Welfare and Nationalists

Since Trump’s first term, a driving force among nationalist conservatives is a desire to limit immigration. The whole movement has an aura of survivalism about it. Conservatives feel that they are being replaced by people with a different culture than themselves. They are afraid that through democracy, their country will be taken away from them, and their resources will be distributed to others. They feel a deep sense of betrayal because they worry that their hard work will be siphoned off to those who did not work for it. While at first glance, this skepticism of immigration might seem to be inherent to right wing nationalism, it may actually be more of a result of the welfare state. Welfare creates an incentive for people of all kinds to migrate to America. Welfare also increases the deficit while increasing the need for taxation. Nationalistic right wingers cannot articulate this, but their primary concern about immigration is often most fundamentally the abuse of our welfare system and government expenditure. If the welfare system became much more limited, there would be far less of a financial incentive to limit immigration. The unique gifts of immigrants could help grow the strength of the nation in a way compatible with both a free market, national stability, and a culture of trust.

The current welfare system was not structured to account for the rates of dependence we currently see among US citizens, or the massive influx of immigrants with historically high dependence rates. The welfare system was still not affordable even in a much less dependent society, yet in our society, with a declining base of earners and an ever-growing base of dependents, it is becoming a worse financial proposition every year. Many welfare programs allow perfectly healthy people to avoid work, and even actively incentivizes them to avoid working. Poor mothers will sometimes tell their sons to avoid getting a job in order to make sure that they can stay on welfare. The welfare system is able to be taken advantage of because it was built not assuming that we would have a society so fond of welfare. The reputational and moral barriers to taking out welfare have eroded, and now it is often seen as a preferable option to working. Whether immigrant or American born, the welfare system has poor incentives and often makes poor people poorer over the long-term by letting them trade their long-term success for short-term benefit benefits.…