Public Welfare is NOT Socialism or Charity
Channel: Ernie Whiteside
Date: 07/07/2020

There is a great tendency to view welfare as “financial or other assistance to an individual or family from a city, state, or national government.” That is one context of the word.

But welfare is more commonly, “The good fortune, health, happiness, prosperity, etc.” of the people who live in our townships and cities, our state and our nation. Welfare in this context is a measure of both our individual and our collective “well-being”. 

While I understand very well that there is a role for government that involves direct “financial or other assistance to an individual or family”, the high demand for that direct “financial or other assistance” is often a measure of government’s failure to invest in our mutual or collective well-being.

Maybe an example would help clarify what I mean?

The public infrastructure that brings clean water to each home and business or takes away waste is essential to a modern people whose population once drew water from a stream and where each home once had an outhouse and a burn barrel in its back yard. 

Our collective investment in public water and waste removal systems improves well-being for all of us. 

Public investment in this kind of public infrastructure is NOT socialism or charity but it is welfare.

As our population has grown policies that prohibit individual acquisition of water from lakes, streams and private wells, and prohibits the private disposal of human waste in something like an outhouse or a burn barrel, have been made necessary to avoid trespass on neighboring property, public health consequences associates with drinking unclean water, contagion from human waste and water, soil and air pollution.

If you prohibit private water acquisition and waste disposal, you must then make water acquisition and waste disposal available as public services. 

In my perfect world, a certain amount of water would be freely available to each resident at no charge for its use. A modest additional quantity would be available at a low price. And higher quantities water would be available at the highest price. 

Commercial and industrial water use would be publicly available at the highest price keeping in mind that the cost of water used by a for-profit business enterprise should be wrapped into the cost of the goods and services that the business produces and would ultimately be paid by the consumers.

Agricultural water use policy deserves special consideration and should be given the highest priority along with incentives to reduce use through environmentally responsible farm practices, something I think our farm community is already on board with.

Q. So why not just make price concessions for low income residential users? 

A. Because doing so would move this important public service out of the realm of mutual well-being and into the realm of charity. Water is a human need. Low income residents should NOT be reduced to beggars and residents with modest income should not be pressed into precarious circumstances to pay extra for water consumed by low income residents.

In my perfect world, socially necessary public services such as water distribution would NEVER be privately owned or outsourced to private management. Once we agree to call water distribution a public service, IF we agree to call it a public service, it should be publicly owned and publicly managed.

Apparently, we have agreed to prohibit private waste disposal but have NOT agreed to provide it as a public service. Instead we mandate its purchase from privately owned waste disposal companies. I find this practice to be utterly reprehensible and classify it as crony capitalism.

I have lived in places where waste disposal was publicly owned and publicly managed. Compostable waste was composted, recyclable waste was recycled. If I had surplus trash on a non-service day, I could take it myself to a disposal yard. The local yard accepted everything! Old bicycles and lawn mowers went in one place and toxic items went in another, but I could always dispose of waste at a convenient, local yard that was open most hours. There was no charge for waste disposal; the cost of managing it was wrapped up in the local taxes.

Ideally, the public sector would be reserved for a very limited set of goods and services and all other production would be reserved to the private sector. The public sector should be publicly owned and publicly managed; the people who work there should be public employees. Privatizing and privately outsourcing public services is just crony capitalism. Public ownership of the public sector should NOT lead to socialism. Public services should not be made available as individual charity but should instead be freely available for our mutual and collective well-being. 

[Video produced at no cost by Committee to Elect Ernie Whiteside.]