subsidizing millionaires, but liberals hate them too much.
Socialist utopians hope, of course, to banish unfairness from the land.
In theory, communism should be the fair system par excellence. But communism in the former Soviet Union and everywhere else never produced either fairness, prosperity or equality. Party members in power always live well and the vast masses live in poverty of mind, body and spirit.
What socialists do is find someone actually in need, provide him with a subsidy then work their way up from there. But every time they do, someone is getting hosed in addition to the taxpayer.
Overlooked is the fact that the government is not the United Way, and that there are plenty of family members and private charities for those truly in need.
Incidentally, Chiles was not a socialist. He was pretty conservative for a Democrat, actually. And I wasn't the only conservative to make the error.
The late Ronald Reagan, greatest president of the past 100 years, was persuaded to go with the Earned Income Tax Credit, another form of incremental socialism. He thought it would help the misnamed working poor. He also did not realize how it would grow.
Welfare works the same way. A recent study showed how it acts to impede employment. In the state of Hawaii, welfare is so generous that you would need to hold a job making $62,000 a year in order to match the welfare benefits.
Minimum wage laws, living wage laws, and long-term unemployment benefits all are well-intended but can harm the economy by making work uneconomical.
As Michael Justin Lee wrote in the Washington Times recently, If employers are legally required to raise wages above what employees are worth, they will simply reduce the number of employees who are hired.
Florida is doing better than most states at holding the line and no coincidence is doing better than most states at prospering.
But at the federal level, the nation is producing more Takers and fewer Makers every day. That is not a recipe for prosperity or longevity.
Lloyd Brown was in the newspaper business nearly 50 years, beginning as a copy boy and retiring as editorial page editor of the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville. After retirement he served as speech writer for Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.
