Is Welfare a Moral Obligation?

The left claims welfare is a moral obligation.  The right says it is not.  Ignoring the mountains of scripture from nearly every conservative religion explicitly stating that welfare is indeed a moral obligation, and addressing this from a purely secular point of view*, is welfare a moral obligation?



(*Technically speaking, from the purely secular point of view, morality is purely man made, and thus is completely artificial.  But let's pretend morality is a legitimate thing, even from a purely secular point of view.)

The biggest argument in favor of morally mandated welfare is that if a community is producing enough for everyone, then everyone should have enough.  This is a poor argument, because it is merely a claim without backing evidence.  Another major argument is that poverty causes suffering and suffering is wrong, thus to avoid this wrong, poverty must be eliminated if possible.  This is also a poor argument, because it is based on an argument, suffering is wrong, that is a claim without evidence.  The problem here is that all of these arguments are based on assumptions that have not been universally established.  It is truly right that because a community produces enough for everyone, everyone deserves a share?  What even is this "deserving", and what are the people of the community doing to have this property?**  And what about suffering?  Is suffering truly wrong?  The common consensus seems to be that pain is bad, but without pain we would not know when something was harmful to us.  The fact is, none of these arguments are truly secular.  They are all religious in nature.  They have no foundation in logic, only in the personal beliefs of individuals.  There is some wisdom in thinking this way, but if logic is not applied at some point, this is a purely religious way of thinking, even if it does not necessarily involve a higher power or a formal religion.

(**This highlights the problem with a purely secular point of view on morality.  Who gets to decide who deserves what?  Who gets to decide what is fair and what is not?  Is it a king?  Is it a religious leader?  Is it the wealthy elite?  Is it the majority?  Keep in mind that this is the same majority that tolerated or even endorsed slavery for so long in the U.S..    If the majority gets to decide morality, than slavery was legitimately not wrong until the majority decided otherwise.)

From the purely secular point of view, there is one thing that matters.  That thing is survival.  Every species on Earth has evolved with the exclusive motive of survival.  Humans, in this quest for continued survival, evolved sentience.  This gives us the power to reason logically, and it gives us the power to think in complex ways that can supersede instinct.  This is true as individuals, and as individuals we thus have the capacity to override this evolutionary motive of survival.  As a species though, survival is still our greatest instinct.  There may be individuals who don't want to survive.  There may be individuals that would prefer the human race not be in a position of dominance over nature.  As a collective though, we are no different from bacteria, plants, or other animals.  We have a motivation to survive, and because of our superior intellect, we have a much greater capacity for survival.  How is this relevant?  It is relevant, because in the evolutionary quest for continued survival, we evolved an instinct for cooperation.  We evolved this instinct because cooperation improved the ability of the species to survive.  Further, studies over the last few decades have found similar cooperative instinct in many primates, especially in the more intelligent species. From a purely secular point of view, all that matters in this argument is whether or not welfare improves the ability of the species to survive.

Now we have a starting point.  The question of whether or not welfare is a moral obligation from a purely secular point of view can be rephrased: Does welfare improve the ability of the human race to survive?  Natural evolution takes place as a function of survival of the fittest.  Essentially, nature kills off those who poorly suited to survival, reducing bad genetics and concentrating good genes.  This results in species slowly becoming more capable of survival over time.  Does welfare help to eliminate bad genes?  Obviously not.  Welfare is pretty indiscriminate it its effect of improving individual survival.  Welfare also does not hinder reproduction in those with inferior genes.  Given this, it is probably important to ask if welfare maybe increases the survival of bad genes, on average.  To answer this question, we must ask another one: Do poor people who need welfare have worse genes on average than everyone else?  If so, then welfare may actually be harming our ability to survive as a species.  Thankfully, the evidence does not support the idea that poor people have worse genes on average.  Physically, poor people are often more fit than middle class and rich people, because poor people are more likely to do a lot of physical labor.  This is not a genetic trait though, so it does not matter.  Poor people do tend to be less healthy than middle class and rich people, but this can be tracked down to poor eating habits that are the result of very limited income and lack of time for preparing healthier meals.  This is also not a genetic trait.  Poor people tend to measure as less intelligent and less well educated, but again, these can be traced back to poor health and lower quality public education for the poor.  In fact, the only genetic differences the poor could reasonably have, given the evidence, is actually better genetics, because poor people with serious genetic diseases are more likely to die before reproducing due to lack of quality medical care.  Yes, our poor may actually be genetically superior, which should honestly not be surprising, given that genetic disease has consistently been more common among nobility and royalty for most of human history (probably more due to inbreeding than quality of medical care, though medical care almost certainly played a role).  It is clear that even in the worst case, welfare does not increase the survival of bad genes on average.

Let's consider what would happen if welfare was eliminated.  Obviously, a lot of people would die from starvation, exposure, and medical problems.  Food is the easiest necessity to get, so discontinuing food stamps would not cause everyone relying on them to starve, but food banks, religious charities, soup kitchens, and others would easily be overwhelmed by the increase in need, and a lot of people would starve to death.  The current state of subsidized housing is pathetic.  That means that kicking everyone out that could not pay full price would not affect the majority of the poor.  Still, a lot of newly homeless people would freeze to death in the winter.  We already have problems with medical welfare, because it leaves such a large gap between who is able to afford their own medical and who qualifies for medical welfare.  Getting rid of medical welfare entirely would significantly impact the bottom of the lower class.  Many people would die due to lack of care.  Many would survive with permanent disabilities.  Many would survive but spend a significant amount of time sick.  In addition, many older retired people would die fairly quickly without their medical care and expensive medications.  So, how would all of this affect our ability to survive as a species?  Well, the lower class covers a significant portion of the labor required for producing things necessary for our survival.  If they are dead or otherwise incapacitated due to starvation or illness, we are going to have a serious problem.  The death toll would likely be so large from a change like this that we would not have the time or manpower to clean up all of the bodies, which means decaying sick corpses everywhere spreading disease.  Even the parts of the lower class that were able to get by without welfare will be getting sick from this.  The middle and upper classes will have a difficult time surviving without the food, clothing, and other necessities provided largely by lower class workers.  Retail stores won't be able to keep up with demand on either side, because on the supply side there will be shortages, and on the service side most of their employees will be dead or sick.  I could go on, but I think it is pretty clear that without welfare, our immediate ability to survive would be dramatically reduced.

We also need to ask what other things poor people provide.  It turns out they don't just provide low end labor.  More and more people in the tech industry are coming from poor areas.  This is true of other industries as well, though not, perhaps, as much.  The tech industry has always struggled to find sufficient skilled labor, so losing this source would certainly harm it.  Evidently, the lower class is actually a source of very intelligent people for the middle and upper classes.  In short, poor people provide a lot of value that improves our collective ability to survive.

In addition to that, poor people provide a lot more than just labor to the economy.  For the economy to function, there must be people to buy stuff.  This is part of the reason general population decline is harmful to the economy, even without considering the effect retired old people who need care have on the economy.  If we suddenly lost most of our poor, our economy would almost certainly crash very badly, and then everyone would be poor.  Our economic health depends on our poor.

The answer is, the left is right, even from a purely secular point of view, because the survival of our poor is critical to the survival of everyone else.  If we don't support our poor, our ability to survive as a species will be reduced considerably.  Most other social species seem to recognize this.  The only time most species that are similar to humans will hoard resources for the "upper class" is when they are so scarce that the only choice is to distribute the resources and have everyone slowly starve to death, or give all of the resources to a few in the hope that they can survive through the scarcity and repopulate.  Humans seem to be the only social species that will allow its lower classes to live in poverty even when there is plenty.  In short, yes, we have a moral obligation to make sure everyone is provided for.  The conservative religious argument has been clear for over 2,000 years.  Even the purely secular argument is well backed though.