This one seems related to our last 2. Thoughts?
MinnPost Enough Individualistic Rhetoric Real Causes Worker Poverty are Systemic
G2A Why are Poor People Poor?
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25 comments:
I'm sorry, I got to laughing so hard I had to quit reading the article. People aren't responsible for their decisions and actions, it is "society" or some other force outside their control that keeps them poor. I call B as in B, S as in S. The solution, obviously (I suspect I would have read later) is for government to make everything nice for everybody by punishing those people who, as individuals, made individual choices and now make up this oppressive system, and must have their wealth redistributed by force.
What's laughable here is that the only use of force in our society is government and, therefore, if poverty is being forced on people it is government doing it. For example, public schools routinely prevent poor kids from getting a better education than their parents, leading to generational poverty rather than equal opportunity. Welfare recipients are not required to seek work or training, and are penalized economically for doing so. Is there any doubt that unwed motherhood increased after government began subsidizing it, no questions asked? In short, most "poor" folks are making very GOOD choices, within the range of choices ALLOWED by government do-gooders like your article-writer. What this country needs is MORE individualism and less government meddling in everybody's life.
There are systemic and individual causes of poverty and oftentimes, they are related. You can't completely separate the breakdown of African-American families from the systematic issues that have plagued that population for centuries.
I think I can. Go back and chart the rate of black families without fathers (unwed is a different issue) through history and you find an uptick after the start of the Great Society. The issues of poverty and education are certainly contributors to the long-term problem of black communities, and most certainly racism contributed. But imagine what would have happened had welfare beneficiaries continued to be subject to "unscheduled visits" and "man in the house" rules? Imagine if, after integration, schools had not "dumbed down" their education to avoid failing black kids (whose previous schools WERE largely inferior)? Imagine that Affirmative Action had NOT resulted in quotas that convinced people that black employees were "tokens" and underqualified, or that set them up to fail in college or work? When government starts to treat a group of people as an underclass, they tend to BECOME an underclass. There is a systemic problem, all right, but it is the GOVERNMENT system, not the system of individual initiative and freedom.
"Go back and chart the rate of black families without fathers (unwed is a different issue) through history and you find an uptick after the start of the Great Society."
Interesting. Was there also an uptick in non-black families without fathers?
Joel
Yes the welfare state impacted multiple races. The Chart
Perhaps that's due to the increasing failure rate of heterosexual marriage. Where's the proof that that chart has anything to do with Welfare?
Joel
Good point. All of this shows correlation.
It is interesting though that the "increasing failure rate of heterosexual marriage" seems to have started in earnest about the time the "War on Poverty" began.
It sounds like the marriage side is more complicated.
The Atlantic: Marriage Article
Some interesting points from the article. It seems that something is encouraging poor / uneducated women to be single mothers... What could that be?
"But in the last 40 years, marriage rates have increased for the top 10 percent of female earners more than any other group"
"Among less-educated and poorer women, marriage is in outright decline. The bottom half of female earners saw their marriage rates decline by 25 percentage points,"
"But if he's right, the following statistic should scare the heck out of you: In 1970, only 6% of births to undereducated "Fishtown" women were out of wedlock; by 2008, it had grown to a whopping 44%."
Perhaps this article makes it clear, that Sen. Moynihan was right.
http://educationnext.org/was-moynihan-right/
The decline in African-American marriage goes back to the 1950s, actually -- before LBJ's reforms. (The fact that the Moynihan report was issued in 1965 -- just as the Great Society was working through Congress further evidences this fact.)
Hoover Marriage Patterns
I think Krugman makes a better argument here -- that the breakdown of marriage is a symptom of the larger economic breakdown in our society (Hoover also refers to the impacts of poverty on marriage).
Moynihan Report
From the Hoover Link. This is interesting.
"The most broadly accepted explanations for marital breakdown are essentially race-blind: greater acceptance of nonmarital sex and unwed parenthood so that young people feel less need to marry, widespread afflu-ence so that it is easier to leave an unhappy marriage, less emotional and economic gain from marriage so that there is less reason to get married, and welfare’s marriage penalties that discourage low-income couples from marrying." Page 107
They go on to discuss other marital stressors.
I of course go back to the old saying... "Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free."
Especially if you can avoid paying to feed and care for the cows and calves, because the Farmer (ie Uncle Sam / Tax Payers) will care for them.
I still think Moynihan's statement(which I paraphrase), is the smartest observation made on the subject to date. "The greatest single socio-economic shift in the last 20 years has been the replacement of a viable social and economic unit-- the two-parent family-- with two NON-viable social and economic units."
Government programs are not going to relieve poverty (if they can at all), until they stop treating symptoms and start tackling the root causes, RATHER than adding to them.
Let me be specific. Used to be that welfare recipients would receive "unscheduled visits" by welfare case workers, looking for a "man in the house." Since AFDC was for "widows and orphans"-- i.e. NO man in the house-- welfare was cut off on evidence of such. It was assumed the man was responsible for the woman and her kids. Period. LBJ allowed the change, and now we have the ridiculous scenario in which a woman can have MORE kids while on welfare, and get paid for them! Even without a home visit (no longer allowed), can we not infer that there was a "man in the house" somewhere along the line, and hold him responsible?
Liberty!
Sean,
Unfortunately her, his, their Liberty is at the cost of some of our Liberty.
Jerry, I and you have less money to spend on our families because our money is being collected and distributed to their family.
If you were writing a $3,000 check per year directly to a single woman with 2 kids and an absentee father. What would you expect from her? How would it change your perspective?
Would you still be indifferent to her choices?
I also write a check to you so you can deduct your mortgage interest, but you're not giving me a detailed report on your behavior so I can judge your choices.
FYI. Dennis and I are discussing related matters in the bottom comments.
"Jerry, I and you have less money to spend on our families because our money is being collected and distributed to their family."
That's not the worst of it. I have less money to spend on THEIR family, too. If I kept that portion of my taxes now going to wealth transfer, I'm certain I could give at LEAST that much to some needy family. I give something like half that already, through various charitable enterprises that EXPECT things of recipients that will make them self-sufficient as quickly as possible. Most of these folks are the "temporarily" poor for whom government welfare does a poor job, anyway. It doesn't generally address those who have become long-term dependent on government benefits they feel "entitled" to have. Government broke it, government needs to fix it, for those folks.
"I also write a check to you so you can deduct your mortgage interest, ..."
I know that's the way Democrats think about this, as if all money belonged to the government first, and letting you keep some of it is a "tax expenditure." Really?
I'm always amused by those who complain about "loopholes" in the tax code. Every last one of them was inserted in there by Congress in order to encourage or discourage certain behaviors. Then Congress gets to rail against people who actually DO what Congress wanted them to do. It's a sweet set-up.
"I know that's the way Democrats think about this, as if all money belonged to the government first, and letting you keep some of it is a "tax expenditure." Really? "
OK, let's turn welfare into a tax credit. Problem solved, eh?
I'm good with that idea, I even PREFER it, so long as the tax credit (aka negative income tax) is fully progressive. That is, those earning zero don't get a credit of poverty-line income. They get something like half that, and the credit phases out slowly so that there is always a (substantial) incentive to work and earn more.
The other way to do that, of course, is with the FAIR tax, though it might be a bit tough to live on 23% of "poverty line plus" if you had no other income.
By the way, the vast welfare bureaucracy could be phased out this way, but I would still want to pay for government "help offices" to help people get training or jobs or learn living skills (or file their taxes). I would really prefer charities do this, but there would have to be at least a transition.
"OK, let's turn welfare into a tax credit. Problem solved, eh?"
Here we go again... Deductions are simply legal reductions to your taxable income. For lower income people who are not very charitable or do not have a big mortgage, they are given a relatively large standard deduction.
Credits are exactly what they sound like. A gift from the Government coffers because of who you are, what you have done, etc. And since they are not available to all citizens, they are very similar to welfare. Intuit Credit List (ie phase out by income level)
I do like credits better than welfare payments, since they require some action / expense occur. But they are still handouts.
I am starting to miss my "child tax credits" since 2 of my girls are older... Though I will never understand why people who chose not to have kids were helping me to pay for mine? Thank you to all those tax payers.
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