RoR: Forum

I was highly sympathetic and very happy to see that her blog raised money for her. I would like to see where she is in a year. She seems very clear-headed.

It is always easier to solve someone else's problems. They should do this. They should do that.

I do not think that forcing someone to live with their parents is the best way for a welfare state to solve the problem of unwed mothers. But the deeper problem of even having a welfare state is perhaps more salient.

Whatever answers Linda Tirado finds will be for herself. I do not see any way to institutionalize a fix to poverty. I was never sympathetic to Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickeled and DImed, But that had more to do with the fact that hers was a fake poverty. Even if Ehrenreich's circumstances had been real - say she had been fired from her university for something - she had the social capital to live well as a waitress and clerk. She just went out of her way to make bad choices so that she could write a book, publishing lest she perish. Compared to that Linda Tirado has achieved something special, perhaps heroic. I wish her well.

(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 11/25, 6:59pm)

Post 1

Thursday, November 28, 2013 - 4:32am

What structural changes could the USA make to government at all levels to reduce impoverishing conditions without resorting to wealth redistribution?

Post 2

Thursday, November 28, 2013 - 6:49am

Allow me a preface before I suggest an answer, Luke. Really, the government cannot do much. It is up to each individual. Granted that we live in a culture that informs us, each person makes their own choices.

Given that the government cannot be a market entity in the sense that ultimately it must by definition hold a monopoly on retaliatory force, everything the government could do is "wealth distribution."

I go into it twice on my blog about "Unlimited Constitutional Government." I mean, can Congress get its walls painted? An open bid process selecting the lowest price would still be "wealth redistribution" because if YOU were getting your own home painted, you might select the most expensive contractor, if you judged them to be the best value for the money. When the Pentagon does that, we complain about wasteful spending... They cannot win...

We roll a lot of different public entities into "government." One example is the debate over "Common Core" which confuses and is confused by the fact that public school systems are and are not "government." The school board is separately elected. The mayor generally has no say. The city council generally has no say. The funding for schools is distinct, also. Another is the public library. Again, the librarians do a good job of keeping the mayor and the police out of the stacks; and city libraries are funded from distinct millages.

On a West Wing episode, speech writer Sam Seaborne is tasked with formulating the conservative case against public schools. (Wasted trillions over decades. Congressional liberals send their own kids to private schools, not DC public.) In the end, he summarizes his true feelings: "I think that education ought to be like defense - insanely expensive for the government and free for everyone."

Before it got into the business of farm subsidies, the US Department of Agriculture was an educational agency, discovering and distributing the best information on farming. In addition, for many years, they operated a training course in Indexing. The theory was that farm wives had the intelligence and the time to learn how to index books for publishers and do the work via the mails.

Back in 1990-1992, I served on the White House Conference on Libraries and Information Services. The guest speakers included Newt Gingrich and Lamar Alexander. Of course, the librarians were all in favor of feathering their own nests. Still, I believe that they made a strong case that if push came to shove, our general society would be better off with libraries and no schools, rather than schools without public libraries. Their agenda was informed by the easy array of horror stories of censorship and control from local schools, from the censorship of books to the decisions on curriculum. In the library, you can educate yourself by your standards to meet your own needs.

So, my view is that libraries should be like defense: insanely expensive for the government and free for everyone. The actual use of them would depend on a cultural norm that is widely lacking. I mean, that is why you started this topic, because of bad choices that you see other people make. I do not know an institutional fix for that.

Until about 100 years ago, America's common culture did support the individual choices you (and all of us here) prefer that everyone make. The Horatio Alger stories are misunderstood today: in the end, the poor boy only gains the chance to succeed; he does not become rich. I have two boy's stories about aviation from before World War One. In both books, the boy runs away from home to make his fortune.

I am not conversant with children's literature today, but I see a lot of titles and precis go by. Mostly, I find sob stories. Even Harry Potter for all of its virtues is about a boy who is rescued from his boorish home by a greater institution. He does not just get it into his head to learn wizardry and make his own way in the world as a good mage.

(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 11/28, 7:07am)

Post 3

Thursday, November 28, 2013 - 7:51am

I guess what I really meant was, "What programs has the government in place now that enable poverty and cripple wealth creation?"

I can think of more than I care to name here but even with all those changes made, per comedian Ron White, "You can't fix stupid."

Post 4

Thursday, November 28, 2013 - 10:36am

"We don't plan long-term because if we do we'll just get our hearts broken. It's best not to hope. You just take what you can get as you spot it."

Things like minimum wages, regulating and licensing everything under the sun, employment laws to "protect" people that end up preventing employers from hire low skilled entry level people into jobs where they could learn something, tying everything to credentials rather than intelligence and aptitude, penalizing entrepreneurs at every level, zoning laws that prevent people from starting businesses in the areas that they live, etc, etc. create the hopelessness resulting in the quote above. Follow the trail of money stolen from producers. The politicians and bureaucrats that create the regulatory environment that prevent people at the bottom rungs from trying anything without "permission", make a living off of keeping people in a state of hopelessness and entitlement.

"Take what you get when you spot it.": A hand out from a gov't agency. What a racket, cut off people's legs, give them crutches bought with other people's money, you've made a friend (voter) for life.

Post 5

Thursday, November 28, 2013 - 6:48pm

Marotta keeps saying that public schools somehow are but are not government. His claim is that the school board is elected, and the mayor or city counsel generally has no say and the funding for public schools is 'distinct'. This is total nonsense! The governor of a state is elected separately from the US President - but that does NOT mean the state government is not a government. School funding is payed for with tax dollars.

The same is true of libraries that are funded by taxes - they are a government program - like the Fed, like the HeadStart Program, like State Parks. Why would anyone attempt to nuance government spending with a bunch of silly word tricks to make it somehow magically appear to be private, free market activity?
----------------------------

Luke, "You can't fix stupid." Too true. But shifting to pure capitalism has the strong added benefit of shifting to what is clearly a system that encourages personal responsibility, and that rewards achievements. That is radically different from what we have now with altruism, PC thinking, collectivism over individualism, and socialism and welfarism which are all geared to focusing society on the losers, the less capable, the bottom quintile.... and the presumption is always that people can't change, can't think (certainly not for themselves), and that things are static and unchanging - and so we are supposed to feel that PC feeling of compassion and divide up a fixed, never growing pie, giving large, guilt-sized pieces to those "less fortunate."

Well, the alternative is that if the individual is the proper focus, and people can grow and improve, and if we value those who are intelligent and productive, and if we see that the pie grows in a free market, then it is the culture that will rapidly diminish poverty and encourage wealth creation. And lots of people who would have been "stupid" under the backwards focused system will surprisingly become much less "stupid."

Post 6

Friday, November 29, 2013 - 7:58am

Mike:

"Take what you get when you spot it."

That reminds of the quote by labor leader A. Philip Randolph:

"At the Banquet Table of Nature, there are no reserved seats; you get what you can take; you keep what you can hold."

A kind of reptilian thinking. "Can I eat it? Can it eat me?" Lather, rinse, repeat.

There is always a bottom half and a top half of every tribe. The calculus of the bottom half when considering the efficacy of simply bashing the top half over the skull and taking what they want is not the same as the calculus of the top half.

What's more, the political element has found a sure fired path to the top of this seething heap by alternately promising to bash the top half over the skull, and at the same time, promising to keep the top half from being bashed over the skull, and only delivering at most 51% of those promises.

The resulting serfdom to the middlemen will continue until both halves turn on them and frag them.

Post 7

Friday, November 29, 2013 - 8:05am

Michael:

"I am not conversant with children's literature today."

What to make of the backstory of the wildly popular 'Hunger Games' Trilogy? 180 weeks on the NYTImes bestsellers list.

Admittedly, not because of the strong anti-totalitarian theme. But I'll take it; it is far preferable to the usual anti-capitalism theme.

regards
Fred

Post 8

Friday, November 29, 2013 - 4:30pm

Others may have caught this but it's worth explicit mention, the Scandinavian countries use 'forced familial internment' on unwed moms until age 26 and ... we now have law on the books in the U.S. that mandates that someone have surrogate medical coverage if they stay in the home until age 26.

I make a lot of connections in my mind (too many to mention), and many of them are perhaps spurious or benign** -- but I don't think that this ban/subsidy on those precisely up to the age of 26 is a coincidence.

Ed

**E.g., Parents who have only daughters are composed of a chauvinistic man and a woman either finding that to be attractive, or merely willing to let him be that way. In inner city lingo, the man is a "player" (more than 80% of the time) and the woman is, too -- both heavily invested in their sexuality. The gender of offspring is dictated by the chromosome donated by the man ("X" for female, "Y" for male). It may be the case that men with high testosterone preferentially donate "X" (or on the female side the female's eggs preferentially accept "X").

Alternatively, I could be making a hasty generalization based on merely a few witnessed correlations. Perhaps someone knows of parents with only daughters who are prudes or pious, or of parents with only sons who are the opposite. However, it would take more than one example to blow my theory -- which is based on many more than merely one example -- out of the water.

Post 9

Friday, November 29, 2013 - 4:38pm

LS: "I guess what I really meant was, "What programs has the government in place now that enable poverty and cripple wealth creation?"

See here from T. J Rodgers for Cato.
(In the wake of Sarbanes-Oxley, Federal regulations modified the Generally Accepted Account Procedures in ways that make it difficult to understand the true position of a company from its annual reports.)

See also "Government Subsidies for Businesses" on Investopedia here
Because there are so many industries receiving government assistance, this article will focus on three representative business sectors that receive subsidies: energy, agriculture and transportation. Each of these business sectors receives billions of dollars annually from the government.

1. The Energy Sector
2. The Agriculture Sector
Direct cash payments made to farmer-producers when farm commodity prices fall, in order to make up for their financial losses.
Loans with no penalty for default are granted to farmers by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The loans, in effect, are a gift, since defaults are not penalized.
The USDA sells insurance against weather and pest damage to crops at affordable prices.
In addition to payments from government insurance, farmers may also receive government disaster aid (cash payments) if crop damage is suffered.
3. The Transportation Sector

"Welfare" as is commonly understand has very little affect on the average recipient. Most are White. Most are on welfare for three to five years. Typically, it is temporary and does not impact "life chances" for success. This chart purports to show that those who are born rich or poor grow up rich or poor.

That is not surprising. But if you look at the chart, you realize that many of the poor do rise, just as some rich fall. In fact, twice as many rich people end up poor as poor people end up rich. That only validates a known law of physics: it is easier to fall than to rise. It really comes down to the individual. As I said up top, institutitional changes are not effective.

Post 10

Saturday, November 30, 2013 - 6:54am

Michael:

"Because there are so many industries receiving government assistance,"... specifically, based on a license in the constitution that says "general welfare."

Selective chutes and ladders, winners and losers, payers and paid fors, is not promoting the 'general' welfare.

Never mind 'industries:' within the chosen chutes and ladders industries there are specific winners and losers. What goes on unchecked in DC is pure nonsense, totally out of all control.

regards,
Fred

Post 11

Saturday, November 30, 2013 - 6:57am

Its like these clowns looked at the constitution and found a license for legalized political payola. "Hey look! it sez 'general welfare.' That means we can use tax dollars to payoff political cronies and put forth our totally random run the economy pet theories."

Post 12

Monday, December 2, 2013 - 7:57am