Greg: Another Try

Jack,

I'm going to give this another try.  I think you're right that I didn't address the points you were making as directly as I could have.  In my defense, it was very late and my brain was throwing fits that I was trying to make it write to you that evening.  Nevertheless, I do think much of what I had to say is relevant, if perhaps tangential.  For example, the statistics that I shared with you about how only 7% of those on welfare have stayed there chronically speaks to how "efficient" and "effective" welfare actually is -- presumably it is doing what it is supposed to do (i.e. provide people with a temporary safety net until they can get back on their feet).  It also presents evidence against your claim, "When poor people come to depend on government support, they sometimes set up multi-generational behavior patterns and forget what it might be to be a productive, self-supporting person."  If my professor's data is correct, that is a far smaller problem than you make it out to be.  But, you say, that is not the heart of your argument.  Fair enough.  Let's address your argument.

The core of what you are saying seems to be:  welfare is inefficient.  It would be more efficient for the poor to be cared for by the private sector.  To quote you again, you say, "I think history shows that the private means would address poverty more efficiently and effectively. (and permanently!)"  Now that's a fascinating statement to me.  If that statement were true, then why do we in America have such an obscene level of poverty in our nation?  This is the most unregulated and least taxed free market in the developed world. I've included a cart below that illustrates how low our taxes really are in the U.S. when compared to the GDP.

Corporate tax rates are also comparatively low in the U.S. (especially once you consider all the loopholes that are available.  See examples here:  <http://money.usnews.com/money/retirement/slideshows/top-10-corporate-tax-breaks>).  And yet in this nation that so values the unregulated market, what do we find?  Massive unemployment, severe poverty, homelessness, sick children left without insurance, and the like.  One would also expect, according to libertarian theory (and I believe what you are arguing for), that an unregulated economy like ours would witness wealthy philanthropists, profitable corporations, and the private sector freely utilizing their funds to eliminate poverty, but that is very far from the reality on the ground.  (I do not mean to dismiss the incredible generosity of some wealthy philanthropists.  My point is that what is given does not meet the level of need.)

And this is a nice segue into another of your points.  You mention how the work of my former church in the inner city illustrates the effectiveness of voluntary poverty alleviation efforts, even without lots of funding.  Well, you're certainly right about that -- we had almost no funding!  Know why?  Because the wealthier Christian businesswomen and men that I pleaded with to help save our little preschool -- the one that we had to close -- simply couldn't allocate the resources for it.  Their cash was tied up in capital used to grow their businesses.  Because, as you know, to compete in today's marketplace you gotta keep spending money to make money.  (I've never been quite sure about this: when does a business have enough?  When do corporations get to a place where they are content with their current level of profit?)

Were we effective in what we did with little to no money?  Yes, we were.  We were extraordinarily efficient with the money that we had -- and I know that you love efficiency.  However, we simply lacked the resources to make a large-scale difference.  We couldn't provide housing, clothes, jobs, food, health care, legal advice, psychological services, low-interest loans, utility assistance, transportation, education… we were, after all, a church of 70 people.  The only way to provide those vital services would be to tap into a massive source of income.  

Let me illustrate with one story from my time as pastor.  And this is just one story among hundreds.  One Monday morning in food pantry, a middle aged woman came to me to ask if we provided financial assistance with paying for medication.  I told her sadly that we could not afford to do that.  I told her that our little church channelled its limited funds into the food pantry that had brought her there that morning.  She was understanding and did not make me feel guilty in the least, but she did start to cry.  I asked her what was going on and she told me a bit of her story.  She had been a working woman up until the recession that hit in the fall of 2008 (thanks to the greed of unregulated banks -- but that's for another email, isn't it?).  When she lost her job, she also lost her health insurance (because, you see, in this country we have this funny system where your health insurance is tied to your job.  Weird, isn't it?).  And yet she had recently been diagnosed with a terminal illness.  My memory is foggy here and I cannot recall exactly what she had, but I think it was cancer.  The illness was treatable, but she could not afford the treatments and medication.  She did not quality for medicaid because her income had been too high on the year (since she had until recently had a decent job).  And so she was stuck.  Here was a medicine that she could take that would literally save her life, but she didn't have the money to buy it.  She had spent weeks on end going from one charitable organization to another -- even to some based in hospitals -- begging for the funds to purchase the treatment she needed, but to no avail.  When I asked her, out of curiosity, how much money we were talking about, she gave me a figure that was larger than our annual church budget -- and that amount was what she needed monthly!  What could I do?  I prayed for her and told her I would continue to pray that she would find the help she needed.  But after she left I became angry.  Here I live in the richest nation that has ever existed in the history of the world and yet we had in our midst a woman in her late forties who was dying from a treatable illness for lack of funds.  No one was there for her, but my little church.  And our little church simply could not meet that need.  It was far too big, and we were far too small.  If that woman is to live, there has to be funding from somewhere.  And that somewhere wasn't coming from the private sector (or from the public sector, for that matter, but that's because we don't have universal healthcare here).  I share that story simply to illustrate the constant struggle that workers in the inner city face:  vast human need and a paucity of resources to meet that need.  

Just imagine what we could do if we did have resources!  Imagine what a First Church could do if, instead of having an annual budget of $65,000, it had the annual budget of, say, a Greenville Free Methodist Church (I often dreamed of this).  The sad thing is, there isn't that much interest out there in finding out what would happen (and, believe me, it isn't for lack of trying to drum up interest).  So if even Christians -- Christians! -- are unwilling to make radical financial sacrifices to alleviate the poverty that exists right in their own backyard (and within their own little denomination), then how can we expect that the general populace will voluntarily pony up the cash to eliminate poverty in the world as we know it?  No, my doctrine of original sin teaches me that we as humans are not prone to generosity, but to selfishness.  And while some wait around for people to open their wallets voluntarily and out of free will, others starve.  The free market has simply not met the demand.

And so I judge a progressive tax which coerces money from the hands of those who benefit greatly from this system to be worth it if it feeds those starving people and pays for their life-saving medication.  Call it the lesser of two evils.  Prying taxes away from people is less evil than watching people starve.  Of course, I wish we didn't live in a world where that was necessary.  I wish we lived in a world where the rich really did live by the principle "live simply so that others may simply live," but we don't.  Heck, I wish even Free Methodists lived by Wesley's dictum to "gain all you can, save all you can, and give all you can," but we don't.  Today Christians (to say nothing of non-believers) build for themselves huge mansions with swimming pools and three-car garages while others on earth sleep on the streets.  It shouldn't be this way, but it is.

I'm being too verbose.  So let me sum up for the sake of clarity lest you conclude that I've not addressed your points.

Your claim:  The private sector is more efficient than the public at eliminating poverty.  Or, in your words, "People operating voluntarily, alone or in company with others, Christians as well as others, have demonstrated both great generosity and efficiency in helping the poor."

My claim:  Yes, but those of us in the private sector who commit our lives to doing just that do not have the resources necessary to carry out the task.  If we wait for "voluntary" giving, it doesn't come -- at least not in the amount needed to meet the demand.  Therefore, even if the government is less efficient, at least the job gets done, or partly done.  It's better as a poor person to have some inefficient help than to have no help.

Your claim:  The free market, by creating incentives to work and by rewarding innovation, will lift people out of poverty.

My claim:  But that isn't happening in America's inner cities.  Sure there are the occasional rags-to-riches stories but, it simply isn't happening on a grand scale.  In this nation -- the freest market in the developed world -- we still see masses of the poor who try to climb out of poverty and cannot.  There needs to be a modified free market, a "free market plus" so to speak, since the free market alone isn't doing the job.

I realize I have not addressed everything, but I hope I have at least addressed some of what you write.  I appreciate your patience and willingness to carry on this dialog because, as you can see, I care about these things a lot.

Blessings,

Greg