Welfare Fifty Years Hence; M. Shumiatcher

This article is reprinted by permission as part of a longer one of the same title in the March 1973 issue of The Canadian Bar Re view. 174 benevolent quest for security and egali tarianism leads to a custodial society of unrelieved monotony that must corral the creative, hob ble the energetic and devour the dissentient if it is to achieve its ends. A projection of present trends, therefore, will lead us not to a new society. Rather it will return us to a society in which the ele ments of status are of greater im portance than the constitutents of freely negotiated relationships, particularly those of contract. The senior citizen, the pensioner, the deserted wife, the dependent mother, the injured workman, .the university student, the day-care centre-charge, the treaty Indian, the "in....scope-employee", the bi lingual public service employee, the uni-lingual civil servant, the prisoner, the parolee - each must be accorded his special status in a structured society that has al ready grown as rigid as the hier1974 WELFARE FIFTY YEARS HENCE 175 archies of the feudal system of the thirteenth century. Lords and nobles, knights and serfs each in his place, performed his duties to, and claimed his rights from the authority that stood immediately above him in the feudal pecking order. What each man did was not so important as the status he oc cupied in the hierarchy. And while no social security numbers were then issued by the Soverejgn, the place of every citizen and what he was entitled to claim of the society of which he was a part, were matters as precisely defined in the feudal age as they are now under the Social Security Act, the Unemployment Insurance Act, the Canada Pension Plan and the fed eral and provincial welfare stat utes. Under the feudal system, so long as he faithfully conformed, the individual was assured that his master would provide him with all of the necessities for life. He required no means by which to make choices on his own. He was paid no money-wages; he did not, and indeed, could not choose where he would work or where he would spend his earnings. Why should he? Did he not have complete se curity? So it may be expected that, present trends continuing, wIthin fifty years the individual will return to a neo-feudal status of total security.

But it is my view that man's growth and development do not proceed in straight or even curved one-dimensional lines. Neither do quantitative data of past events necessarily reveal the course of human conduct of the future. Graphs that may demonstrate the growth of population in the past fifty years do not necessarily chart the trend for the next fifty years. In the 1920's, some population ex perts predicted that by 1970, Ca nada's French-speaking population would constitute a majority since the birthrate of French-Canadian Roman Catholic families far ex ceeded that of all other groups in Canada. The emergence of French speaking Roman Catholics as the predominant racial linguistic and religious group in Canada was bound to shape the culture and mores of Canada in the last quar ter of the twentieth century. So ran the popular theory that came to be referred to as "the revenge of the cradle" for the Plains of Abraham. It was a prophecy but tressed with solid statistical graphs projected fifty years into the future. These lines went a long way to nurture the nationalistic aspirations of many who foresaw as inevitable, a French-speaking Canada. Obviously, the statistical experts of fifty years ago lacked both the facts and the imagina tion necessary to build into their projections the decline in influence 176 THE FREEMAN March of the church or the effects of the pill. These played a vital role in reversing the population trends that the statisticians thought to be inevitable. Smaller families among French-speaking Cana dians, the postwar baby boom and immigration all had the effect of reducing the proportionate growth of French-speaking Canadians, and when these facts became ap parent, many no longer were will ing to rely on the cradle to inten sify their influence and turned to other means.

The Pendulum Principle Thus, in human affairs, the theory that if a trend be recog nized, it is likely to continue, does not provide an accurate basis on which to forecast the future. It is the unexpected and the unforeseen that are likely to become the most significant factors for change. Surprise makes fools of statistics. If some theory is to be applied in considering the state of the law pertaining to health, welfare and education fifty years hence, ex perience would seem to favor the pendulum principle that views hu man tastes and choices, institu tions and standards of conduct as constantly changing and as peri odically oscillating bet:ween ex tremes over periods of years or even centuries. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the changing fashions of physical adornment and personal morality. The contemporary culti vation of long hair and hirsute facial embellishment is a re-run of the preferences demonstrated by royalist cavaliers of the court of the Stuarts. Our moral permis siveness is in the tradition of a licentious England in the years of the Restoration when the pendu lum swiftly swung against the bleak years dominated by Crom well's round-headed republicans.

The libertarian society dominated by Edward VII was a moral and sartorial reaction against the strictures attempted by a widowed Victoria upon the ebullience of her vigorous people. The ethical self-reproach following World War I produced a pendulum-like swing from a free-wheeling morality on the one hand, to so prolific a proc lamation of blue laws on the other, as to spawn a whole generation ac cused of being moral malefactors. Literature, liquor and libido all had their lynchers. It was some forty years before the pendulum of public opinion swung. New standards of morality were so swiftly incorporated into the law in the 1960's that some complained that society abandoned all but the barest elements of decency. What ever one's tastes, it is common ground that trends in sartorial and moral standards have always 1974 WELFARE FIFTY YEARS HENCE 177 moved pendulum fashion. It is my view that man's health, welfare and education, being as uniquely personal to him as his clothing and his morals, are likely to be sub ject to the same kind of swings.

History is replete with evidence of the reversal of apparent trends. The concept of contract was the pivot upon which the feudal sys tem's most stable concept - that of status - was reversed. As a re sult of that reversal, there devel oped a relatively free and mobile society. State Intervention The trends of the past fifty years have repudiated the concept of the free· market place. The pro duction and marketing of all major agricultural commodities are regu lated by the state; the flow of commerce across international boundaries is controlled by law; private land purchases in some jurisdictions must be approved by a cabinet; the direct sale of com modities, from encyclopaedias to kitchen utensils, are subject to re pudiation during a "cooling off period"; employment agreements are spelled out in statutes that accord special status to those who work; the practice of the learned professions is made subject to sta te controls; the press itself is regulated by government councils.

The pendulum of such a society has indeed moved to an extreme position in its oscillations between freedom and servility, contract and status, independence and pa ternalism. And over the whole scene there floats, like some giant satellite, the theory that the state has eminent domain over all life and property . Upon that theory it claims and collects taxes at rates that would cause the most callous feudal lord to blush. A reaction against this relation ship between the state and the individual is inevitable. The present position of Cana da's economic and social pendulum has reached the point of a status structured society from which the common sense of citizens will re treat when the implica,tions of their status are recognized and the tribute they pay is assessed. The trends that have produced the total state will be arrested and reversed when it is recognized that governments, grown greedy for money and p<lwer, debilitate and destroy the industry that is the source of a nation's wealth.

Legislatures grown hyperactive produce citizens who are inactive and unproductive. The major controls of the fu ture, therefore, will not be im posed by public laws: they will become the restraints that indi viduals will exercise over their own desires and appetites, accept178 THE FREEMAN March ing the concept of Ortega y Gasset that: Order is not a pressure imposed upon society from without, but an equilibrium which is set up from within.! The society of the future will be one in which men themselves will fashion the relationships that are expected to satisfy their needs. The sanctions of the state will be resorted to only in the most ex ceptional cases. Fifty years hence, men. will agree that fewer laws be passed and that fewer sanctions be im posed by the state .. Governments will be moved to disengage and leave the individual free to de velop a higher degree of self-dis cipline. Parliamentarians will take pride not in the number of new statutes they will have passed in any year, but in the number of laws they have succeeded in re pealing. They will come to embrace the view of the ancient philos opher Chuang-Tzu who said: 2 There has been such a thing as letting mankind alone; there has never been such a thing as govern ing mankind. Letting alone springs 1 Mirabeau 0 el politico in Obras com pletas (1947), Vol. III, p. 603.

2 James Legge (trans.), The Writings of Kwang-zze, The Great Learning, in The Chinese Classics, vol. I (2nd ed., 1893), pp. 355-381. from fear lest men's natural dispo sition be perverted and their virtue laid aside. But if their natural dis positions be not perverted nor their virtue laid aside, what room is there left for government? This insight will be widely ac cepted when the sanguine prom ises of politicians concerning the magic of the laws they propose will prove illusory. Individuals will then come to exercise their own capacities and energies to support themselves and discover their own destinies, and they will exercise their own judgment to restrain themselves and consider their neighbors. Egalitarianism Rejected The concept of egalitarianism will also be rejected. The ethnic and cultural differences that be came recognizable during the latter part of the twentieth cen tury arose as a counterpoise against the rising Canadian nationalism that was reflected not only in the country's economic and cultural activities but in the declarations of almost all political personalities.

So in the twenty-first century, in dividual differences which are the hallmark of the human person ality, will be accentuated as a pen dulum-like reaction against the collectivist social policies of the age. Equality of opportunity will remain a cornerstone of national 1974 WELFARE FIFTY YEARS HENCE 179 policy. But the concept that all in dividuals are equal will be rejected as unrealistic and retrograde. Un realistic, because in whatever he does each man is unique and his personali ty differs from tha t of every other man. Retrogressive, because equality repudiates the concept of excellence upon which a meaningful life and a good so ciety both depend. The welfare state will not suc ceed in changing the basic nature and motivation of mankind. Men will remain self-interested though not necessarily self-centered. They will continue to be competitive whenever they are free to exercise their will to succeed and to excel.

The pious policies of planners, who will design a state in which there are no losers and only winners, will fail. To believe that fifty years hence, some national pater fami lias will produce a condition of security and egalitarianism in which there will be defused man's instinct to strive to distinguish himself above his fellows, whether in the laboratory or in the boxing ring, in the concert hall or on the ice, in the market place or in the court room - is as unrealistic as a painted picture on a stage back drop. It May Get Worse Of course, it may be that the pendulum has not yet swung to the extreme, and there will be more laws controlling the lives of Canadians before there are less. By the end of the twentieth cen tury, the costs of the welfare sys tem will have grown so over whelmingly that Canada will be faced with the alternative of aban doning it or of entering an era of national impoverishment. There will be no questio ll of distinguish ing then between the rich and the poor. Poverty will be the lot of all.

The reasons will be apparent to our progeny. First, the national guaranteed annual income will, in effect, become the national uni versal income, and it will be the sum and total received· by almost all Canadians. By definition it will continue to be regarded as oR pov erty income. Most Canadians will receive no less than this fixed sum though they be wholly nonproduc tive and content to do nothing to earn it. By that same token, most Canadians will receive no more than this fixed income even though they toil from dawn to dusk and accept onerous responsibilities. The desire to work, the capacity to work and the productivity of work actually done will be irrele vant to the income received by the individual. His needs, as deter mined by the Economic and Social Councils of Canada alone will govern. Secondly, the increasing propor180 THE FREEMAN March tion of a man's wealth that the state will take, will render it im possible for him to become wealthy either by his earnings or by in vestment. For most, there will be a hand-to-mouth existence, and for those who are able to save, there will be no worthwhile return on investment. Saving will be re garded as an antisocial act.

Thirdly, egalitarianism will ele vate the welfare recipient to the status of model citizen. The right to be supported will become the national ethic, and the duty to work and to produce will be viewed as an aberration from the norm. Under these circumstances, the nation's plant and equipment will grow obsolete; capital will disap pear; production will decline and there will be achieved a society in which each citizen will share equally in the poverty of all. Then Change Must Come It will be then that the pendu lum will swing. The concept of rights and obligations will be ex amined afresh, and it will be rec ognized that no citizen can prop erly claim of his fellow citizens, through the state or otherwise, an annual guaranteed income for life, as a matter of right. It will be found that while it is a simple matter for an individual to con tend that he has certain inalien able rights, no right can be enjoyed by him unless some other individual is able and willing to deliver it; that rights and obliga tions are simply opposite sides of the same coin, and that there is no right to be had, unless there be an equal and corresponding obli gation assumed by someone.

When this equation is accepted as a fact of life, the curtain will be lifted between the majestically impersonal tax-collecting machin ery of governments on the one side, and the anonymous bureau cratic welfare-dispensing agencies on the other. The citizen receiving his guaranteed stipend from the state will finally become conscious of the fact that although he may not have worked for what he has received, some other citizen has; and that his right to claim susten ance is meaningful only because some other citizen has been willing to assume the burden of giving effect to his claim. He will become aware of the simple fact that his claim to the right to be supported is as empty as a cry in the wilder ness except when the conscience of another human being recog nizes a duty to respond to his plaint; that there really exist no rights but only obligations, and that the first obligation of every man is to care for and maintain himself and those directly depend ent upon him, on the simple prem ise: "If I am not for myself, who 1974 WELFARE FIFTY YEARS HENCE 181 will be?" It is then that the con·· cept of welfare will undergo the kind of change that will assign it an appropriate place in the Cana-· dian society: it will reassume its original purpose as an aid for the weak, the disabled and the infirm.

so long only as they cannot care for themselves. No Guaranteed life The concept that the world owes everyone a living, so popular in the latter years of the twentieth century, will gradually fall into disrepute in the twenty-first. Ob·· servant and thoughtful people win come to regard mankind as only one of a vast variety of an infinite number of living things that in-· habit the earth; that like the trees and the stars, human beings are children of the uni verse and to that extent they have a right to be here. 3 But since no inhabitant of the earth, save man, has ever claimed the right to be supported by all others, the welfare ethic will be rejected. In its place, there will refurn to prominence, and eventually, to popularity, the work ethic which, in the middle of the twentieth century, had been so denigrated. Only by accepting and applying 3 From Desiderata, by Max Ehrmann (1872-1945) whose statement acquired great popularity in the latter part of thE~ century.

the desirability of work will it be possible to rebuild the Canadian economy, so seriously will it have declined in the age of the guaran teed life income. It will be many decades before Canada will find her place again among the nations whose people, in the middle of the twentieth century, led the world in industrial productivity and in ventiveness. Philosophers, historians and poli tical scientists will wonder why it was that, after a period of fifty years of welfarism and rej ection of the work ethic, the Canadian pendulum should have swung so decisively away from the lethar gic, nonobjective way of life pur sued by Canadians for half a cen tury. A leading historian will say that the reason lay simply in the oscillations of the value-system. An outstanding economist will point to the .paradox of the sheer poverty in the midst of vast po tential wealth that finally moved Canadians to change their stance on the welfare issue and resume the serious development of their land. A distinguished philosopher will say that man, as a rational creature, could not long maintain the irrationalities of a welfare state and revolted against its strictures. A lawyer will venture the view tha t the change from welfare to work was simply a mat ter of finding a way out of bore182 THE FREEMAN March dom when the fun and games of the entertainment and travel in dustries were no longer amusing, and people decided to use their lives seriously and to play for keeps.

Duties vs. Rights When the measure of man is taken by the duties he assumes rather than by the rights he de mands, assistance to the needy will become personalized. One of the justifiable criticisms of the wel fare system throughout the latter half of the twentieth century was based upon its impersonality and hence its inhumanity. It treated all claimants according to· fixed formulae that failed to take ac count of individual differences and idiosyncrasies. The computer de termined eligibility, and the ma chine proceeded with its calcula tions as to quantum. So gargan tuan had the system grown, even those who had benefited from it most came to believe that it was time to revise its procedures and, ultimately, to rethink its philos ophy. To humanize the process of as sisting those in need, the welfare system will cease to be a function of government. The problems of determining who genuinely are en titled to aid will become a func tion of those groups and associa tions who have most consistently concerned themselves with humane and charitable works. The churches, synagogues and temples of the world have occupied this role for centuries, recogl1izing that: ... the poor shall never cease out of the land; therefore I command thee saying, thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother .... 4 During the twentieth century, most of these religious organiza tions were more concerned with charitable works in distant lands than with the needs of their pari shioners and neighbors close at hand. The reasons for this curious phenomenon were twofold: first, since governments appeared to be assuming the burden of welfare at home, the charitable role of reli gious organizations became super fluous. And secondly, it was then, as always, simpler to love and help neighbors who lived ten thousand miles away in foreign lands than those who shared a common lan guage and a common bathroom.

Reform Begins at Home In the twenty-first century, men will begin to recognize that if the world's affairs are to be set right, it is necessary to first set matters right at home. When religious or ganizations at last renounce their 4 Deuteronomy, 15: 11.

1974 WELFARE FIFTY YEARS HENCE 183 political ambitions and put away their international pretensions, they will regain the confidence of their parishioners who will once more make the temple and the church their house. That house in turn will be able to bestow ma terial and spiritual comfort upon those in need. When this miracu lous change appears, the same re ligious organizations will also win the confidence of governments, who will be grateful at last to discover a simpler, less expensive and more satisfactory way of pro viding funds for those who genu inely require assistance. It will be found that the parish priest knows Human Rights more about the needs of the people who come to him for help, acts more wisely, wastes less and achieves a happier result than all of the clerks of all of the govern ment welfare offices that did busi ness in the twentieth century. He will view a man in need as a whole person and not as a mere social security number. And to the new relationship that will thus come into being, there will be brought a fresh dimension of love and un derstanding and faith that no Par liament had ever succeeded in leg lislating, and no government had ever found a way of adminis tering. ~ IDEAS ON LIBERTY THOSE who favor instituting "economic rights" have invented a supposed distinction between "human rights" and "property rights." These human rights are said to be prior to and superior to property rights. Thinkers who make this distinction are ac customed to refer to all concern with money, finances, and prop erty as selfish and motivated by the desire for "pecuniary" gain, the latter being ignoble and inhuman in its consequences. But property (or monetary) rights are reducible to the rights of human beings to the fruits of their labor and the enjoyment of their life. The expropriation of property or money is an expro priation of that part of the life of a man which he has spent in acquiring or improving his property and earning his money.

More, it is an ex post fQ~cto incursion upon the liberties of the individual, for it is the taking from a man the product of his use of his liherty. If the right to the disposal of his property is not a human right, there are no human rights. CLARENCE H. CARSON, "Of Rights - Natural and Arbitrary"