Over and over again I hear Repuglicans lamenting that we are becoming a socialist country, that we are removing people's incentive to work. They are panicked with fear that someone is going to get something for nothing and that as a result no one is going to be willing to work and production will collapse. Welfare is so attractive, they believe, that people are better off doing nothing and collecting welfare checks than actually going to work each day.
So let's ask them: Is this what is happening? Does every job go vacant for a lack of applicants?
Under their scenario shelves would be devoid of product. Demand would outstrip supply grossly. Jobs would be posted but no one would apply. Crops would go to waste in the fields, garbage would go uncollected, society would grind to a halt.
According to the high priestess of everything conservative, Ayn Rand, the welfare state would cause all productive people to "Go Galt" and stop doing anything, causing nothing to be produced.
According to Rand's theory, a collectivist society will eventually collapse because those with the capacity to produce things of great value will lose their incentive to do anything for society. The artisans, engineers and scientists, she predicts, will become so disgusted with giving away their production that they will no longer work for the society that needs them.
We see that everything is exactly the opposite. Jobs have hundreds of applicants seeking them, shops are full of goods with no one to buy them, unemployment is running out for millions and conditions continue to get worse. We all want to work but there is all too frequent a lack of work for pay to be done. Productive, competent, industrious, well meaning people who have worked hard all their lives find themselves nearing retirement with nothing to sustain them when they get there except for Social Security - which the Repuglicans consider to be the ultimate welfare program.
Today we see that John Galt didn't quit working because society took too much advantage of him. Rather, he quit work because no one had the means to buy his products anymore and he employer had to lay him off. Ayn Rand could not have been more wrong.