Charles Murray, Excerpts from Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980. Basic Books: New York, 1984

On Popular Wisdom:

"The popular wisdom is characterized by hostility towards welfare (it makes people lazy), toward lenient judges (they encourage crime), and toward socially conscious schools (too busy busing kids to teach them how to read). The popular wisdom disapproves of favoritism for blacks and of too many written-in rights for minorities of all sorts. It says that the government is meddling far too much in things that are none of its business…."

"Stripped of the prejudices and the bombast, these, as I see them, are three core premises of the popular wisdom that need to be taken into account:

Premise #1: People respond to incentives and disincentives. Sticks and carrots work.

Premise #2: People are not inherently hard working or moral. In the absence of countervailing influences, people will avoid work and be amoral.

Premise #3: People must be held responsible for their actions. Whether they are responsible in some ultimate physical or biochemical sense cannot be the issue if society is to function.

…Social policy since 1964 has ignored these premises …and has thereby created much of the mess we are in."

"#1. The Law of Imperfect Selection. Any objective rule that defines eligibility for a social program will irrationally exclude some persons.

#2. The Law of Unintended Rewards. Any social transfer increases the value of being in the condition that prompted the transfer.

#3. The Law of Net Harm. The less likely that the unwanted behavior will change voluntarily, the more likely it is that a program to induce change will cause net harm.

Policy Proposal:

On public welfare: The proposed program…consists of scrapping the entire federal welfare and income support structure for working aged persons, including AFDC, Medicaid, Food Stamps, Unemployment Insurance, Worker’s Compensation, subsidized housing, disability insurance, and the rest. It would leave the working aged person with no recourse but the job market, family members, friends, and public or private locally funded services. It is the Alexandrian solution: cut the knot, for there is no way to untie it.