Ever since Ronald Reagan ran for office and won, the idea that the Republican Party lives to rain pain on the unfortunate has been part of the liberal canon. It is thus no surprise that a modest Republican proposal that healthy and functioning people on Medicaid give some hours a month to work, school, or service should be construed as slave labor itself.

“Dollars, Cents, and Republican Sadism,” said the New York Times and Paul Krugman. More ridiculously, Jonathan Chait perceived in this a Republican concern that the “privilege” of healthcare “is being extended to the wrong kind of people.” Chait put this down to a warped ideology, but it’s the same principle that animated the Homestead Act, the G.I. Bill of Rights, and most New Deal innovations: The idea that things work better when people do things to earn their own benefits, that government dependency is harmful to the able-bodied and work-capable, and that something-for-nothing is seldom a bargain.