Government spending either is completely wasteful, merely transfers income, purchases an intermediate rather than a final good, or purchases valuable final services whose value cannot be ascertained because the transaction is not made by private parties exchanging their own resources in a market setting.

Recipients of transfers set a bad example for others, including their children, other relatives, and friends, who see that one can receive goods, services, or money from the government without earning them. The onlookers easily adopt an attitude that they, too, are entitled to such transfers. They have fewer examples of hardworking, self-reliant people in their families or neighborhoods.

Abetted by misguided or co-opted intellectuals, the rulers weave a cloak of legitimacy to disguise their theft and hence to ease their extraction of wealth from the rightful owners.

Since the end of the nineteenth century, if not earlier, presidents have misled the public about their motives and their intentions in going to war.

In the transfer society, the general public is not only poorer but also less contented, less autonomous, more rancorous, and more politicized. Individuals take part less often in voluntary community activities and more often in belligerent political contests. Genuine communities cannot breathe in the poisonous atmosphere of redistributional politics.

Without popular fear, no government would endure more than twenty-four hours.

Ironically, in the full-fledged transfer society, where governments busy themselves redistributing income by means of hundreds of distinct programs, hardly anyone is better off as a result.