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"The state almost exclusively undertakes to supply bread to the hungry, assistance and shelter to the sick, work to the idle, and to act as the sole reliever of all kinds of misery." I wrote this description not of America but of the European nations of my own age; I ardently hoped that the self-reliant energies stimulated by Democracy would render such well-intended but despotic & administrations of charity forever a thing of the past. Yet America today presents the spectacle of an enormous machinery for the dispensing of support. Indeed, the monies spent for this purpose by government at all levels each year exceed what the nation spends annually on its self-defense. I am sad but not surprised to report that this unimaginably expensive machine does not work. There are indications that the poor are growing in number. Dependence on government help has rendered many of them unwilling or unable to pursue productive roles. The enigma is striking: a system that everyone, beneficiaries included, dislikes; a torrent of money that leaves the social landscape ever more sere. I thought that Democracy could do better than this, and I retain that expectation.
On the Decline of the Word Public
"A stranger is constantly amazed," I wrote after my first visit, "by the immense public works executed by a nation which contains, so to speak, no rich men." America now contains many rich men, and the very word public seems to have sunk into strange opprobrium. I suspect that these two phenomena are related. As the number and size of fortunes have swelled, the people who possess such wealth have naturally sought means to distinguish themselves from the common run of their fellow citizens. Private wealth in America is seldom used to purchase ostentatious grandeur. Instead, great money buys the freedom not to mingle indiscriminately with those of inferior resources. The rich prefer not to avail themselves of services that are provided to the multitude. The consequences of this retreat by the wealthy from hoi polloi have been unsettling. Those who no longer require public amenities soon begrudge the funds required to maintain them. Public schools, which their children do not attend, come to seem wasteful and unnecessary; public transportation, which they do not ride, is changed from an adornment of well- regulated society into a subject of scorn. Such attitudes among the rich would not, by themselves, be decisive. But they are adopted by millions of others who hope to become rich and purchase splendid isolation for themselves. In the scramble to pursue this goal, the comfort of the public concerns fewer and fewer people. And those who have no choice but to use general facilities no longer feel glad of the convenience but trapped, resentful and abusive.
Of Industry and Commerce