Jason Riley recently wrote, in the Wall Street Journal, about Peter Cove, who once was a warrior in the “War on Poverty” but has come to the quite different conclusion that the government is now promoting dependency:

“We have edged toward a moral cliff where the shame of being dependent on government aid has been replaced by a breezy bonhomie for entitlement,” he writes in a new book, “Poor No More.” “We have moved from a commitment to serve the deserving poor to an assumption that all are deserving. And much of this rests at the feet of politicians trolling for votes by larding on the largesse.”

What Cove is talking about, in my view, is the business model of the government plantation.