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Save the poor from their ‘friends’
The poor in America (whoever exactly that is) have many friends in Washington D.C. But that is part of their problem. When your friends are powerful and aggressively well-intentioned but unwise, you don’t need enemies.
Consider poor unwed mothers. In the name of helping these (in some cases) unfortunate people, congressional friends of the poor established Aid to Families with Dependent Children. This federal program gave cash and housing benefits to poor single mothers. Perversely, and as a consequence, the program unintentionally encouraged foolish young girls to become single mothers at state expense. As a consequence, their numbers swelled. It brings to mind Ronald Reagan’s quip, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’”
The evangelical Christian community has its own supply of these political Calamity Janes. When the Republican-led Congress and President Bill Clinton passed welfare reform in 1996, which has since liberated masses of poor people from intergenerational welfare dependency, they faced loud opposition from the Christian anti-poverty organization Sojourners. The organization’s founder and CEO, Jim Wallis, speaking for “compassionate Christians,” called the reform “a great national sin.”
In the 15 years since that lesson in what works and what doesn’t, nothing has changed on the left. In the midst of a debt crisis of historic proportions that threatens to downgrade our creditworthiness for the first time since the Revolution (no, it was not the debt-ceiling debate that raised this threat), Wallis, that softhearted man with perennially bad judgment, has called church leaders into a “Circle of Protection” for the poor against any cuts in entitlement spending.
Thankfully, the poor have friends who are not only friends from the heart but also from a properly instructed head. They are friends not only affectively, but also effectively. This most recent parading of well-meaning but tragically counterproductive concern for the poor has provoked an evangelical counter-statement that Marvin Olasky wrote about yesterday: Christians for a Sustainable Economy. This group (which includes Olasky as a signer of its letter to President Obama) objects that the Circle demands big government and “federal welfare programs that are often ineffective—even counterproductive” as though they were simply restating what God has clearly said in Scripture:
“Contrary to their founding ‘Statement,’ we do not need to ‘protect programs for the poor.’ We need to protect the poor themselves. Indeed, sometimes we need to protect them from the very programs that ostensibly serve the poor, but actually demean the poor, undermine their family structures and trap them in poverty, dependency and despair for generations. Such programs are unwise, uncompassionate, and unjust.”
Lord, deliver the poor from their enemies (Psalm 35:10) . . . and from not a few of their friends.
back to top24 Comments to “Save the poor from their ‘friends’”
When the government pays for something the government gets more of whatever it pays for.
If the government pays higher amounts for it the government gets even more of it.
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Great article D.C. And you know government is back to that perverse kind of bragging about how many poor people it helps.
Even worse than that, I was receivingi AFDC for a time – not because I had no other source of help, but because my family decided that someone in the family should get back from the government what they’d been paying in taxes. Sad. It was humiliating.
When there is a government program many people try to figure out how they can qualify for the benefits, whether or not they technically need it.
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That’s like saying we need to our nation, not our armed forces. In order to protect America, we need to sustain the Department of Defense.
Similarly, we need government, socialistic programs in order to protect the poor.
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That’s like saying we need to protect our nation, not our armed forces.
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When there is a government program many people try to figure out how they can qualify for the benefits, whether or not they technically need it.
Exactly! Great insight.
The exact process happens at the other end also. When there is a Gov program to raise taxes on the wealthy, they will try to figure out how they can not qualify to pay it, whether they really are wealthy or not.
This is one reason taxing the wealthy never works. And that tax that was targeted at them finds its way in the laps of the middle class to pay.
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#4 Yes, if we don’t protect programs for the poor, we may soon not have any poor!
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D.C. is good with the convincing-sounding rhetoric, not so good with accuracy.
“Consider poor unwed mothers. In the name of helping these (in some cases) unfortunate people, congressional friends of the poor established Aid to Families with Dependent Children. This federal program gave cash and housing benefits to poor single mothers. Perversely, and as a consequence, the program unintentionally encouraged foolish young girls to become single mothers at state expense. As a consequence, their numbers swelled. ”
This is false.
AFDC began in the 1930s and through the 1960s the numbers of unwed mothers didn’t change much. If the program was a direct cause — or even an indirect cause — the numbers would have grown long before they actually did.
Secondly, AFDC was replaced with a much more restrictive program in 1996, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. If the availability of government funding were the cause of foolish young girls getting pregnant, the new limitations of TANF would have driven the rates down again, but it didn’t. They’ve continued to rise.
Innes also completely disregards the racism behind much of the opposition to AFDC. It wasn’t that poor women were having babies, it was that poor black women were.
http://www.jeanhardisty.com/essay_therightscampaignagainstwelfare.html
Then this post contains another gratuitous hit on Jim Wallis, who must have said something bad about Marvin Olasky recently.
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Innes makes some comments that cry out for confirmation or questioning.
1) Is there a causation between AFDC and unwed mothers? He needs to show there isn’t a delay between the beginning of AFDC and the rise in unwed mothers — any time gap suggests other factors at play.
2) Did welfare reform libeate massess from intergenerational welfare dependncy? He needs to give a real number — how maasive was it? He needs to demonstrate first that there is intergenerational welfare and it was specifically this group which no longer collects welfare. He also needs to demonstrate it was welfare reform which lowered rates and not the general prosperity of the Clinton era.
3) In a bracketes aside, Innes asserts the debt ceiling debate was not responsible for the questioning of America’s credit rating. To assert this he would have to explain why countries with similar debt to GDP ratio were not assessed. He would also have to explain why credit worthiness was not an issue until several Republicans publicly raised the idea of purposeful default.
4) Finally to assert that social programs cause people to live in poverty, one should be able to assert the converse, that is, without social programs poverty would not be an issue. And given that poverty existed prior to the New Deal, social programs niether cause poverty nor do they extend it. The poor shall always be with us — the only question is the best means to help them.
And I would assert social programs are far more helpful than soup kitchens.
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There’s a subtle fallacy here even assuming the AFDC has a causative effect on unwed motherhood.
In this case the AFDC would have negatively impacted those women who, in its absence, would not have become unwed mothers. The baseline for evaluating the effects of the AFDC is “what would have been”. The delta between that baseline and the AFDC scenario, supposing the causative effect exists, is that certain women who would not otherwise have become unwed mothers end up becoming unwed mothers. Given that we might conclude the AFDC is bad for women in general, or possibly bad for a specific subset of women, but it is certainly not bad for unwed mothers. In fact it’s demonstrably good for unwed mothers; that’s the whole problem.
Innes argues the AFDC creates a moral hazard. Reduce the pain of being an unwed mother and you get more unwed mothers since it no longer sucks quite so much. The question, then, is how do you meet the legitimate needs of unwed mothers without creating a moral hazard?
Private charity excels here since it usually forces the one seeking assistance to “come out” as “needy” to a human being and undergo some level of scrutiny. This attaches an emotional “cost” to the financial aid that doesn’t exist when one just gets a check in the mail from the government.
Of course, the problem with private charity is that it always results in some folks falling through the cracks.
Imagine, if you will, a hypothetical future in which Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, SCHIP, TANF, food stamps, subsidized housing and the EITC have all been eliminated and taxes reduced accordingly. The budget is balanced and there is no longer a minimum wage. A poor, unskilled, unwed mother with three children comes before your church benevolence board and says: “I don’t work because, given my limited skill set, child care for my children would cost more than I could earn. My parents can’t take care of them because they have to work all day as well. Could your church please provide free all-day child care for my children as well as an additional weekly stipend so I can afford rent, food and health care? Oh yeah, one of my children has juvenile diabetes. I’m happy to work full time, but $4/hour isn’t enough to purchase food, clothing, shelter and health care (*) for myself and my children. Also, sorry, but I’m not really interested in joining your church; I don’t believe in God.”
What do you think the response would be? What should it be? How do we, either personally as believers or collectively as citizens of the United States, care for this type of person? Should we even try?
(*) These being the for vectors of aid to the poor Marvin Olasky concedes as legitimate.
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It’s painful to read these rationalizations by men who justify giving up the care of children to the the State.
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KAS – Evangelical ideas won’t eliminate poverty. For ye have the poor always with you . . One good idea was to liquidate everything and give away the money. Evangelicals say that was just an idea. Short of really doing that, however, Evangelicals shouldn’t get too critical of socialism, unless they can guarantee that nobody will ever be hungry, naked, or unvisited — a dumb guarantee in view of Jesus’ prediction.
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Interesting to see that there are still defenders of the most notorious welfare program ever. I will simply refer any interested parties to Charles Murray’s politically earth shattering book, Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950-1980 (Basic Books, 1984).
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Yes, Charles Murray, he of the “blacks are intellectually inferior” Bell Curve.
Great reference, D.C.
This “notorious” program provided aid to poor women for 40 years before the proportion of unwed mothers in America began to rise significantly. You make absolutely no argument for causation, offer no evidence, you just assert it.
I do not think your thesis holds any water. And you’ve provided no supporting evidence to convince anyone who doesn’t already agree with you.
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And I notice you offer no substantive response to your critics, either, D.C. HRW correctly points out the need for confirmatory evidence. Rather than just say the program is “notorious,” how about offering said evidence?
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Innes — you’re basing your argument on a book written in 1984?? Given the changes in welfare undertaken in the Clinton administration, your argument needs to be updated. And even the data in your referred book points out that poverty rates went down and the increase in AFDC recipents did not occur until 1960. Thus we have a time lag from when programme was established until an increase occurred, thus suggesting other factors at play.
While reading conflicting reviews of Losing Ground, I came across the book Rethinking Social Policy that purportedly proves Murray wrong. However, there was no preview available under google but perhaps this may be a starting point to updating your argument.
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The first question is whether or not the socialist program violates God’s design for social order. And these govt welfare programs do indeed violate God’s design, therefore, they are bound for failure. The truth of human nature is neglected within welfare socialism, especially when a civil govt is run as a democracy in violation of its Constitution.
Theodore Dalrymple’s Life at the Bottom; The worldview that make the underclass makes for some very telling insight that supports Innes theme. His theme is spot on; it has to be as it reflects God’s truth. Our socialist welfare programs perpetuates themselves with bad policy.
LBJs Great Society and War on Poverty has been an abject failure and Socialist Insecurity (some may still refer to it as Social Security), Medicare and Medicaid and now Obamacare are assuring financial collapse of the nation. The unfunded liabilities of these programs can not be supported.
But what the hey; the bleeding hearts are comforted at the expense of those that produce.
Frederick Bastiat “The Law” A Frenchman looks at the failures of the French Revolution and the socialism it ushured in. Another excellent read for the bleeding hearts to try and grasp reality. The truths of civil govt run welfare are timeless.
Like others, Bastiat recognized that the greatest single
threat to liberty is government. Notice the clarity he employs to
help us identify and understand evil government acts such as
legalized plunder. Bastiat says, “See if the law takes from some
persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to
whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at
the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot
do without committing a crime.”
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11 Scroop-
Please don’t read too much into my “cute” post. I wasn’t implying that Evangelical ideas or anything else will eliminate poverty. I simply could not pass up an inverting double entendre, i.e. protecting poverty programs can protect the poor from going out of existence due (a)starvation, etc., or (b) becoming non-poor. I just thought, in a Monty Python sort of way, it would be funny if programs for the poor were designed to sustain the status quo in the same way the armed forces are designed to sustain the status quo. The fact that (b) tends to coincide with my view of most government programs for the poor was almost (;-)) incidental. (Example: Tapering off welfare payments as people earn income traps some in poverty by insuring that they never quite achieve the economic critical mass to get out of poverty.)
But seeing as you made much of my lame joke, the reason for criticizing socialism (or the allegedly “good idea” of “liquidat[ing] everything and giv[ing] away the money”) is not that socialism will not eliminate poverty. As noted, nothing will accomplish that. The reason to criticize socialism (and the “good idea” in particular)is that (a) it is unjust because it rests on theft, and (b) it tends to make poverty worse. The problem with socialism is not that it fails to do the impossible (eliminate poverty) but that it fails to do the possible, like reduce poverty, and often exacerbates the problems it purports to solve.
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Here is the other side of the same failing socialist coin of legal plunder by civil govt:
He [Steve Wynn, chairman and CEO of Wynn Resorts] told investors the “Obama administration is the greatest wet blanket to business and progress and job creation in my lifetime. And I could prove it…I could spend the next three hours giving you examples of all of us in this marketplace that are frightened to death about all the new regulations,[as] our healthcare costs escalate, regulations coming from left and right, [with a] President that…keeps using that word ‘redistribution.’”
Wynn’s pitch was not partisan: “I am a Democrat businessman….I support Harry Reid…[but] I am telling you that the business community in this country is frightened to death of the weird political philosophy of the President of the United States. Until he is gone, everybody is going to be sitting on [his] thumbs.
“[I]t is Obama that is responsible for this fear in America,” Wynn insisted. “The guy keeps making speeches about redistribution and [the need] to do something to businesses that don’t invest, that are holding too much money. You know, we haven’t heard that kind of talk except from pure socialists. Everybody is afraid of the government and there is no need soft-pedaling it. It is the truth. It is the truth.”
Fred Sheehan,
for The Daily Reckoning
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KAS – I appreciate your reply. What would it take to persuade you that American socialism isn’t “theft” and our safety net has relieved poverty, not made it worse?
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RWHawk: Wynn’s pitch was not partisan: “I am a Democrat businessman….I support Harry Reid…[but]
I doubt it. If it were true, he’d say “Democratic.” The “Democrat party” and similar constructions that use the noun instead of the adjective are Republican word tricks.
Democrats would use the adjective “Democratic” when using the word to modify a noun, i.e., “businessman.”
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“Save the Poor From Their Friends”
Often the poor ARE saved from their “friends”.
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CONAN,
You should base your judgement on facts rather than feelings. Do a little investigating. Perhaps its a generational thing. There was no such thing as ‘Democratic’ during Wynn’s formative years.
Wynn’s donations did not seem to particularly favor either the Democratic or the Republican party, though he is registered as a Democrat.
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Here’s the REAL face of poverty in America today:
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/08/09/america_crime_poverty/index.html
A real eye-opening article, for those who have ears to hear.
To me, the bottom line is this: Who are we as a country?
Are we a WE, a nation of people who care for and look out for each other, those who have been blessed helping those who are in need?
Or are we an US and THEM, a nation of people who care only for ourselves and our immediate circles, and expect everyone else to fend for themselves — with an added dose of hostility for those perceived as ‘not like us’ (i.e., gays, immigrants, the poor.)
The sad thing is, conservatives often talk like they want the first kind of nation, but the invariably vote for and support the things that have made us the second.
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Hawk: Do you think your quoted line supports your statement? It doesn’t.
Wynn’s donations did not seem to particularly favor either the Democratic or the Republican party, though he is registered as a Democrat.
“Democratic party” — “Democratic” is the adjective modifying “party”
“Registers as a Democrat” — “Democrat” is a noun.
The noun and adjective forms of “Republican” are the same word; that is not the case with “Democrat.”
And yes, “Democratic” was the correct adjective form during Wynn’s formative years, and the years before that and in fact for the entire time the word has been used in English.
But Republicans think saying “Democrat party” makes it sound unpleasant, and so they do it in an effort to sway public opinion. They don’t realize that to many of us it just makes them sound illiterate.
For your edification: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/08/07/060807ta_talk_hertzberg
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