In his libertarian manifesto, For a New Liberty, Murray Rothbard [15] points to
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as an excellent model for what
a private welfare program would look like in a free society. In analyzing this
same organization, we can see that nearly 50 years later Rothbard’s analysis is
truer than ever. Unlike the public welfare programs in the U.S., the LDS
church has successfully helped lift countless individuals out of poverty and off
the welfare rolls by increasing their level of productivity – a point that Henry
Hazlitt [7] made in his book, The Conquest of Poverty. Public welfare, on the
other hand, has continuously failed to increase the standard of living or even
lift those it ostensibly seeks to help out of poverty; on the contrary, it is a
system that prevents economic independence. The analysis in the present paper
seeks to revive, amplify and bring up to date Rothbard’s observation and
provide further insight on key factors that other private organizations can take
from the Church’s model. Ultimately, it reveals that the successful journey out
of poverty is not a public but rather a private endeavor.