But, the city is highly taxed and over-regulated; those taxes and other factors, including crime, have driven 328,000 people out of Baltimore over the past decades (since 1950 the population has shrunk from 950,000 to 622,000), and as the tax base and business have shrunk, government, one way or another, has become its biggest industry.
The best welfare program is a job, and the best way to handle riots is not to let them get started in the first place; and stand down orders and thoughtless comments from politicians won’t accomplish that. The ways to bring the level of violent deaths downward are not hard to figure out: – arrest violent criminals, keep them in jail for the length of their sentences, enforce probation laws to make sure people keep on the straight and narrow path. And one more thing – we should understand that the entitlement society and the welfare state can remove incentives for people to take care of themselves and to respect lives and property of others. Tax dollars, given with the best of intentions, can be used to subsidize destructive lifestyles. Our tax system and the welfare state can punish the productive, underwrite idleness and discourage achievement while encouraging dependency. If we make it difficult to hire people or expensive to employ them, we will generate many more unemployed people – leading to hopelessness, idleness, and, often, anger and resentment.
The free market is not perfect, but it offers better solutions to social ills than does the provider state.