The poor would be better off without it
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| The typical fate of a big government program: it produced the exact opposite effect of what was officially 'intended' |
By Bill Boner
The
unemployment numbers came out on Friday. They were worse than expected. Only
74,000 jobs added – about one-third of the consensus estimate. Meanwhile, the
labor force participation rate – the amount of people either employed or
actively seeking work – went from 66% to 62%. That's a loss of about 5 million
from the available workforce … or about 100,000 a month.
In December,
more people left the job market than entered it. So, the official
"unemployment" rate went down. The bad news had little effect on
stocks.
Investors
thought it was good news, but they weren't quite sure. On the one hand, it
seemed to point toward more EZ money from the Fed. On the other, even taking
the effects of bad weather into account, it looks as though the economy could
be weaker than commonly thought.
The 'War' Goes On
Meanwhile,
the 50th anniversary of the feds' "War on Poverty"
came and went last week, without much notice. No flags flying. No speeches.
Veterans on both sides took their money and kept quiet. But that didn't stop
hands from wringing, hearts from bleeding and bellies from aching.
So, the
"war" goes on.
But as in
many other of the feds' wars, we don't know which side we should be on. We've
got nothing against poverty. Then, again, we've got nothing against wealth
either. People should be able to decide for themselves what they want out of
life. But during the Johnson administration the rich got the idea that they
should exterminate poverty … or at least gain a political advantage by
appearing to try to do so.
So it was
that on January 8, 1964, LBJ declared war:
“This administration today,
here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America.”
That was 50
years and $20 trillion ago.
Jesus Christ
warned us that eradicating poverty wouldn't be easy. "The poor will always
be with you," he said. So far, it looks like he was right.
About 15% of
Americans still live in poverty – roughly the same percentage as in the
mid-1960s. And that's despite the government spending about $1 trillion a year
on eradicating poverty!
A New Kind of 'Poor'
But wait. It
depends on how you define "poor." What we take from the recent
article in the Wall Street Journal by senior research fellow
at the Heritage Foundation Robert Rector, titled "How the War on Poverty
Was Lost," is that the "poor" are too rich for their own good.
The feds
spend $9,000 a year on each of the roughly 100 million recipients of their
various means-tested welfare programs. That, and other sources of revenue, give
the typical poor person a rather rich life. According to Rector, the typical
American living below the poverty level:
“… lives in a house or
apartment that is in good repair, equipped with air-conditioning and cable TV.
His home is larger than the home of the average non-poor French, German or
English man. He has a car, multiple color TVs and a DVD player. More than half the
poor have computers and a third have wide, flat-screen TVs. The overwhelming
majority of poor Americans are not undernourished and did not suffer from
hunger for even one day of the previous year.”
Sound pretty
good? Yes, but there's more to life than creature comforts. And by attempting
to exterminate material poverty, the feds created a new kind of poverty that is
far worse.
We have some
experience of it: In the 1980s and 1990s we lived in a war zone – a
"ghetto" in northwest Baltimore. There, too, there was plenty of
money – at least, there was enough to buy gadgets and drugs. Everybody had a
TV. And everybody had alcohol and drugs. There was a whooping party whenever
the welfare checks arrived. But it was not a very nice place to live.
When you pay
people not to do much, that is what they do. And then, after doing so little
for so long, they can do nothing else.
Tales from Druid Hill
The
Druid Hill area of Baltimore, where we lived for about 10 years, was the front
line in the War on Poverty. Few people had jobs. Instead, they hung around.
Idleness begat disorder. And trouble. In personal lives, family lives and the
life of the community. People slept at all hours … and stayed up late at night
partying. Children were poorly tended – often out on the street in the middle
of the night. The sidewalks were trashy and dangerous. Gunshots were frequent.
Violent deaths were not uncommon. The red and blue lights of the gendarmes were
never far away.
It had its
charms. One of our neighbors had murdered another man in a drug dispute. He
seemed like a nice fellow – at least as long as you didn't get him too mad. He
and a few others formed a kind of glee club … singing Motown hits until they
passed out drunk.
They could
get drunk every night because they didn't have to get up to go to work in the
morning. The work world imposes order. You have to get up in the morning. You
have to get along with your coworkers. And you have to get the job done. Mother
Necessity is a powerfully civilizing force. Take her out of a community, and
the place goes to hell.
Marriage,
too, comes with civilizing requirements. You have to get along with your
spouse. You have to learn to live together. You have to take responsibility for
other people … and cooperate to get the job done. But there were almost no
marriages and no jobs in Druid Hill. Why?
The War on
Poverty made them unnecessary. You didn't need to have a job to support
yourself. And you didn't need to get married to support your children either.
The feds would do it for you. Rector totes up the consequences:
“In 1963, 6% of American
children were born out of wedlock. Today the number stands at 41%. As benefits
swelled, welfare increasingly served as a substitute for a bread-winning
husband in the home. [...] Children raised by a single parent are three times
as likely to end up in jail and 50% more likely to be poor as adults.”
The War on
Poverty? The poor would be better off without it.
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| And as this chart shows, it didn't come cheap. |
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