I followed the referrer logs (as I do obsessively) over to Donald Sensing’s, and got a present. He writes about the nature of poverty in the U.S. and the world, and talks about a couple of hours he spent lessening the burden on one specific poor person he met as she walked down the highway away from her flat-tired car. If you haven’t read it yet, go read it now. He manages in one post to do three things:
* He illuminates what the life of the struggling poor looks like here in the U.S.;
* He compares it effectively with what it looks like in the rest of the world, and talks about the hopeful changes that are happening with little notice (linking to M. Simon’s piece below);
* And most of all, he lets you see what goodness looks like from the inside, and the cascade effect that one good act can have in inducing others to do good.
“She was en route from Murfreesboro, 30 miles distant, to my town of Franklin to appear in court appearance for a non-traffic misdemeanor charge. She was late, so I took her to the court and went in to verify her reason for lateness to the judge if necessary. It wasn’t, but I hung around anyway.
Rhonda was in her mid-thirties, a single, welfare mom with a four-year-old daughter. She had no family in Tennessee, nor any real friends, being a fairly new resident to the area. She had lost her job last week (she had been a restaurant hostess) because no child care was available for her evening shift. She had been taking her daughter to work but management had let her go for that reason.
I had called the sheriff’s dispatch and asked them not to tow her car if possible, but when thunderstorm moved in the deputy on patrol decided it had to go. Knowing the road, I can’t blame him. But the tow charge would cost Rhonda $75, which she didn’t have, and she’d still have to fix her tire.
The judge threw out the legal charge. Her public defender wrangled a deal with the tow operator and the sheriff’s department that if the department called that tow company for the next tow, they’d not charge Rhonda. Everyone agreed, so that was a relief. The tow lot hosed enough air into her tire to get up the road a stretch to a a Marathon gas station that had a garage.”
Now I know that things like this happen almost every day. I make it a habit to stop and help people – I’m a first responder. To be honest, I’m also somewhat less vulnerable than the average highway user, so it’s pretty safe for me. And I’m forever in the debt of people who’ve stopped to help me and mine; Miguel, who stopped his pickup truck and offered his cell phone – mine, being digital, of course had no signal – when Tenacious G had her motorcycle crash outside Bakersfield two years ago, and others over the years as well.
I’ll also toss in a (doubtless controversial) policy suggestion we can take where the French actually do something right: My ex – sister in law runs a creche in Paris. The French have a system of public childcare that plugs directly into the public school system, and can deal with children as young as 18 months.
Sensing commented: “That’s the nutshell problem: babysitting or child care, low wages and generally unreliable transportation.” The leg of this tripod that can best b dealt with is childcare. While in an ideal world, a parent would stay home with children, for low wage workers this isn’t remotely an option.
And while I’m not thrilled with the job our public school systems are doing, they’re nonetheless doing a pretty good job as I can directly testify from the experience of my three sons.
I’ve been lucky (and hardworking and disciplined) enough that childcare for my sons was never an issue, and been able to be at jobs where I could walk off for a day to take care of a sick child without feeling my job was at risk. Rhonda, and the millions like her in the U.S. aren’t.
I’m glad beyond belief that Donald was there to help, and that he’s the kind of man he obviously is.
I’d hope that I, and those of you reading this, might think to do the same.
And, in case you wonder why I’m a liberal, it’s because I’d love to see if there is anything we can do to lighten the burden and smooth the path of all the Rhondas out there.
Excellent post. Thanks for that, A.L.
Being a personal liberal myself I applaud the efforts of Sensing and A.L. (having done similar stuff).
What I object to is the idea of being liberal with another’s time or funds when it is not voluntary. Which is why liberal has become a term of disparagement in America.
We should all be liberal on our own time and our own dime.
Remember, it’s not individuals competing on a global scale, it’s collectives competing, of which there are many types, the most important being nation states.
The ultimate libertarian fantasy of “no state” would lead to another state moving in to fill the vacuum or exploiting it’s relative lack of organization to economic advantage. This system may be ideal (it’s debatable), but unless all the players, the various peoples and nations, follow these same rules and agree to a weak nation-state, then the one that is limited by these rules will become a victim, either economically or militarily.
The ultimate collective fantasy stifles all human freedom, such that your state becomes uncompetitive economically, and thus eventually militarily.
The question is, from the perspective of the state, “what is the best way to organize your society to maximize it’s competitiveness?”, not with respect to some idea maximum of human potential, from either extreme, but with respect to other nation-states. This balanced approach would have the goal of maximizing the libertarian values as much as possible, while ensuring the maximum LONG-TERM competitiveness of the state.
The competitiveness piece is most important, because unless your economy is, at a minimum, in the same ballgame as everyone else, then over the long term you will NOT of the luxury of organizing your own society. Another nation that is out competing your own economically over the long long-term, while eventually be the one organizing your society for you.
So, there ya go. It’s great to be idealistic, to either extreme, but when the rubber meets the road, your system has to deliver the goods or it’s eventually going to be in the dustbin of history, even if it’s a nice place to live… for a while.
Whether we like it or not, we are in this competition of collectives. Our can we continue to make our fundamental collective, the good ol’ USA, the most competitive? Fortunately, our democracy, while keeping in mind the goal of maximizing libertarian values, without sacrificing our competitiveness, gives us good, self-correcting tools toward these ends.
So, when we filter all of this down from the macro to the micro, what has it got to say about Rhonda situation? Rhonda is either chronically under employed or unemployed. Is this helping the competitiveness of our economy? Don’t think so, assuming that we think a fully engaged human being is more of an asset than one that is disengaged. Isn’t Rhonda worth some investment from us?
So, what things might we do that might help Rhonda and this help us? Subsidized day care would help Rhonda, but it wouldn’t really help us. This requires the state to assume that it knows best about what Rhonda needs, i.e. day care services, it encourages the thinking that the state is responsible for everything, and it is subsidizing a consumption activity instead a creation activity.
Wouldn’t it be better to encourage personal achievement and responsibility? Working is a fundamental virtue. It binds you to society and gives you a stake in its success. Does everyone remember the axiom, “Idle hands are the tools of the devil”? Given, this shouldn’t society, on principal, attempt to maximize the number of opportunities for its members to gainfully work? Shouldn’t it provide support to those who have difficulty in finding gainful work and to provide incentives to make them more suitable to work? YES.
Traditionally, this has been done from the point of view that the state knows best, e.g. “you need more education”, “you need day care”, “you food stamps”, “minimum wage”, and “here’s all the hoops to jump through to get this stuff”. This is unlibertarian and, from society’s point of view, uncompetitive. I propose to make this process better for a certain folks… those willing to work.
Let’s encourage work. Let’s help people work. I’d much rather subsidize work. Work begets work… if you have worked; it’s more likely you will work. It promotes values on both scales, libertarian and economically. How can we do this?
Currently, I only know of one federal program, the earned income credit. For folks that work, let’s get rid of ALL the other programs and policies, e.g. minimum wage requirements, food stamps, day care, education, transportation, and all the other ones where the state assumes it knows best, and really expand the earned income credit. Make it fade out slowly with rising income, so there’s no penalty to getting a raise or a better job. That’s it. No restrictions, ifs, ands, or buts… for those who WORK.
Advantages to individual:
1) gets to order his own life.
2) gets to choose how to best spend the money.
3) teaches personal responsibility
4) increases self reliance
5) binds to society, provides a ‘stake’
Advantages to society:
1) promotes the civic virtue of work
2) maximum return on scarce public funds
3) encourages private decision making
4) investment in future competitiveness
5) does not encourage idleness
6) improves civil society
7) maximizes
This seems obvious to me, I’m sure there are many here that will disagree…
You’re committing a fallacy, there, Lurker. I don’t know if it has an official name, but you’re assuming that given the same facts, other people will make the same choice you would. It doesn’t happen that way. Not everyone is mature enough to choose the best things for themselves, let alone what’s best in the long term. You might say then they will suffer the natural consequences of those choices; but so will their children, who didn’t make a choice.
I grew up on welfare a lot of the time. There were days the only food I ate was free school lunch; other days we had government surplus cheese, dry milk, and canned meat. Other months we had food stamps, but my mother was the “steak on the first, rice and beans by the 25th” management type–and no one taught her any better. And yes, she worked at least part time during most of my childhood. I went to work at 16 and helped feed my siblings, and paid the electric bill a couple of times as well. Some people are just poor managers, even as adults. I don’t mind adults suffering those consequences, but their kids didn’t get a choice, and those kids are citizens just as much as you and I are, who deserve the protection of their government.
Lurker,
Had the government been limited to it’s Constitutional functions we would have an economy growing at 10% a year. According to Milton Friedman.
Remember at the end of the dot.com boom when it was growing at 8% a year when the minimum wage was forgotten because labor was scarce and minimum wage was actually around $7 instead of $5.50?
You want to do something for Rhonda and see that she has what she needs to be productive? Get the government out of the business of helping. Because really it is not.
Kris,
Did I mention anything about welfare? No, but you do make a valid point about people not capable of making their own decisions. The HARD part is weeding them out from the ones that want to milk the system, the free riders. One way to do it, as I’ve suggested, is to make work more attractive, so more free riders will voluntarily leave welfare. If enough do, then the welfare problem becomes more tractable.
Another good point that you make is about kids. The current systems awards people without means to have more children… they get a bigger government check every month. This is a tough problem and you’re right it’s of no fault of the children. Giving people an incentive to have more children than they can adequately nurture is no permanent solution. This Welfare has created a permanent class of poor people, something never seen before in America. People need incentive to improve. Having the government make all of these decisions doesn’t seem to have increased anyone’s initiative.
My idea would have helped your family, because you’re willing to work. Would it have been better to get more for the work that you and your mother did? Is it bad to encourage others to work, even give them incentive to do so?
M. Simon,
Well, military spending has been a huge drag on the economy too. How fast would we be growing if we didn’t have to carry that load? This is a libertarian concession to reality. The point being, there are some things that must be done collectively, security to ensure our existence, and resolving structural issues of our society that hamper our collective competitiveness, well, to ensure our long term existence.
An aside: The nineties boom seems to have had less to do with tax rates than with balanced Federal budgets.
Our disagreement, is about whether we’d be better off keeping the tax rates as low as possible, or investing some money in low performing individuals. Remember, this isn’t going to suck people from higher paying jobs, the idea is to suck people out of welfare, introduce them to work and get them some experience, so they can hopefully move up to better jobs. Seems like the return on investment would be good. It is certainly more libertarian friendly than what we have now.
Can’t you get on board for an improvement? Or ya gonna hold out for that Libertarian utopia?
Lurker,
You are suggesting something very close to an idea that Milton & Rose Friedman floated in the early 60’s, the negative income tax. In a nutshell, myriad social safety net programs would be replaced by a simple cash benefit that provided a minimum income and could be supplemented by work. The benefit would diminish as your income rose, but it reduced the disincentives to work when compared to traditional all-or-nothing welfare programs.
Similar plans were considered by Presidents Johnson and Nixon, and McGovern proposed something like it in his run for the White House.
To my knowledge, the EITC is the only NIT-like plan that actually has seen real world use in the USA.
Luker: “investing some money in low performing individuals” usually doesn’t work. Some of the money goes to them, but most of it will go to the bureaucracy that is supposed to be helping the low performing individuals. And then those in that bureaucracy develop a need to have a lot of low performing individuals around so they can keep their jobs and continue to get pay raises. So they scare the bejesus out of society by continuing to say that there are all these low performing individuals around who cannot make it without the help of the bureaucracy. The social service mafia continues to grow and fails to come up with solutions. The interesting thing about the original post is that AL never asks Rhoda how she got in the fix she’s in. (I’ve spent 18 years running a homeless shelter and that is one question I always ask my clients) One mistake she made was to become a single mom and now she is paying the consequences of that mistake. I don’t think having a social service burecuracy micromanaging her life will help her much. The EITC might just be the best solution to her dilemma. But if she doesn’t take personal resposibility for where she is at and figure out how to move on, she and her child will just be added members of the dependent class and society will have to continue to subsidize them both.
A point that has not been raised in this debate: Rev. Sensing is a pretty right wing guy. So, I’d add a 4th key point that the story illustrates:
Neither side of the political aisle has a monopoly on compassion.
That said, they DO have materially different views about what constitutes real help over the long term. Perhaps a slight reformulation will help the debate. What if, instead of having a philosophy of “invest a bit in low performing individuals”, we shifted the focus slightly and said “look for low performing individuals willing and determined to invest in themselves, and focus our best and most intensive efforts on them.”
Kieran Charles, and Joe,
The guaranteed income is a bad idea. This plan is an attempt to make work pay, even for the lower skilled folks just starting out and not currently in the work force. Hopefully they would then move up to better jobs as their skills improved.
Charles,
Actually there would be no extra buracracy. As long as there is an income tax and the IRS, no social workers, program administrators, or bureacats would be needed. The IRS all ready runs a similar program called the Earned Income Tax Credit, my proposal would just expand this.
The extra money goes to the poor that CHOOSE to work. They can then spend it however they want. And by working they would be learning to work, and moving up to better jobs as their skills improve.
Joe,
I agree! Having to work to get the benefit is just the filter you are talking about. No inititive, no work, then no benefit. Seems like a great filter to me! And it doesn’t take an extra army of government employees to do it.
I hadn’t intended to focus my comments as specifically as that, or to step into your debate over these particular proposals… it was more of a general principle and test that could be applied to a variety of efforts, and a follow on that illustrated the view from the Right a bit more clearly.
Lurker writes: “An aside: The nineties boom seems to have had less to do with tax rates than with balanced Federal budgets.”
The only problem with your thesis is that none of the data supports it. The correlation between GDP growth and deficits is poor during the Clinton administration. Likewise, the correlation between interest rates and GDP growth. The “boom” proper appeared to be strongest in certain narrow market sectors. And if, as it currently appears, the last half of 2003 and early 2004 have large GDP growth during a sharp rise in deficit spending, there will be even less correlation.
Robin, The main driver of the recent GDP uptick has been due to the increased government activity, e.g. military. This is nice, but it’s not sustainable. Let’s bring keynes back out of the closet!
Again, I don’t think the data supports your statements.
Robin, I was responding to an assertion that lower taxes ALWAYS lead to increase economic growth. So, forgive me for being obtuse, are you saying that GDP is generally positively correlated with tax rates? And from this, are we to conclude that it was Clinton tax cuts that fed the nineties boom? Or are you saying something else that I’m not getting? Like maybe, GDP doesn’t correlate with anything?