The Evil of Benevolence
How is it that after the expenditure of trillions of dollars, the percentage of poor people in the United States is largely unchanged? Does the rate of reproduction among poor people exceed the assistance government provides? Are illegal aliens entering the United States skewing the evidence since they are often employing public social services? Or is it likely that philanthropy and government commitments tend to be distant from the target of their largess, overlooking the real conditions for poverty?
Despite the widely held view that philanthropy is desirable as a way to mitigate the influence of poverty, there is another, often disregarded, side to social beneficence. Some would argue – I am among them – that the welfare state, with all of its well-meaning rhetoric, actually creates more poverty and dependence than it was designed to abolish.
For the recipient of charity there is the intoxicating impression that this transfer payment is necessary and desirable. Hence the behavior that results in poverty is often reinforced, rather than reproved. For the charitable giver there is very often smug righteousness, a belief that one is saving the world through personal acts of benevolence. This is analogous to the good intentions that lead to debilitating effects.
There was a time several decades ago when officials at the UN would visit Haiti at the invitation of “Papa Doc” Duvalier. What they would see was mind-boggling poverty, poverty that would yield tears from a statue. These visits invariably resulted in enormous financial transfers and naturally self-satisfied UN.claims of addressing the issue. But this annual event did not have any effect on Haiti’s poor. How could it? The money went directly into Duvalier’s Swiss bank account. However that didn’t stop the UN from adopting a righteous stance about the use of its development funds.
This is merely the tip of the proverbial iceberg. President Johnson organized the Great Society program with great benevolence. A war was declared against poverty, a war that in the aggregate had a price tag of several trillion dollars and in a variety ways, especially legacy programs, continues to cost billions annually. Yet there isn’t any evidence this expense has had any effect on the poverty rate in the United States. Of course this result or lack thereof hasn’t had any influence on those advocating for government programs.
Similarly, President Obama “invested” more than $800 billion to stimulate the economy. He argued, when the legislation was being entertained, that this funding would reduce the 7.3 percent unemployment rate. Yet two years later the unemployment rate has risen to over 9 percent and there isn’t any indication this government spending has had any effect in creating new jobs. Here is an example of benevolence with a vengeance.
Show me what is considered a ‘poor’ person in America and I’ll show you an Obese, lazy POS.
Delia, now don’t you know, they are obese because they cannot afford vegetables! And the only ones able to get those vegetables to them are the ruling elite! (That would be right after the $35,000 a plate birthday bash!)
…an obese, lazy turd, with a coach purse who has a nicer phone than me and spends their food stamps on NY strip and lobster (yes, I’ve actually seen this in the checkout line at the store)
And therein, it seems to me, lies the essence of the problem. Perhaps it isn’t so much a question of whether to assist those who are temporarily down on their luck as it is a question of how some form of assistance might be provided.
If one entertains the premise that chronically bad decision-making and attendant personal irresponsibility (dropping out of school, out-of-wedlock childbirth, chemical addiction, fast-money criminal values, etc.) by the “impoverished” has contributed materially to their own plight, then one has to ask how it may be expected that perpetual infusions of government-managed cash transfers can conceivably improve things. How can free money with few restrictions as to its use be expected to improve the personal irresponsibility and demonstrably poor decision processes that produced the “poverty” in the first place?
Cash, especially someone else’s cash, flowing in open-ended and largely unrestricted fashion to those incapable of and/or unwilling to make constructive life decisions, and thereby advance their own welfare, has, I believe, produced the predictable disaster we have witnessed for the past fifty years.
They aren’t trying to help “the poor”, they are buying their votes.
NO they do not!
Strip and lobster..like they went to a SUPERMARKET?!
They spend their food stamps at the corner bodega,
on Lottery Tickets, cigarettes, and Orange Soda.
Didnt you hear Ms. Pelosi? Food stamps are the biggest economic boon to the inner cities….food stamps keep millions of bodagas from going out of business.
Ah, but that’s been going on since the very beginning of food stamps (when they actually were stamps). I remember seeing migrant workers with families of 6+ in the checkout line in front of me — instead of hamburger to feed everyone for a week, they’d buy 8 NY strip steaks. The worst, tho? They’d pay for the food w/stamps, then whip out a $20 to buy the case of beer! It p.o.’d me then, and still does …
Love your fighting spirit, but they are not all obese, some use speed to keep their slim figure so they can be prostitutes.
LMFAO!!!!!!!!!!!
Isabel Paterson pinned this more than sixty years ago. She viewed the politician, the philanthropist, and the pimp as subspecies of a single breed: the breed that seeks to live by and through others. All three engender dependency in their “clients” — and that’s exactly what they set out to do.
Give us all a million dollars, every year tax free for life, we’ll handle the rest with the free market. The rest will fund the military, build the damn fence, courts and the minimum. Get rid of these crappy programs to bribe people with, I can’t believe this went on this long. They have wasted trillions and what did we get for it, a pain in the ass and bankrupt, enough with these people. If the libs weren’t so stupid they would of demanded this along time ago but no they want cell phones?? We are awake and things are going to change.
Actually, I believe the left perpetuates a dependent class because they’ve figured out its just a numbers game. There will always be more poor people than rich people as has been the case through out the history of the world and inciting the poor is a preferred tactic by politicians throughout history.
Even if declines and improvements are made in the number and living conditions of the poor, the left engages in statistical jitsu that denies these facts. They then use these bogus statistics to shove in front of our faces in order to play on heart strings to extract more and more money from the non-poor.
Like everything else in big government–welfare programs are ineffective, unaccountable and culturally destructive programs that are just another path for power entrenchment and money laundering for politicians.
So how is it they can’t see a movie like Precious and WEEP. I only saw clips of that film and heard about the horrifying story line. It is what “their benevolence” wrought. Watching those 70′s films that depicted life in the ghetto ie “Fort Apache” I always wondered how in heavens name such a hell could exist.
I can only imagine that generations of these children could never escape. Yet people like Charles Paine of Fox news and his stories of growing up with a single mom and two brothers, making his way through life getting beaten up for talking like a white person etc.. are an inspiration. Hence why Obama is nothing but a sham. Imagine the inspiration he could have been to those teenage moms who he witnessed feeding potato chips to their infants. He did nothing to inspire self reliance, responsibility, and to speak of the immigrants that came to America’s shores from dire circumstances only to become model citizens. Think of what a great President he could have been “because ” of his color.
Of course the left/progressives/liberal/obama-fdr/marxist want a lot of poor people.
How the heck do you think 15% of a population(communist/progressives… yadda yadda) have gained 50 -50 control of the last bastion of freedom? It is called the “Corruption of Democracy”. I am reminded of a quote.
“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.”
— Alexis de Tocqueville (Democracy in America) (of course Alexis was not the first to understand this)
Add that concept with an absolute evil/corruption.. democrat/fdr/progressive Übermensch that the obama/progressives see themselves as.
Well…… my fellow travelers favoring individual freedom over being ruled in an ant colony , understand what we face.
Benjamin Franklin’s way of helping the poor was not to make them easy in their poverty.
St. Paul wrote: “For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat.” 2Th3:10
The Government’s policy goes counter to ethics of a founding father of not just the nation, but of Christendom. It should surprise no one that the policy fails to accomplish its stated purpose. Its real purpose, however, was to create wards and dependants, and at that Government has been quite successful and very immoral.
Having voluntarily (without gov’t or business subsidy) worked with and lived among the poor, I can assure any skeptic reading this article of its truth. It’s far too small a space to elaborate, but suffice it to say that helping the poor has become an industry, even amongst the most saintly of organizations.
Most of these orgs attract government savvy directors who know how to wrest more money for programs. There is even one organization that touts its administrative-to-outreach proportions to help ease the mind about supporting them. Sure, they do a lot of good with the money, but it’s still a huge NGO seeking federal funds for all sorts of rehab programs, then “bidding out” to assist the local city prisons, shelters, etc., and thus expanding their organizational footprint. I’ve watched them deny needed administrative help at the street-level in order to buy new cars for the bloated executive levels. It’s still community organizing. With a halo. Dancing with the devil.
And then, there are the created lifetime professional clients of such benevolence. Because where some do-gooder is looking to fill a need with cash, a need will arise to meet it.
This liberal mind set also extends to education. Don’t you know that if we only throw trillions of dollars into education, it is bound to be a success? Well, how much money have we sunk into the black hole of public education over the past 40 years? Billions and billions of dollars. And what do we have to show for it? The quality of public education has actually gone down over the past few years. Test scores are down and more and more kids are actually dropping out of high school. Colleges are now teaching the same courses as high schools simply because the kids graduating from high schools are not up to college-level math or English. And this is success?
Whenever government spends more money on anything, you can expect more waste, more inefficiency, and more failure. This goes for the Pentagon too; there is tons of waste there and much, much, money can be saved by running many of their programs more efficiently, getting much more “bang” for our buck. We really need to be running more government agencies like a business. If a business lost a trillion dollars on anything, how long do you think its managers would still have their jobs? We need to start doing the same thing in government. Get better results or the people running the programs should be canned.
Have you seen Waiting for Superman? It is a good look into public education. However, I don’t think it fully addresses the problem because it doesn’t address the content of the curriculum. I give some of my own suggestions at http://web.me.com/freedommatters on the page Keep Legal.
“Don’t you know that if we only throw trillions of dollars into education, it is bound to be a success?”
I don’t disagree at all, but wish to point out that the trillions of dollars we have already thrown into education didn’t go to education at all…it went into the pockets of teachers to buy their votes.
If even a tiny fraction had gone really gone into education, the system would be many times better today.
No amount of money will pay to educate people who refuse to learn.
(I’d go further to say that the reason they refuse to learn is that we’ve made it too easy to be comfortable while being ignorant, arrogant, and recumbent.)
Nope. Money is not the problem AT ALL. I doubt if there’s a government school in the entire country that is actually short of funds for TEACHING.
The problem is with WHAT is being taught, and with the METHODS used to teach.
There are thousands of private schools turning out well-educated citizens on a FRACTION of what we are spending.
More money isn’t needed. We can spend LESS and get better results if we can take the schools away from the leftists.
I’m not advocating more spending, just pointing out that almost all of education money has always gone into the pockets of paid-for democrat voters.
We haven’t really even been able to prove that spending money on education rather than bribing voters would work or not because it has never been tried. The teachers always grab every dime. Everything can be improved. There are many examples around the world and even in this country of more successful education systems. It is certainly at least conceivable that computers can help kids learn (actually, I think it is totally obvious), but when 100% of the funding goes toward perpetuating a corrupt union system, it can never happen.
Making improvements shouldn’t be hard at all, and shouldn’t be expensive either, in relative terms.
But it will never happen because teachers have been converted from people who love to teach to people who love to increase their income.
My friend, whose husband was out of work for a while, stayed with us for a month. She had four children and received $1000 in food stamps, $250 in WIC and if her kids were school age, she would have received help for their school lunches. She is not someone who liked being on welfare and knows how to handle money frugally. She was impressed/surprised with the amount of money she received. Her husband now has a job and she budgets a little over half the amount for groceries that she used to receive from welfare. If most Americans knew how much welfare recipients received, they would know not to listen to the whining. Living frugally is part of a good education.
Also, I spent one of my spring breaks with Habitat for Humanity at a time when satellite dishes were not universal – my parents didn’t have one because they were paying for two kids to go to college. On the block that had been completed, nearly every house had a satellite dish and nice cars. As an idealistic college student, that bothered me. I started to wonder if the money and time and energy we exerted to help was truly necessary. Why did they have nice cars and a satellite dish while I gave up my spring break, spent gas money to drive from MO to Houston, and would go home to regular TV and a reasonable car? That was the beginning of my conservative awakening.
I don’t believe the recipients learn fiscal frugality or responsibility.
My friend, whose husband was out of work for a while, stayed with us for a month. She had four children and received $1000 in food stamps, $250 in WIC and if her kids were school age, she would have received help for their school lunches.
When my oldest stepson divorced a few years ago, he had custody of their two very young (1 and 3) children. He received well over $400 a month in food stamps and WIC. That money was only for food and couldn’t be used for anything else, just to feed one adult and two very small children. By way of contrast, my wife and I spend only about $200 a month to feed two adults and that includes eating out on occassion. Of course, we brown-bag our lunches every day and do other reasonable things to economize. Since food step recipients are getting so much, why can’t they send their kids to school with a sack lunch like I do (and did as a child)?
When you add up all of the various welfare programs that a small family (especially a single parent household) can receive, the dollar amounts are staggering. Welfare, Medicaid, food stamps, WIC, housing assistance, etc. add up pretty quickly. Depending on the state, a person on welfare would have to get a job paying over $15 an hour (double that in some states) just to break even with their welfare benefits. Few of them have the skills to earn that kind of salary so they milk the system for everything it’s worth.
You also have a large “welfare industry” of case workers, social workers, etc. who earn their living on the other side of the system. I remember hearing congressional testimony several years ago that almost 80% of the money spend on welfare programs actually goes to administrative overhead. They have a vested interest in expanding the welfare caseloads.
The people administering the system and those receiving the benefits add up to a sizeable voting block, one that Democrats pander to. “Vote for me and get more free stuff” is their operating motto. They’ll fight hard to keep anything from being cut from the programs.
An excellent, well thought-out post. Thank you.
On the subject of more free stuff, I just found this article from the New York Post titled “Free Cell Phones are Now a Civil Right.”
Pennsylvanians on public assistance now have a new ‘civil right’ — free cell phones. Meanwhile, the rest of us get to pay higher cell bills as a result.
Recently, a federal government program called the Universal Service Fund came to the Keystone State and some residents are thrilled because it means they can enjoy 250 minutes a month and a handset for free, just because they don’t have the money to pay for it. Through Assurance Wireless and SafeLink from Tracfone Wireless these folks get to reach out and touch someone while the cost of their service is paid for by everyone else. You see, the telecommunications companies are funding the Universal Service Fund to the tune of $4 billion a year because the feds said they have to and in order to recoup their money, the companies turn around and hike their fees to paying customers. But those of use paying for the free service for the poor, should be happy about this infuriating situation, says Gary Carter, manager of national partnerships for Assurance, because “the program is about peace of mind.” Free cell service means “one less bill that someone has to pay, so they can pay their rent or for day care…it is a right to have peace of mind,” Cater explained.
But wait, there’s more! (Emphasis added)
The telecommunications companies like Verizon and AT&T want more paying customers, but their desire to reform their deal with the feds dovetails nicely with the political ideology of the current FCC chairman Julian Genachowski, who like all Obama administration flunkies sees ‘rights’ where others see ‘priviledges’. Just listen to how the agency put the question of providing broadband and cell service to those in rural and poor communities. “The goal of reform is to provide everyone with affordable voice and broadband,” the agency said.
Between 14 million and 24 million Americans lack access to broadband, “and immediate prospects for deployment to them are bleak,” the FCC said in a report last year. “Many of these Americans are poor or live in rural areas that will remain unserved without reform of the universal service program and other changes,” the report said.
But who says that cheap or free broadband is anything more than a luxury?
Well, another Obama flunkie, Rahm Emanuel, that’s who. As we reported in June , the new mayor of Chicago was all excited to proclaim the wonderful news of free internet service to poor kids in Chicago’s worst neighborhoods. And how could Mayor Emanuel pay for this new ‘civil right’? Well, because the federal government extorted the money from Comcast when it wanted to buy NBC-Universal. Once again FCC chairman Genachowski was all about “helping the kids” by forcing the internet provider to give poor kids free netbooks, laptops, and internet service, indefinitely. And who is going to pay for this gift? Well, of course the rest of us poor saps who actually pay our bills.
Good grief! It never ends!!!!!
What next? Free cruise ship vacations for the ‘poor’? What would that cruise ship be named? “The Welfare Xpedition”?
Larry,
Most of those social/case workers could probably qualify for food stamps according to their pay stubs and likely the only ones that do not are married to folks making far more in the private sector. THey are overworked for the most part and VERY often underpaid. Not much of a living for them. Overall I agree with the rest of your diatribe.
When I was a starving college student, the state I lived in set aside a certain amount of food stamps just for college students. I got $160/month just for me. I ate like a king on that much money, judiciously spent.
Once I bailed on school and got a good paying job, I called the food stamp office to cancel my food stamps. The social worker was amazed, “Why would you want to cancel your food stamps?”
“Because I got a good job.”
“Oh.”
I really don’t like that I was on public assistance at all, but I feel better knowing that I have paid far more in state income taxes than I ever used in food stamps. I sort of feel better, anyway…
Once I bailed on school and got a good paying job, I called the food stamp office to cancel my food stamps.
I’m glad to hear about your sense of honour as evidenced by your effort to cancel your food stamps.
I remember meeting one couple here in Canada, a man and his girlfriend. They’d been living together for a while and she’d been getting unemployment benefits as a result of getting laid off at work. But things were much better now since she’d gotten a job (or jobs) that added up to four days a week of work at a decent salary. I was surprised to learn though that they were still collecting unemployment. I asked – very politely – why they were still on that program. She explained that they were trying to save up for some new furniture. Whether they would have cancelled their benefits even after they got the furniture is, of course, an open question.
They were an odd pair. At one point, the man told me that his girlfriend had onlyh narrowly averted a serious accident when a car almost hit her on her bicycle. I asked if she was alright and she assured me that she was. Then the boyfriend mentioned that it was too bad the car hadn’t hit her since they would have had the opportunity to sue the bastard for all he was worth. His girlfriend nodded emphatically to reinforce his point. Apparently, neither of them considered the fact that an accident which would have assured a good settlement would very likely have grievously injured the woman and caused her immense pain. All they could see was the lost opportunity to earn a big payday….
My friend, whose husband was out of work for a while, stayed with us for a month. She had four children and received $1000 in food stamps, $250 in WIC and if her kids were school age, she would have received help for their school lunches. She is not someone who liked being on welfare and knows how to handle money frugally. She was impressed/surprised with the amount of money she received. Her husband now has a job and she budgets a little over half the amount for groceries that she used to receive from welfare. If most Americans knew how much welfare recipients received, they would know not to listen to the whining. Living frugally is part of a good education.
Also, I spent one of my spring breaks with Habitat for Humanity at a time when satellite dishes were not universal – my parents didn’t have one because they were paying for two kids to go to college. On the block that had been completed, nearly every house had a satellite dish and nice cars. As an idealistic college student, that bothered me. I started to wonder if the money and time and energy we exerted to help was truly necessary. Why did they have nice cars and a satellite dish while I gave up my spring break, spent gas money to drive from MO to Houston, and would go home to regular TV and a reasonable car? That was the beginning of my conservative awakening.
Your story reminds me of one I heard from a work colleague some years ago. He had a good friend who was a volunteer at a food bank. In fact, she was so devoted to social justice that she didn’t even have a car of her own and deliberately spent the money she had, which could have bought a car, on charities to help the disadvantaged. She also spent a great deal of her time on volunteer work at the food bank and other organizations. One day, which working a shift at the food bank, one of the food bank’s clients insisted that she help carry the groceries that she (the client) had picked up. The volunteer agreed and carried the client’s groceries out to her car, discovering it to be a rather expensive one. The volunteer had a moment of clarity then and suddenly questioned everything she was doing. Why should she deny herself even a basic car and work at the food bank and other organizations for free so that she could tote groceries out to a car that belonged to someone who wasn’t in need at all?
Probably because it’s NOT benevolence, but altruism.
Charity, given due to the goodness of people to others who are in bad times to no fault of their own, is vastly difference from altruism, given out of recourseless duty, to people regardless of how bad they screwed up (often on purpose).
The welfare state is NOT founded in benevolence, it’s founded in the “legal” foundation of buying votes with taxpayer money.
Poverty in the United States is not what people picture when they say the word “Poverty.” For most poverty evokes visions of squalid living, in bare bones conditions, lacking food, etc. In the United States this could not be more from the truth! People below the poverty line in the US are likely to live in a home larger than the average European, have enough to eat, and have many modern conveniences including color TV, major appliances, cars, etc. The Heritage Foundation has a very good research report on what is “Poverty” in the US at http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2011/07/What-is-Poverty . You will probably be surprised at how well people consider to be in poverty truly live.
I think it is funny when someone uses “color TV” as a descriptor of ‘not poverty’. This isn’t the 60′s. All TVs are color now. Maybe it’s time to graduate to “flat-screen TV” or HDTV instead of “color TV”.
Just sayin’
Even “flat screen” TV is not necessary, as this type is the only type out there (AWA the color). Pretty soon there will be nothing other than HD.
Several outstanding black journalists have written about the effects of the welfare state on the black family, and statistics bear out the truth. It destroyed the black family, just as it has done the urban poor whites and latinos. It would take familiarity with history, including economic history, for people to see that when a government robs the productive and gives it to the non-productive, the result in the long run is poverty for everyone.
Haiti, if you study its history of socialism, is the poster child, just as India under its socialist leaders, the USSR and much of Latin America. As Hayek’s analysis in “The Fatal Conceit”, civilization was evolved based on traditional moral principles. Those principles enabled tribes to give way to larger groups and eventually led to the founding of this country, which is now being destroyed by elitists who have only disdain for tradition. Europe appears to be ahead of the US in this rush to nihilism, based on socialists’ conceit.
Sharpshooter is absolutely correct. Benevolence should not be confused with altruism, but, as in this article, it certainly often is. The reason I went through the comments was that I noticed the philosophical error in the title. It’s important to untangle these two definitions. Benevolence is entirely voluntary and individualistic. It’s a basic part of ethical behavior. Altruisim is forced on whole societies by the state, and is indeed evil. I recommend a studied reading of Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.
Benevolence? Oh please, my aching sides.
Benevolence is the lipstick on the pig. It’s a sham; the curtain in front of the Wizard; something for pravda to justify their salaries.
The reason poverty has NEVER been affected is that the spending doesn’t have anything whatsoever to do with poverty. To even suggest it is to make a fool of yourself.
The spending on poverty is 100% political. In other words, it is done to steal money from you and give it to 1) the politicians, and/or 2) their supporters.
Don’t kid yourself that it is anything else.
I’m trying out an experiment with myself as the subject. I am trying to “re-build” my life from scratch. I used to earn a good five figure salary and had all the trappings of success. Not bad for a guy with only a couple years of college. I am someone facsinated with “inventing”. I founded a company in 1993 that did great until 2008. We designed a built some hardware for our troops that the military canceled.
I lost my home and property, friends(?), my credit rating tanked and life’s immediate focus became more about keeping the heat on rather than engineering tasks. I received 0 Dollars in unemployment. Have tried for Food Stamps. Have not applied for any State support. I have been living day to day on consulting fee’s, loans from friends (paid back in full)and have begun a new start-up.
The blessing of all this “down” time has been that there has been much time available for innovating a “new” system that’s far superior to the older products of my last comp[any. True differentiation in terms of price and performance. I wrote a business plan with the mantra in mind; Plan the work, work the plan. Soon I found that there are many people cheering me on. I’m asked often when the hiring will start.
Raising capital in my world is hard. It’s actually a microcosm of our economic condition in general. It has now become a “mom and pop” approach to roll out a new and genuinely great product. It will succeed. It will succeed because of it’s performance and benefits and the results it will deliver.
A year ago, many “friends” wrote me off, called me irresponible etc… In my
mind, in-spite of Obama, an entitlement mindset and growing “victimm mentality”, this is still AMERICA. Life is hard. Often unfair. Certainly not easy. Do I feel my future success is owed to me? No. Is my future success guranteed? No. My future however, is still largely up to me. Only I have the power to decide whether to quit or drive on.
Should my efforts prove fruitful, I will do my best to make sure everyone knows that entitlements, Gov benevolence or subsidy had nothing to do with it. In contrast to prevailing opinions in DC, many american people are very capable, tenacious and independant. Should I end up living in my vehicle, I will have no one to blame but myself. And I will still be defining my own path forward.
Good luck.
The headwinds are against you.
Poverty as a career choice.
Bring on the entitlements, live for years on somebody else’s dime, snarl at anyone who suggests the time has come for the handouts end for able bodied sluggards, unwed mothers, ‘disabled’ persons whose only affliction is an allergy to work, gangbangers who move into your neighborhood because the government (taxpayers) pay their rent.
Yep, the party is about over…the poo will hit the fan…prepare to duck.
And how do you tell those who are disabled from the shysters and frauds?
Oh bugger it, I don’t know…well now, lemme think…wait a minute…
…ever heard of something called ‘a thorough medical examination?’
Better idea: shut down the welfare state and leave charity to private individuals and organizations, who can then do their own due diligence.
There has been no improvement because nobody’s trying to improve anything. It’s subsidized poverty – giving people what they need to survive but not expecting them to do anything to change their situation. For every success story, every fortunate person who has pulled him or herself out of poverty, there are millions of failures. And of the failures, the majority are NOT people who tried and failed, but people who never tried at all because they accepted failure as the only possible result.
They were beaten long ago. Their culture is one of beatenness – of passiveness, of mere survival, not of achievement. Their core belief is “The System is against me. I can never get ahead because I’m [insert excuse here].” They can hear all the uplifting messages society has to offer, but they believe the evidence before their eyes: born in failure, surrounded by failure, educated in failure, dying in failure, how can there be anything for them other than failure? It doesn’t matter if they’re black ghetto-dwellers or white meth-heads in the Ozarks. Government spending does nothing to change their fundamental beliefs.
To change them would take someone intervening the moment they were born. Someone would have to literally take them by the hand and lead them step by step through their entire lives. Handing them money and saying “Now, go forth and succeed!” is not enough. They don’t know how to succeed. They only know how to fail. Government largesse means failure is ok – someone will take care of them anyway. Is that a good, liberal thing? I don’t know. There are accidental failures – we all experience those. But should there be chronic, lifelong failures? Should the government allow people who fail to simply give up? I don’t know.
Depriving them of money except for producing wealth of equal value would induce them to become productive because in a monetary society everyone wants the freedom money can bring and needs the respect that money income provides. So the answer without letting people starve is give out all the free rooms, apples, oatmeal and cheese wheels that anyone would need to avert starvation, and leave the emergency rooms open. And then give free equal ownership to all the factories you could build to those willing to build and work in those facotories (properly run by well educated managers) and poverty among the willing who attended the daily and required education programs would end soon enough. Voluntary poverty among those like Francis of Assisi and the old Mountain Men of the 1820′s who ran away from civilization would always be there, but freedom requires to freedom to be poor if that is your choice (since making money and wealth is a hard job). That’s the end game and it is really easy to set up with only a few important changes from what we have now. And the society would get really filthy rich really quickly with an awful lot of people “saved” from poverty really quickly. Compare 1800 England to 1900 England. No comparison.
I believe with hard work, everyone on earth could earn precisely 40k a year.
I believe everyone can be rich and no one has to wait on tables or wash dishes or be a gardener or factory worker.
Anyone who is not a millionaire is simple lazy, I believe this.
I believe dogs are telepathic.
People can live a very comfortable life in America without being ‘rich’. Our ‘poor’ certainly have managed to live high on the hog with little effort. ;p
Yes, it’s odd how many of the “poor” of this country are FAT.
Not just a bit overweight. GROSSLY OBESE.
Oh, but they are “pooorrrrrr. We must heeeelllllp them!”
Yeah, right.
Meanwhile, there ARE people who are really in need who are not helped because of government regulations that get in the way of those who really want to HELP.
A lot of the real suffering in this country would evaporate very quickly if we just reformed the tax system.
Valerie Jarrett, and Van Jones Talks About Transforming Society
http://www.Youtube.com/watch?v=TnDxzvc0OXk
Equal distributiohn of the ownership of wealth (primarily real estate with rent rolls and wealth producing capital like factories, mines and oil wells and the like) would easily eradicate poverty when the poorest person would have wealth that produced income in excess of current need. This wealth would have to be reinforced by skilled employment by the owner and the moral recognition of the owner of why providing value to his/her neighbors for earned income of no greater value that the value provided is morally necessary for an ordered and just society that is advancing in prosperity. Giving free money in of a continually growing quantity, that is being provided by someone else’s effort, is a recipe for societal collapse, since the temporary summer ant state is so superior to the winter grasshopper state that all the winter grasshoppers are gradually wiped out or converted to dependent status. That is what is happening now and that is why the contagion of dependence without exchange will never cure poverty while equal ownership of capital by the morally trained will end poverty. The poor have to become owners, of capital creating a profit, which means a full embrace of private property, capitalism and profit all of which the left has been trained by Marx, Lenin and Stalin to hate. Yet those three are the only three solutions to reverse our continuing collapse which is less like a hurricane and more like a termite infestation that is hardly noticed until the roof is in the basement.
The poor will always be with us, but that’s because of human nature and bad luck. This article makes a distinction between helping those who are poor because they truly can’t help themselves, and those who are poor because self-righteous benevolators believe they aren’t competent to manage their own lives.
Long ago I saw a simple calculation. You take the number of poor people in the country. You then take the total amount of money in all forms that are spent on the poor. You divide the money by the number of people who are poor. The figure turned out to be $40,000 per person. We know that if that happened there would be no poor. The $40,000 did not reach to poor. Most of it went to the middle class who were manning the agencies that provided the aid. A similar calculation today would be interesting.
Yes, and that’s the money that survives the collection process to reach the program. Most of the tax dollars collected go to gov’t employees and office expenses, long before any reach the intended recipients.
You’re probably not naive enough to believe that money spent on “the Poor” is really about poverty at all.
It’s about redistributing YOUR money into the pockets of the Ruling Class and their paid-for supporters.
There would still be poor people. If everyone was given 40K a year, all problems would not be solved because of life choices. If you make/earn/recieve 40K but you have a 50K/yr cocaine habit, your kids are still going to starve. If you buy all the latest/newest/fanciest electronics, your kids are going to starve. People will still make stupid choices. When I called to disconnect our mind numbing useless cable, the lady assumed it was because we couldn’t afford it. She told me she would feed her kids Ramen noodles three times a day before she would dc her cable. There will always be stupid people.
TRANLATION:
“Let those kids starve. Most of them are the wrong color, anyway.”
Okay, I’ll bite…so why do we always have to feed kids of the wrong color?
Will there EVER come a time when their parents are required to feed them themselves?…or is this the new racism?
Naw. It has nothing to do with the amount of ‘melanin’ in one’s skin.
The ugly, obese and stinky people are discriminated against because they are gross to look at and smell and most obese and stinky people are lazy pigs and UGLY is just UGLY.
http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2010/05/bad_news_for_ug.php
Sorry to shatter your teensy utopia. What next? Ugly people as ‘models’? We already have that. You’re welcome.
OMG, these people are really starting to question our ultimate weapon against them — altruism! Panic! Quick, grab the nearest outlandis accusation we have!
*digs around*
Oh yeah, this one will work! It isn’t all worn out at all!
“RAAAAAACIST!”
Give it up Lefties, Obamacare won’t cover what you are smoking.
The number of truly poor is a heck of a lot less than the official numbers. You recall how the number of “homeless” dropped under Clinton, but was higher under Bush I and Bush II? Definition changes.
Some of our poor and homeless actually are, but the majority? Nope. Not at all.
Carley, skin color has nothing to do with it. Not directly. Indirectly by race baiters, such as yourself, is another story.
Does anyone have a solution?
I have a suggestion. Any public charity is highly susceptible to corruption and therefore must be policed and regulated. The problem we have now is that both State and Federal governments, who are the police and regulators, engage in public charity and are able to legalize any of their own corruption.
The solution is simple: Except for disaster relief, State and Federal governments must be constitutionally prevented from engaging in public charity.
Private charity organizations and local governments can take over public charity responsibilities. State and federal governments would be well positions to carryout their legitimate responsibilities as police and regulator.
Check your copy of the Constitution. Mine says that the federal government is ALREADY prohibited from engaging in public charity.
OH come on America, do we all really care about something as insane as this topic? Let Michell Obama who think America, “is mean spirited.”work on the fat.
Welfare (not entitlements) is generational. The Hyspantic non-speaking , illegals have the system down to the dollar signs.
false I’D, fake SS #, {do you use E-Verify where you live?} to get their bennies. They will flock to every state that will pay for all the free loaders, and we hope that’s it’s NV and CA. After all they are both open border state, and proud of it.
please support Alabama that has passed a very stricked law and is being attacked by the ACLU and the DOJ,a replay of what they did to AZ.
A wonderful law just passed in FL. All welfare receivers must pass a drug test if they get welfare. Sounds like a solid plan.
I would recommend “A Fairwell to Alms” and “The White Man’s Burden” for anyone interested in studies about why big government and big private philanthropy efforts fail and will always fail.
I will admit I’ve been on the other side of this issue; that is, a F.S. recipient. I was a single mom with 2 teenaged sons who lost my job in the 2001 tech crash, after working for a comp. for 6 yrs., working my way up from admin. asst. to project mgr. — but despite training 13 mgrs. in those years, the powers that be would not make me the mgr., due to my lack of a college degree. So I went back to school. I know, counter-intuitive, right? But after spending 6 mos. as a dept. store clerk (no benefits, making 66% less than before, horrid hrs/schedules), I knew the only way out was to improve my chances. I also made sure my boys had our state’s equivalent to Medicaid (not me however; it was only for kids). But it was weird — when I first lost my job (due to merger w/largest competitor; only 1 of my position was required and I had TWO WEEKS less seniority), I got $832/mo. unemployment. This was to house/feed/etc. 3 people. When I applied then for ADC and FS, I was told I made too much! By $8/mo., I was over the limit for assistance. Anyway, I don’t know what I would’ve done w/o the FS in those few months I needed them. Thank heaven I knew how to cook, so could look for the best deals and make the healthiest choices I could (no pre-fab stuff). I about shorted myself out that first year: classes 9 – 1, pt time job 1 – 5, then 3 nights a week back to school 6 – 9. But I finally made it. However, I don’t think that would’ve been the case w/o the govnt programs. I didn’t like taking help (went against the individualism that made this country great), but for my sons’ sake, I didn’t have much choice. I got off as soon as I could, but will forever be thankful I did get the proverbial hand up. I’m now a certified literacy volunteer, and am trying to not only pay for what I got, but hopefully pay it forward as well.
The premise that government programs to assist the poor is charitable is in error. Even those who push the programs do not pretend them charitable.
Charity is individual VOLUNTARY response to aid those in need. Many voluntary groups supported by persons who are not rich already exist and help at far less cost than any government programs – no bureaucrats with union protections?
Government programs are compulsion using the fist of law requiring free citizens to “benevolence”/ OBEDIENCE. Those who decide this have in the main, eg. John Kerry, ALL the Kennedys, both Obamas after having tapped the benevolence springs of the USA to become very rich,and others have sufficient wherewithal to fund their own private charitable foundations if benevolence is their aim. But compelling others, using the levers of government is far more satisfying, and in being able to so compel enhances their belief in their own superiority. Compulsion of others makes the effort not benevolent but punitive for those others. This is the management system of gangs, of tyrants, of dictators, not charitable, not benevolent well-meaning personages.
In addition it is important to keep in mind that those who impose these “benevolent” actions do not call them charitable, but entitlements for their chosen needy.
You present Charles Rangel as spokesperson of these benevolent government representatives. Charles Rangel who even the Congressional House, in which many members have been seen to be less than admirable, failing to honour private and public oaths and sundry other reprobate behaviour, admonished for “unethical” conduct.