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  3. The second design in this great centuries-old tradition is to argue that any form of public help to the poor only hurts the poor

The second design in this great centuries-old tradition is to argue that any form of public help to the poor only hurts the poor

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问题    The second design in this great centuries-old tradition is to argue that any form of public help to the poor only hurts the poor. It destroys morale. It seduces people away from gainful employment. It breaks up marriages, since women can seek welfare for themselves and their children once they are without husbands.
   【T1】There is no proof of this — none, certainly, that compares that damage with the damage that would be inflicted by the loss of public assistance. Still, the case is made—and believed—that there is something gravely damaging about aid to the unfortunate. This is perhaps our most highly influential piece of fiction.
   【T2】The third, and closely related, design for relieving ourselves of responsibility, for the poor is the argument that public-assistance measures have an adverse effect on incentive. They transfer income from the diligent to the idle and feckless, thus reducing the effort of the diligent and encouraging the idleness of the idle. The modern manifestation of this is supply-side economics. Supply-side economics holds that the rich in the United States have not been working because they have too little income. So, by taking money from the poor and giving it to the rich, we increase effort and stimulate the economy. Can we really believe that any considerable number of the poor prefer welfare to a good job? 【T3】Or that business people — corporate executives, the key figures in our time — are idling away their hours because of the insufficiency of their pay? This is a scandalous charge against the American businessperson, notably a hard worker. Belief can be the servant of truth — but even more of convenience.
   The fourth design for getting the poor off our conscience is to point to the presumed adverse effect on freedom of taking responsibility for them. Freedom consists of the right to spend a maximum of one’s money by one’s own choice, and to see a minimum taken and spent by the government. (Again, expenditure on national defense is excepted.) In the enduring words of Professor Milton Friedman, people must be "free to choose".
   This is possibly the most transparent of all of the designs; no mention is ordinarily made of the relation of income to the freedom of the poor. (Professor Friedman is here an exception; through the negative income tax, he would assure everyone a basic income.) 【T4】There is, we can surely agree, no form of oppression that is quite so great, no construction on thought and effort quite so comprehensive, as that which comes from having no money at all. 【T5】Though we hear much about the limitation on the freedom of the affluent when their income is reduced through taxes, we hear nothing of the extraordinary enhancement of the freedom of the poor from having some money of their own to spend. Yet the loss of freedom from taxation to the rich is a small thing as compared with the gain in freedom from providing some income to the impoverished. Freedom we rightly cherish. Cherishing it, we should not use it as a cover for denying freedom to those in need.
【T3】
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答案或者认为那些商人——公司经营管理者，我们这个时代的重要人物——真的在因为工资不够高而虚度光阴?这是对美国商人——显而易见的勤劳工作者——的可耻指控。信念可以是真理的仆人——但更多的情况下，只是一时之需。
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