Many blame rampant consumerism, manifested by much shorter time preferences, for the decline of family values, of the traditional family unit. But when you believe, as many have been led to believe, that you’ll never have to worry about long-term care, for yourself or for your loved ones, you can devote a larger perecentage of your income to current consumption than you otherwise would. In this light, the decline of the family is an effect of the ripple created by social welfare programs which are designed to alleviate personal responsibility, and replace it with social responsibility.

Loyola University student, Vedran Vuk, in the daily article over at Mises.org today, rains down on the welfare state, and in favor of family values. Vuk defends the manner in which the elderly, the infirm, the poor & huddled masses were generally cared for prior to the vast array of social safety nets invading all aspects of our existence.

Before the advent of Social Security, what happened to people who lived past 65 years? Did these people just starve to death from hunger by the tens of thousands? No … These people survived under a basic principle in life. You take care of your kids, and one day, they will take care of you. It is not the responsibility of some other taxpayer who does not even know your parents. Anyone who would leave it to strangers to care for their elderly parents should be ashamed.

Ashamed? Indeed! Now, Aristotle tells us something about acheiving goals, which I’ve always remembered by an analogy to a stool with three legs. As a stool cannot stand without three legs, likewise, in order to achieve a goal, it’s imperative that the following three conditions are met: First, we must have a goal in mind. We must also have the means (tools or reason) capable of acheiving the goal. And finally, we must be cognizant of the manner in which the means at our disposal can achieve the goal. Social Redistribution programs like have reduced or eliminated the means with which most of us could ever hope to provide a significant amount of charity to our family or otherwise. And when the means are gone, we lose the goal; we blank-out, and stop thinking about it.

Programs like TANF (“Temporary Assistance for Needy Families”), Social Security, and unemployment insurance take away our responsibility to the family and place it in the hands of the state. They crowd out our sense of moral responsibility…The more you depend on the state, the more you justify its existence… the larger it grows.

Any government hack can tell you, “If you want to encourage a particular behavior – subsidize it. If you want to discourage it – tax it.” Pretty basic economics. To say that these welfare programs alleviate some of our “responsibility” is incomplete, at best. Through taxation and redistribution, the state can rob us of the financial means by which we might offer assistance or support to our family and friends, and of the moral principles that would guide us towards charity – in return it can give us neither.