Promoting the general welfare

[mrsx]

******* [Background information – skip it if you know U.S. history} ********
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America”

The general welfare has an important place in the American system from the very first. The Constitution returns to the idea in Section VIII: “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.”

The idea of the general welfare first brought into conflict “strict” versus “loose” interpretations of the Constitution itself when Hamilton asked Congress to charter a national financial institution, the Bank of the United States. Thomas Jefferson founded the strict school of interpretation when he argued to President Washington that “the incorporation of a Bank was not delegated to the United States by the Constitution.”

Hamilton argued for a “loose” interpretation, noting that Article I, Section VIII, empowered Congress to make “all Laws which shall be necessary and proper” to carry out the Constitution. According to Hamilton, “if the end be clearly comprehended within any of the specified powers, and if the measure is not forbidden by any particular provision of the Constitution, it may safely be deemed to come within the compass of national authority. Washington agreed with Hamilton and signed the legislation creating the bank.
********** [End of background information} ***************
What does “the general welfare” mean and what laws appropriate for its promotion?

 

[5stringJeff]

I think general welfare would mean maintaining law and order. In other words, Congress has every right to pass laws against theft, murder, etc. for the general welfare of the nation. I don't believe that the "general welfare" clause should be used to allow "welfare" programs.

 

[rtwngAvngr]

******* [Background information – skip it if you know U.S. history} ********
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America”

The general welfare has an important place in the American system from the very first. The Constitution returns to the idea in Section VIII: “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.”

The idea of the general welfare first brought into conflict “strict” versus “loose” interpretations of the Constitution itself when Hamilton asked Congress to charter a national financial institution, the Bank of the United States. Thomas Jefferson founded the strict school of interpretation when he argued to President Washington that “the incorporation of a Bank was not delegated to the United States by the Constitution.”

Hamilton argued for a “loose” interpretation, noting that Article I, Section VIII, empowered Congress to make “all Laws which shall be necessary and proper” to carry out the Constitution. According to Hamilton, “if the end be clearly comprehended within any of the specified powers, and if the measure is not forbidden by any particular provision of the Constitution, it may safely be deemed to come within the compass of national authority. Washington agreed with Hamilton and signed the legislation creating the bank.
********** [End of background information} ***************
What does “the general welfare” mean and what laws appropriate for its promotion?

It does NOT mean "government controlling all aspects our lifes". A healthy society is one with a balance between government and the individual. Personal financial success is a responsibility of the individual, the individual being the one MOST in control of himself and his choices, and his aptitudes, and desires. To presume otherwise and set policy based on compulsory socialistic nonsense, is equivalent to each person being born a criminal in the eyes of government, a being wholly unsuited to individual thought.

This is bad.

 

[mrsx]

I think general welfare would mean maintaining law and order. In other words, Congress has every right to pass laws against theft, murder, etc. for the general welfare of the nation. I don't believe that the "general welfare" clause should be used to allow "welfare" programs.

I'd be inclined to agree that "Welfare" didn't mean anything like public assistance. That idea was still novel at the time of the Great Potato Famine in Ireland of the 1840's. Hard to imagine that the Founders would have thought of aid to the poor as a federal responsibility in any event.
On the other hand, law and order functions would seem to come more under "establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility." As a whole, the Constitution seems to leave law and order to the states, except for piracy, insurrection, or civil disorders beyond the ability of local authorities to control.

I haven't had a chance to check the OED for contemporary usage of the term "Welfare" and I'm not a Constitutional scholar. I suspect that it refers to the kinds of things that motivated Franklin's Junto: scientific research, technological and economic development etc. The Royal Society, for example, was much admired in the colonies. If so, then things like the CDC, county agricultural agents and land-grant colleges probably come under the general welfare clause. Washington (a great man but not a great thinker) evidently thought the Bank of the United States came under the welfare mission statement.

The reason this is important to me (and I thank you for sharing your views) has to do with the minimalist approach of Libertarians and some conservative Republicans. It may be that the Founders had a rather broader conception of the role of the federal government than these folks suppose.

 

[mrsx]

It does NOT mean "government controlling all aspects our lifes". A healthy society is one with a balance between government and the individual. Personal financial success is a responsibility of the individual, the individual being the one MOST in control of himself and his choices, and his aptitudes, and desires. To presume otherwise and set policy based on compulsory socialistic nonsense, is equivalent to each person being born a criminal in the eyes of government, a being wholly unsuited to individual thought.

This is bad.

No argument here. I don't think people began to think of the federal government as touching individual lives until the Civil War. There was still a lot of the old Articles of Confederation (between sovereign states) attitude until the rise of a national economy in the 1830's. Different times call for different attitudes and different emphasis, but the structure of the Constitution defines the boundaries of the playing field, wouldn't you agree?

 

[rtwngAvngr]

We're exactly on track, my friend this is what we are:

Social market economy provides a dynamic balance between capitalism and socialism. This is a dynamic competition between ideologies, not a static compromise. In untamed free market capitalism successful competitors end competition with their monopolies. In pure socialism successful equality of wealth distribution turns into equality of poverty distribution under the rule of monopolistic leaders.
* * * As for real life, we have to acknowledge: Only a part of an individial's life can be determined by individual merit. This part is larger during the "productive" phase of life and smaller during childhood and after retirement. And the latter phase again can be split into two segments: a powerful phase (power to control the own assets) an a powerless phase (very limited or no power to control the own assets). As a completely free market only works if all players can exert power, it does not meet the requirements of this final phase of life*- unless euthanasia (e.g. death as consequence of exclusion from social life) due to economical reasons is considered to be acceptable.

No simple solutions: Extreme and "pure" ideologies often are simple. Interestingly, however, the entropy measure associated with pure capitalism (Theil redundancy) and the measure associated with pure socialism (Theil redundancy with swapped inputs) each are more complicated than the combination of both entropy measures: The Kullback-Leibler redundancy is almost as simple as the Hoover coefficient. That redundancy as well as the coefficient allow to acknowledge the existence of self-determination (intelligent behaviour) for people. But both measures also acknowledge the role of luck (random behaviour) in how resources and opportunities offer themselves to people or withdraw themselves from people.

Fuzzy inputs, crisp outputs: A democratically controlled social market economy is complex and full of contradictions. Democracy is fuzzy control: The inputs are ambiguous, but still crisp decisions are generated after aggregating these fuzzy inputs. (Actually, fuzzy logic is not fuzzy. Instead, it provides clear decisions in fuzzy environments.) Complex systems do not go down well with believers in pure capitalism or pure socialism (unless complexity helps them to fuzzyfy their responsibilities). In both religions efficiency is linked to simplicity*- the efficiency and simplicity of structural violence. A democratic and social market economy is inefficient, in that it decreases the efficiency of violence and limits the power of monopolies. That's just fine.

Maximizing individual efficiency: On the other side social market economy maximizes the efficiency of the individual members of a society by minimizing those influences to an individual's life, which cannot be controlled by the individual. Basically this is done by sharing risks*- more or less. More, after too many individuals have had to suffer from events beyond their control; and less, after too many people have misused the system or have gotten the perception, that the system is misused by others. Democracy is the environment, where a dynamic balance between too much and too little distribution of those risks (and collective resources) can be found. In such an environment the individual has the incentive to focus on productivity. That is why social market economies are successful.

http://poorcity.richcity.org/entequi1.htm#07


We're exactly where we need to be, having the argument out and adjusting as necessary, the avoidance of extremes through exreme partisanship. We don't know we're alive without conflict, my friend, and when you don't care you're alive, you cease to think. I't s a pleasure doing business with ya!

 

[freeandfun1]

General welfare means safety and security AND an environment where the people have the OPPORTUNITY to succeed. It also means creating an environment where the people, not the government, takes care of those TRULY in need.

 

[archangel]

General welfare means safety and security AND an environment where the people have the OPPORTUNITY to succeed. It also means creating an environment where the people, not the government, takes care of those TRULY in need.

Guess I was asleep during class on this one...I thought the founders quote was..."A government of the people...by the people... and for the people"
Learn something new in here everyday...I did get a "A" in civics and government though...wonder why...now I am confused....NOT!

 

[mrsx]

We're exactly on track, my friend this is what we are:


http://poorcity.richcity.org/entequi1.htm#07


We're exactly where we need to be, having the argument out and adjusting as necessary, the avoidance of extremes through exreme partisanship. We don't know we're alive without conflict, my friend, and when you don't care you're alive, you cease to think. I't s a pleasure doing business with ya!

I just glanced over this site and it is very interesting. I think I may learn something here (that would be a refreshing change). I'm going to go back and read it over carefully, then I will post again. I just didn't want you to think I had been kidnapped by NAMGLA and forced into unnatural axe with a sheep.

 

[mrsx]

We're exactly on track, my friend this is what we are:


http://poorcity.richcity.org/entequi1.htm#07


We're exactly where we need to be, having the argument out and adjusting as necessary, the avoidance of extremes through exreme partisanship. We don't know we're alive without conflict, my friend, and when you don't care you're alive, you cease to think. I't s a pleasure doing business with ya!

The author uses the second law of thermodynamics to evaluate the social utility of socialism vs. capitalism, reaching the conclusion that:

In these days, socialism lost lots of its clout. Thus, capitalism lost a major antagonist. A dynamic balance, however, between socialist collectivism (in this text dubbed in short: "socialism") and libertarian capitalism (in this text simply called "capitalism") minimizes the increase of entropy. One quite successful attempt to achieve that balance has been called "social market economy".

This is a fresh approach to an important topic whose edges have become worn by subjective polemic. We Americans have to wrestle with this issue inspired and confined by the distinctly 18th century terminology of the Founders in phrases like “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” and “ the general Welfare.” With their passion for what they called “natural Philosophy,” Men like Franklin and Rush would have been fascinated by the laws of thermodynamics. I can see scenes rather like the old “Star Trek” in which the “poorcity.richcity.org” gents beam down to explain it to them.

After copious quantities of flip and the knock-down-a-horse wine punch favored by Washington and his circle, I believe the two groups would find themselves in profound agreement on two points: As government regulation of the economy increases, so does the propensity towards tyranny. (All though modern socialism was unknown in the 18th century, mercantilism – another form of command economy through government regulation - certainly was. The restrictions imposed by mercantilist policies were one of the primary causes of the American rebellion and in 1776, Adam Smith had already proved the inefficiency of state control in his “Wealth of Nations.”)

At the other end of the bar, unrestrained individualism or pure Libertarianism was universally regarded as a theory so “cucu” as to have never have been tried since the ancient days of the State of Nature in which “a war of all against all” made life “nasty, brutish and short (Hobbes).

I suspect the Founders would have re-cast the conclusions of the author at poorcity.richcity.org as the search for the proper balance between Liberty and the general Welfare. The term "social market economy" would perhaps have struck them as foreign, but the principle would have seemed right on the money.

Of course, articulating the principal only initiates the difficult and never-ending task of locating the proper balance, whether between libertarian capitalism and socialist collectivism or between Liberty and the general Welfare in the many spheres of human life. So far, we have identified two spheres where regulation is legitimate: the interstate highway system and public schools. I mentioned public health as a possible third sphere. Identifying the areas where government regulation is legitimate is the easy part; what the balance should be right now is a lot trickier. That’s were I’m glad to have the collaboration of you learned gentlemen. Thanks for the link.

 

[William Joyce]

The founders debated the meaning of "general welfare."

The way I see it, the future of limited government in the United States demands a return to James Madison’s understanding of the words “general welfare” in the preamble to the Constitution. The phrase, seized upon by those who believe the federal government may spend money for any purpose, was thought by Madison to be an expression of the benefits to be gained through exercise of the enumerated powers, not a blank check for Congress. In other words, if Congress spends money at all, it must be in furtherance of a power granted to the federal government by the Constitution.

Opposing Madison was Alexander Hamilton, who appears to have believed that Congress could spend for purposes that, while not directly empowered by the Constitution, were thought to contribute to the good of the nation as a whole.

But even Justice Joseph Story, a later proponent of Hamilton’s view, acknowledged in his Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States that if “general welfare” were interpreted to mean that Congress could do anything it wanted so long as it was thought to promote the common good, “the government of the United States is, in reality, a government of general and unlimited powers, notwithstanding the subsequent enumeration of specific powers.”

 

[Annie]

The founders debated the meaning of "general welfare."

The way I see it, the future of limited government in the United States demands a return to James Madison’s understanding of the scope of the power to spend money, and his interpretation of the words “general welfare” in the preamble to the Constitution. The phrase, seized upon by those who believe the federal government may spend for any purpose, was thought by Madison to be an expression of the benefits to be gained through exercise of the enumerated powers, not a blank check for Congress. In other words, if Congress spends money at all, it must be in furtherance of a power granted to the federal government by the Constitution.

Opposing Madison was Alexander Hamilton, who appears to have believed that Congress could spend for purposes that, while not directly empowered by the Constitution, were thought to contribute to the good of the nation as a whole. Yet even Justice Joseph Story, a later proponent of Hamilton’s view, acknowledged in his Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States that if “general welfare” were interpreted to mean that Congress could do anything it wanted so long as it was thought to promote the common good, “the government of the United States is, in reality, a government of general and unlimited powers, notwithstanding the subsequent enumeration of specific powers.” But it is not, nor should it be. Our Constitution has proved too wise, too inspired, and too enduring to allow the federal government’s single largest power to operate wholly outside its command.

Dammit William, this is the kind of post where I think you are more than sane, rather brilliant! I loved Hamilton, but he was for a very strong central government! You nailed this!

 

[rtwngAvngr]

The author uses the second law of thermodynamics to evaluate the social utility of socialism vs. capitalism, reaching the conclusion that:

In these days, socialism lost lots of its clout. Thus, capitalism lost a major antagonist. A dynamic balance, however, between socialist collectivism (in this text dubbed in short: "socialism") and libertarian capitalism (in this text simply called "capitalism") minimizes the increase of entropy. One quite successful attempt to achieve that balance has been called "social market economy".

This is a fresh approach to an important topic whose edges have become worn by subjective polemic. We Americans have to wrestle with this issue inspired and confined by the distinctly 18th century terminology of the Founders in phrases like “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” and “ the general Welfare.” With their passion for what they called “natural Philosophy,” Men like Franklin and Rush would have been fascinated by the laws of thermodynamics. I can see scenes rather like the old “Star Trek” in which the “poorcity.richcity.org” gents beam down to explain it to them.

After copious quantities of flip and the knock-down-a-horse wine punch favored by Washington and his circle, I believe the two groups would find themselves in profound agreement on two points: As government regulation of the economy increases, so does the propensity towards tyranny. (All though modern socialism was unknown in the 18th century, mercantilism – another form of command economy through government regulation - certainly was. The restrictions imposed by mercantilist policies were one of the primary causes of the American rebellion and in 1776, Adam Smith had already proved the inefficiency of state control in his “Wealth of Nations.”)

At the other end of the bar, unrestrained individualism or pure Libertarianism was universally regarded as a theory so “cucu” as to have never have been tried since the ancient days of the State of Nature in which “a war of all against all” made life “nasty, brutish and short (Hobbes).

I suspect the Founders would have re-cast the conclusions of the author at poorcity.richcity.org as the search for the proper balance between Liberty and the general Welfare. The term "social market economy" would perhaps have struck them as foreign, but the principle would have seemed right on the money.

Of course, articulating the principal only initiates the difficult and never-ending task of locating the proper balance, whether between libertarian capitalism and socialist collectivism or between Liberty and the general Welfare in the many spheres of human life. So far, we have identified two spheres where regulation is legitimate: the interstate highway system and public schools. I mentioned public health as a possible third sphere. Identifying the areas where government regulation is legitimate is the easy part; what the balance should be right now is a lot trickier. That’s were I’m glad to have the collaboration of you learned gentlemen. Thanks for the link.

I thought it was a cool site too!

 

[mrsx]

The founders debated the meaning of "general welfare."

The way I see it, the future of limited government in the United States demands a return to James Madison’s understanding of the words “general welfare” in the preamble to the Constitution. The phrase, seized upon by those who believe the federal government may spend money for any purpose, was thought by Madison to be an expression of the benefits to be gained through exercise of the enumerated powers, not a blank check for Congress. In other words, if Congress spends money at all, it must be in furtherance of a power granted to the federal government by the Constitution.

Opposing Madison was Alexander Hamilton, who appears to have believed that Congress could spend for purposes that, while not directly empowered by the Constitution, were thought to contribute to the good of the nation as a whole.

But even Justice Joseph Story, a later proponent of Hamilton’s view, acknowledged in his Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States that if “general welfare” were interpreted to mean that Congress could do anything it wanted so long as it was thought to promote the common good, “the government of the United States is, in reality, a government of general and unlimited powers, notwithstanding the subsequent enumeration of specific powers.”

The preamble mentions the general Welfare as you say, but it is in Article One, Section Eight where the phrase is repeated in a specific context enabling legislation and taxation that the trouble starts as, upon Hamilton's recomendation and based on Article One, Section VIII, Washington signed the bill chartering the first Bank of the United States, located in Philadelphia.

It was the Federalists who invented the "lose" school of constitutional interpretation, Jefferson and the anti-Federalists who argued for strict construction. The bank was more than just your typical government program, it was intended to profoundly alter the development of the U.S. economy and shape the direction of national development. Even more outrageous by some standards, the interest on the federal debt was paid out of tariff revenue, a tax on imported goods passed along to the consumer as an indirect sales tax. Then as now, government debt is a wealth distribution program that takes money from many taxpayers to enrich a much smaller number of wealthy bondholders.

With all due deference to Justice Story, Hamilton did not say that Congress could do anything it wanted so long as it was thought to promote the common good. What he said was that "if the end be clearly comprehended within any of the specified powers, and if the measure is not forbidden by any particular provision of the Constitution, it may safely be deemed to come within the compass of national authority." That seems to me to be a quite different guidline.

 

[mrsx]

Guess I was asleep during class on this one...I thought the founders quote was..."A government of the people...by the people... and for the people"
Learn something new in here everyday...I did get a "A" in civics and government though...wonder why...now I am confused....NOT!

Are you thinking of the Gettysburg Address? I think the zip is 17325.
******** and in the news Sunday: ********
ALBANY, N.Y. -- Scores of convicted rapists and other high-risk sex offenders in New York have been getting Viagra paid by Medicaid for the last five years, the state's comptroller said Sunday.

This one strikes me as an example of NOT promoting the general Welfare, but then I've never needed to use the stuff.

 

[mrsx]

Here is my modest proposal for enhancing the general Welfare:
Instead of the WTO madness which is gutting our industrial base. we should adopt a "balanced trade" policy. Any company that sells an American product to China (just for example) would receive from the U.S. govt. an import license to bring in an equal dollar amount of Chinese goods to this country. This license could be used by the exporter, sold or traded to another company wishing to import Chinese goods.

 

[5stringJeff]

I haven't had a chance to check the OED for contemporary usage of the term "Welfare" and I'm not a Constitutional scholar. I suspect that it refers to the kinds of things that motivated Franklin's Junto: scientific research, technological and economic development etc. The Royal Society, for example, was much admired in the colonies. If so, then things like the CDC, county agricultural agents and land-grant colleges probably come under the general welfare clause. Washington (a great man but not a great thinker) evidently thought the Bank of the United States came under the welfare mission statement.

The reason this is important to me (and I thank you for sharing your views) has to do with the minimalist approach of Libertarians and some conservative Republicans. It may be that the Founders had a rather broader conception of the role of the federal government than these folks suppose.

Good points. Things like this, that benefit all society, are a good fit for the general welfare clause. The Bank of the United States - and the modern Federal Reserve - may also fall under this, though their benefits are debatable.

Here is my modest proposal for enhancing the general Welfare:
Instead of the WTO madness which is gutting our industrial base. we should adopt a "balanced trade" policy. Any company that sells an American product to China (just for example) would receive from the U.S. govt. an import license to bring in an equal dollar amount of Chinese goods to this country. This license could be used by the exporter, sold or traded to another company wishing to import Chinese goods.

Now you're crossing over into Congress's ability to regulate commerce. Great discussion, but different than "promoting the general welfare."

 

[mrsx]

Good points. Things like this, that benefit all society, are a good fit for the general welfare clause. The Bank of the United States - and the modern Federal Reserve - may also fall under this, though their benefits are debatable.



Now you're crossing over into Congress's ability to regulate commerce. Great discussion, but different than "promoting the general welfare."

I see what you mean, but I don't think congressional power to regulate foreign trade has ever been questioned by even the strictest interpreter. I'm going with Hamilton's rules about federal authority and proposing what in earlier days would probably be thought of as "tariff legislation" - a perennial hot button topic back then.

Although Jeffersonian free traders and Hamiltonian protectionists disagreed about what tariff policy should be, no one questioned that it should promote the general Welfare. Today, we have reached a point where the results of our WTO and NAFTA free trade policies are being questioned by people across the spectrum of political affiliation because of the trade deficit and loss of manufacturing jobs.

The old-fashioned approach of tariffs on specific products caused a "rent," artificially raising the cost of protected items and distorting the efficiency of the free market. My idea of "balanced trade" avoids that defect by regulating only the balance, not the content of our foreign trade. Anyone is free (and given strong incentive) to sell abroad. Imports will consist of whatever is most profitable to sell here. If Boeing, for example, sells a billion dollars worth of airplanes to South China Airlines, they get a billion dollars worth of import credit. They can go into the import business (unlikely) or sell the credits to Wal-Mart, our biggest importer of Chinese goods.

The results would be an end to the current accounts trade deficit, stimulation of the export sector of our economy and a slowing of the "race to the bottom" which is exporting our high-paying manufacturing jobs. I consider these changes to powerfully promote the general Welfare. I concede that it will also raise the cost of cheap Chinese goods by an amount roughly equal to our current trade deficit with China. I believe the general Welfare will be better served by so doing than by our current practice of running a trade deficit and having the Chinese use the dollars to buy U.S. Treasury debt (or European high-tech weaponry to close the Taiwan Strait to our 7th fleet).

There is a certain irony in having today's Federalists (the Republican Party) supporting a free trade policy run by a bunch of foreigners (the WTO). I'd overlook the irony if the policy were helping the general Welfare, but it ain't.