… is from page 120 of my colleague Richard Wagner’s 1995 essay “Progress, Poverty, and Democracy,” which first appeared in American Perestroika: The Demise of the Welfare State, Richard M. Ebeling, ed. (Hillsdale, MI: Hillsdale College Press, 1995) (footnote deleted):
As compared with liberal democracy, a system of social democracy offers greater political profit for policy measures that promote poverty and dependence. A system of social democracy creates two sets of people who have interests that support the maintenance of poverty and dependence to a greater extent than would be true under liberal democracy. One set is the recipients of state-supported services, who are content with the terms of the trade by which they replace independence with state support and who might offer their voting support in return. The other set is the providers of those services, for whom the continuation of poverty and dependence is a source of income.
