The true basis of morality is utility; that is, the adaptation of our actions to the promotion of the general welfare and happiness; the endeavour so to rule our lives that we may serve and bless mankind.
Beneficience removes evils, introduces the practice of virtue, and adds to general welfare and civilization.
OSHA was created to regulate jobs that cause injury or illness to workers. Increasingly, though, OSHA sees its purpose as improving the general welfare of working Americans, whether work itself is hazardous or not.
An individual, in promoting his own interest, may injure the public interest; a nation, in promoting the general welfare, may check the interest of a part of its members.
But the general welfare must restrict and regulate the exertions of the individuals, as the individuals must derive a supply of their strength from social power.
This dullness of vision regarding the importance of the general welfare to the individual is the measure of the failure of our schools and churches to teach the spiritual significance of genuine democracy.
Taxes, well laid and well spent, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, and promote the general welfare. Taxes protect property and the environment; taxes make business possible. Taxes pay for roads and schools and bridges and police and teachers. Taxes pay for doctors and nursing homes and medicine.
The Constitution authorizes Congress to tax Americans to provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare. But in Washington, the professional political class has hijacked that authority to rig up a tax code that provides for the well-being of Washington, not the country.
The balance of private good and general welfare is at the bottom of civilized morals; but the morals of the Heroic Age are founded on individuality, and on nothing else.
I imagine an America that can actually change. That we become a nation that prospers again but without pillaging the resources of nations that make their people hate us. That we become a nation that, as the constitution says in its preamble, its very first paragraph, 'promotes the general welfare' of its people.
