When America’s founding fathers revolted against Britain, history books tell us they were rejecting the heavy taxation and oppressive government. Part 1 of this article showed that America has become a giant welfare state burdened with taxes far in excess of what Washington, Jefferson, or any other founding father would ever have imagined.

Although the economic consequences associated with becoming a welfare state are about to be felt, America is already experiencing many of the social consequences.

Today, government has become so large and all-encompassing that it acts like a big mother hen still nurturing her 40-year-old children who refuse to leave the family nest.

This big-mother approach promotes a culture of irresponsibility. Take the effects of welfarism on family life, for example.

Despite the welfare reforms of the late 1990s, the U.S. government still requires the state to meet every material need of a child despite the actions of his or her parents. The welfare solution is to provide money for disadvantaged children by taxing everyone else. Nobody considers that by rewarding certain lifestyle choices, welfarism only encourages negligent behavior by detaching it from its consequences.

Welfare continues to act as a giant engine powering the production of fatherless children, and consequently child misery and poverty. Millions of young girls get pregnant out of wedlock—and the state, instead of focusing on the cause of the fatherless children, deals with the effect by providing a range of welfare benefits including generous “income disregards,” government accommodation, and in-home visitation by nurses. Other young girls see their peers experiencing a life that looks appealing; young men see no consequences. So there is little deterrent, and the welfare cycle continues, drawing in more young mothers and creating more fatherless, disadvantaged children.

In essence, welfare programs often undermine the role of the father in the home. The welfare culture tells recipients that the father is not necessary to the family; the breadwinner is a welfare check. But an ethereal state figure cannot provide authority and love that helps build proper character that keeps adolescents out of crime.

The welfare mentality has also eroded basic individual responsibility for things like planning for the future and determining how you will put food on your own table once you retire. Before big government welfare programs and the mandated Social Security tax, “social security” meant family, a good work ethic and responsible planning. If an aging parent could no longer work, his children would provide for his needs. Family came together to take care of Mom and Dad. Elderly parents weren’t left for the state to pay for. If someone slipped through the cracks, these real needs were taken care of by charitable organizations and churches. (Again, the biblical economic model does have a system of welfare to provide for the truly needy.)

With Social Security, because the government has plundered the Social Security fund to finance its spending, the younger generation is taxed, effectively, to pay today’s retirees. It is a similar situation with Medicare and other government-sponsored programs. Aging parents don’t need kids—the state takes care of them. And kids don’t want to care for parents because it is cheaper and easier to foist them on the state—which is actually the taxpayers.

The problems with welfare in America are even worse in Britain. Commenting on that system, Melanie Phillips wrote, “It is the welfare state which, more than anything else, has created a culture of incivility, irresponsibility, family breakdown and disorder …. Yet no politician, even Conservative ones, will go near this subject. For all the windy rhetoric about irresponsibility and state interference, the root cause of these problems—the welfare state—remains a political untouchable” (Daily Mail, April 26).

Man’s Solutions Inept

Welfare and big government are untouchable issues because politicians are more worried about their own party interests than those of the nation or the people they are supposed to serve.

That is why democracy is doomed to fail. Voters just don’t seem to realize that you can’t get something from nothing no matter how much politicians might like you to believe otherwise. Eventually, all government-promised benefits must be paid for. And as they are, the tax burden will steadily grow, and more people will experience financial hardship. If history stays true, voters will be only too happy to elect the next politician promising the quick fix of additional government programs. How those programs are to be paid for and their social consequences will be lost in the euphoria.

Any nation that succumbs to this trap will continue to experience the effects of big government and oppressive taxes that Samuel warned about in 1 Samuel 8. God says He will let that nation suffer the consequences of rejecting His rule. “And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen you; and the Lord will not hear you in that day” (verse 18).

God is letting America and the world in general get sick and tired of man’s rule, but He has a purpose. After enough punishment, the world will then be ready for God’s government in the soon-coming World Tomorrow.

The future will be very different from today.

A Better Way

In the World Tomorrow, dealing with the government will be refreshing. Government will operate with a giving, service-oriented attitude. Christ said a leader should be the servant of all (Mark 9:34-35). Leaders will truly serve for the good of the governed and not determine policies based upon vote pandering.

Actually, the world’s whole economic system will be completely obliterated and replaced.

Burdensome taxes and the complex and inefficient tax code will be replaced with God’s simple system of tithing. No more Internal Revenue Service or audits.

Every man will work. The Apostle Paul told the congregation at Thessalonica that “if any would not work, neither should he eat” (2 Thessalonians 3:10). To the brethren at Ephesus, Paul said, “Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth” (Ephesians 4:28).

Honest pay will be the foundation of wages (1 Timothy 5:18) and will eliminate the need for unions and tedious governmental regulation and oversight. Employers will not cheat their employees (Matthew 20:1-15).

People will be taught to be good stewards with what God has given them. They will plan for the future, leaving their children an inheritance (Proverbs 13:22), thus eliminating the need for government-sponsored social security plans. Inheritances will not be taxed.

God’s system—fundamentally the same one given to ancient Israel—will prevent system abuse: The poor and needy will be dealt with on the local level—preferably, within the family (Deuteronomy 15:7-8). That way, it will be easier to discern whether the individual in need really needs welfare. Bogus worker’s compensation claims will be a thing of the past. Families will provide for their own children—citizens will not be taxed so that the government can provide subsidized child care, in many cases subsidizing lifestyle choices of people with questionable need.

In the future, when people and families step in to help those in need, God will reward them personally for living the way of give—repaying those unselfish acts many times over! (Proverbs 19:17). That will be an additional incentive to help the poor.

It is impossible to outgive God. Today, many refuse to acknowledge God and implement His laws concerning government and finance, but by doing so they reject God’s blessings too.

God challenges us to prove Him. In Malachi 3:10, He says, “Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith … if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.”

While those who practice God’s laws on tithing already experience the many financial and spiritual blessings that come as a result, the whole world will soon also benefit from keeping those laws. Then “shall thy barns be filled with plenty, and thy presses shall burst out with new wine” (Proverbs 3:9-10).

A new world government, based on giving, is about to encompass the Earth. Mankind’s civilization of inefficient bureaucracies and taxation will be history, a teaching tool for future generations. Having learned the lessons of the past, mankind will experience the many blessings that result from following God’s laws.

For a more complete description of the coming new world, write for The Wonderful World Tomorrow—What It Will Be Like.