Freedom works; dependency doesn't

Myron Magnet outlines why freedom, not dependency, is a better, more successful strategy when it comes to social policy. This is a great example of why the tagline of this blog is "Freedom Works." Excerpt:

All this was part of America's decades-long experiment with putting into effect the whole 1960s program for liberating the poor: not just the War on Poverty's generous welfare policies, but also leniency to criminals (so as not to "blame the victim"), lax educational standards aimed at not damaging ghetto kids' self-esteem (which also subverted the War on Poverty's Head Start program), and homeless policies based on the comical fiction that here was yet another class of victims of the system. When the results of such policies became unmistakably clear -- the underclass, a crime wave, decaying cities -- Americans, ever pragmatic and capable of learning from experience, did a U-turn, passing welfare reform and adopting tough-minded Giuliani-style policing in cities across the land. The result: a halving of the welfare rolls and the violent crime rate, and the lowest child-poverty rate ever.

The lesson after 40 years couldn't be clearer. Freedom works; dependency doesn't.