Two Interim Replies from Jack

Note:  After sending my letter today, Jack sent me two replies which I will post here.  However, he recognized that they did (for lack of a better word) interrupt my plan to post again in my series of posts.  But, for you our loyal readers, here they are.  - Greg

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Greg:

Since you plan a continuation of your most recent, I'll just respond to this one thing.  Later I can go back and sift through the whole thing.  I know, that makes me guilty of what I complained about earlier.

On Oct 14, 2013, at 11:08 AM, Greg Coates <gregory.coates@garrett.edu> wrote:

But turning to the New Testament, the guiding principle for Christian practice regarding private property is stewardship, not ownership.  We do not actually own or possess anything.  We, as those who bear the image of God in his good creation, stand as stewards, keepers, and protectors of God's property.  This means that Enlightenment notions of private property are relativized since I no more own what is in my bank account than I own the ocean.  All of it is God's.  What is in my bank account is for me to use to meet my family's needs (since doing so pleases God), but beyond that the use of those resources are up to God. 

I'm with your whole statement here.  Stewardship (oikos) defines our responsibility and our privilege toward the wealth we create or acquire.  Regular scanning of obituaries should remind us of this reality.  And God should guide our use of this wealth, whether we use it to create more wealth (for both sides of any transaction, remember!), or to make our family life more secure and comfortable, or to relieve the needs of those suffering, or help others on a path to their own entrepreneurial opportunities.  As individuals or as the Church, we should seek and respond to God's guidance about these.

BUT (my big point, the heart of most of my arguments)...BUT government is not God.  Basic government, as described in the New Testament, is put in place to keep order and protect us from wrongdoing.  It is not recognized as a redistributive or rationing device.  It's not a corrective of the shortcomings of the market or a substitute for caring by persons.

And in more modern times, as we read the work of Adam Smith and his successors, it still isn't that.  When government intervenes in the marketplace, no matter how noble the motives declared, it still doesn't function as a corrective device.  Democracy or communal plutocracy or monarchy or whatever's in between, government always turns out to be simply an alternative distribution device, and an inferior one.  Instead of distributing by mutual agreement and price adjustments, it confiscates and then distributes by political competition.  Rather than win-win, most of its transactions are win-lose--the kind participants would not agree to voluntarily.  

It grows wasteful and corrupt, but lacks the purging correctives the market has.  These would include the phenomena of price changes, profit and loss, and bankruptcy liquidations.  Government is "ungoverned" by any of these, and has a perpetual life with a growing appetite.  When we try to use its convenient power of coercion to take the place of our voluntary charitable efforts, we get something that is anything but charity, more resembling a livestock feeding trough but less efficient.  And it tends to displace the private donations that would have supported more charities.  We see this in the history of US charities after the onset of the welfare state throughout the 20th century.  The Salvation Army is one of the few such agencies remaining, of hundreds of such that existed in 1900.

Have these government agencies, with their much larger funding, accomplished more than the private organizations would have?  I'll say no.  In addition to their wastefulness, they lack the personal touch the privates had.  They become cold bureaucracies functioning only by rules, applied by people who don't have to care at all.  Only if you think the sheer volume of dollars spent indicates the amount of good being done would you favor the government programs; and I think that would probably contradict your notion that the quality of life does not correlate to its money spent.

I better stop now.  Trying to keep my promise above.

Jack

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Second Post

On Oct 14, 2013, at 11:08 AM, Greg Coates <gregory.coates@garrett.edu> wrote:

There's no doubt that life expectancy in Sena would be way down.  Or that it would involve a great deal of suffering.  And, in so many ways, as you point out, it would be a life seemingly less attractive and considerably less comfortable.  Yet, we might also find among such a "primitive" people a deep sense of community, an appreciation for the earth, a sense of oneness with the Divine (as they are able to understand Him/Her), and an inner peace about who they are and where they belong in this world. 

Greg:

This was your opening passage, and I meant to comment on it.  I would like you to re-read it.  In a society with very low life expectancy, much disease and uncertainty, etc., people would have little time or energy to stop and celebrate their sense of community.  While their children die of unknown causes, they may not feel like appreciating the earth or their sense of oneness with the divine.  They feel their poverty, and they mean material poverty because it hurts so much.

And it helps very little to redefine the word "poverty" from its usual meaning.  We have plenty of words to express our alienation from God.  We can better use "poverty," not as a substitute meaning--only as an expansion of what it includes.  When people are in physical suffering and bearing the torment of fear and lost loved ones, it doesn't help to tell them they're not really poor at all since they can always turn their eyes to the sublime.  We might as well say "Be thou filled; be thou clothed and sheltered" while not telling them about ways they could improve their material condition.  Their misery would then continue; but we would be able to say we have left undisturbed their sense of community and their appreciation of the earth.  I think you may over-romanticize those forced to live primitive lives.  I believe they would think so too.

But lest we both get caught stereotyping:  No doubt some poor people find ample reason to rejoice in one another and in their Creator.  No doubt some prosperous people focus on their possessions to the exclusion of persons and higher things.  But I don't buy the idea that hopeless poverty, with its suffering, somehow purifies us and should be sought.  The Bible encourages industry.

The above only came to me after I started to send you a note, and I threw it in.  My real reason for writing again before you've had a chance to react to what I sent earlier:  I want to clear up a word or two that may have been causing us to talk past one another.  What I like to defend, I think in all my emails to you, is human freedom.  What you've been critical of is not really freedom, but rather what I would call "crony capitalism."  I don't have an exotic meaning for freedom; just what I put into a Facebook entry a couple of days ago:  a condition in which no one is allowed to interfere with your choices except where you try to interfere with another's.  

But Crony Capitalism is, I think, what Marx was attacking as Capitalism when he invented the term.  When a person creates much capital and produces much goods, he comes to possess both riches and powerful influence.  He created them, and may feel temptation to waste them or to use them in ways that deprive others of opportunities, to protect his advantages.  (Less prosperous people probably suffer from the same temptations; but they will have only smaller opportunities.)  

This will seem innocent to them at the time.  They may reason that growing their enterprise has been good for everyone touched by it; therefore they ought to grow it more with the cooperation and protection of those who have political power.  Modest changes in the laws will keep pesky competitors from reducing the profits we use so well.  We'll keep out "cut-throat competition" that could put our honest laborers out of their jobs.  And we'll prevent price cutting by those who use "coolie labor" or "Asian sweatshops" so that upright Americans can continue with their high wages.  (Never mind that "coolies" and Asians would like to step on the ladder's lower rungs and progress.)

This happens a great deal, always has, and I think that's what the Campolos and Wallises of the world are attacking.  They think it characterizes most of American business.  It does not; our markets are still free enough that companies doing that still eventually face competition and must get more efficient or collapse.  When you read of once-giant companies sliding into bankruptcy, the most common cause is over-reliance on government maintaining the status quo for them, accompanied by stagnation in their efforts to keep innovating.  Actually you find more of this sustained in Europe; and even more in third world countries.  It's a violation of the freedom that I'm advocating.

The genius of the American Republic was to establish a more perfect union, in which freedom was maximized and impairments of it prevented.  The Framers especially feared impairment of freedom by government, since it had to be entrusted with coercive power to do its duties.  Government faces no direct competitors with equal power; and it needs limits.  The early limits prevented it from favoring any business over another; but over time, business owners have tried to build good cooperative relationships (naturally) with those who govern them.  In doing this, they don't necessarily know when they've crossed over the line into limiting a competitor's freedom; just as a government official doesn't necessarily know when he's using his power to stifle the influence of a political opponent.  Our way of reducing all this encroachment is by constitutionally limiting what a government can do, and exposing officials to voters every so often.  Also we protect our right to write and talk about them.

Greg, I'm observing, here, that we have a great deal of overlap in our viewpoints.  We both like the idea of being free, and at least in principle allowing similar freedom for everyone.  And we both fear the spread of an oligarchy of powerful people who step on others to maintain their position.  I call them Crony Capitalists; you use a less specific term (and less accurate I think), Capitalists.  They misuse their influence with government.  Your solution (and that of prominent liberal Christian folk) seems to be to take resources from successful and prosperous people to spread to those well off.  Mine is to attack the misuse of government power that goes with an enlarged government, and leave people free to use the fruits of their prosperity as they choose.  They may waste some of this (by my or your definition of how they "should" use it), but they can create so much that we can appeal to them to help others, and they will respond.  We know this, because of all those hospitals we've pointed out before.  And also their very process of creating the wealth, through voluntary exchanges, will enrich everyone they employ or deal with.  This is how poverty (at least the material kind) is defeated.

Enough.

Jack

Greg: Private Property and Kingdom Economics

Jack,

There's no doubt that life expectancy in Sena would be way down.  Or that it would involve a great deal of suffering.  And, in so many ways, as you point out, it would be a life seemingly less attractive and considerably less comfortable.  Yet, we might also find among such a "primitive" people a deep sense of community, an appreciation for the earth, a sense of oneness with the Divine (as they are able to understand Him/Her), and an inner peace about who they are and where they belong in this world. I cannot help but notice that our own society is filled with people who lack many of those basic characteristics.  In fact, we find a deep and rampant spiritual hunger expressed everywhere in our culture, which is why pop spirituality and self-help are constantly among our nation's best selling books. We likewise are witnessing a strong disconnect from one another and breakdown of community even as the use of social media is on the rise.  Furthermore, never has any culture been as thoroughly disconnected from the earth as ours.  I could cite examples of each of these, but we both are well aware of these maladies since we live in the same culture.  Put simply, we are a nation that is physically rich, but spiritually impoverished.  

To return to my previously mentioned definition of poverty as alienation from God, from others, from the earth, and from self, I would suggest that we might find less poverty among some of the "uncivilized" peoples around the globe than among our own.  I am obviously using the term "poverty" in a way very different than you are when you make statements about economic wealth and yet I think my theological use of the term of poverty is appropriate, in fact more appropriate in light of what eternally matters (as well as in resonance with biblical language).  Of course, the truth is always more complicated than what we like to admit and I am certainly painting with broad brush strokes in my descriptions of our culture (Chicago) and that of "less civilized" people (Sena).  Both are, of course, marred by sin and bear the marks of the fall.  I don't mean to paint one as innocent and the other as guilty or fall into the trap of Rousseau that you mentioned.

I guess here's why I wanted to engage in that little thought experiment together:  I question that our notion of "progress" which comes largely from Hegel and continental philosophy is, in fact, leading us toward what, as I'm sure you know, Francis Fukuyama termed "The End of History."  I don't need to explain this view to you, but (for the sake of those who may read our blog) I would simply say that his view sees the rise and spread of capitalism across the globe as inevitable (and desirable) -- to the point that every human on earth will one day have an electric toothbrush.  Fukuyama and others like him laud capitalism as a sort of savior of civilization, and it is remarkable to me the extent to which that narrative of progress had captivated the imagination of even today's Bible-believing Christians.  Now I do not mean to keep "beating" on you over this Enlightenment thing, but what economists value is deeply rooted in this narrative of progress and faith in the ongoing growth of technology through the accumulation of capital -- sometimes, it sounds, as a sort of salfivic human project.  (By the way, I've even read one theologian who interpreted the resurrection at the end of time as the inevitable result of the march of human progress; in his theory, humans were able to find the DNA of every human that had ever lived and were able to bring them back to life through modern technologies.  A sort of Jurassic Park meets resurrection.  It's far fetched, of course, but it is a melding of the Christian narrative with the narrative of the Hegelian dialectic and faith in progress that can often typify modern economic thought).  

It isn't that I blame economists.  I just think that we are trying to answer different questions from the very beginning.  Economists ask, "How do we produce wealth?"  Theologians, like philosophers, ask questions like, "Who are we?  Where do we come from?  What are we made for?  What is our end?  How do we get there?  What is the nature of the God who created and redeemed us?" and so on.  That's the tension I'm trying to articulate.  My example of Chicago and Sena was an attempt, however poor, to shift the conversation to the question, "How does the way we arrange our communal life impact who we are a humans?  And are there underlying assumptions and biases that we in the West have about other cultures and ways of life that might even critique our own if we were willing to listen?"

You're right that there aren't many Chicagoans leaving the comforts of urban American life to go and live in the African bush.  However, as Wendell Berry has pointed out in his many books and poetry, sometimes the "simpler" life -- including a renunciation of the modern fast-paced economy in favor of a rather Luddite agrarian lifestyle -- is more consistent with what it means to be a Christian.  And we do, in fact, see many younger Christians choosing to do just that.  (Just this afternoon I ate lunch in an intentional Christian community -- a commune -- that chooses to share life together by eliminating private property amongst themselves as a form of witness to an alternate way of life -- a way of life that is not dominated by the accumulation of things or of "capital," but rather oriented toward the sanctity of human relationships and, they would say, communal relations with God.)

Reba Place Intentional Community in Evanston, IL.  Residents share three meals a day, daily devotions, daily "life together," and a "common purse" (all their money goes into one pot that they share).  They stand as a modern-day example of an alternate form of economics in our capitalist economy.  On Sunday, October 13 my family enjoyed the hospitality of their table during lunchtime.

I want to answer your question about what precisely I'm concerned about my "beating" on you about the Enlightenment.  You asked me, "What [economic] concepts are we dealing with, and do they somehow lose meaning if we try to apply Scriptural values to them?"  That's a very important question.  Before I venture a specific answer, indulge me while I make some general remarks.  

The Bible calls into question the hegemony of economics over human life, of profits over people.  And it constantly warns against the dangers that wealth pose to the life of the disciple.  Jesus famously said, "You cannot serve two masters… You cannot serve both God and Money."  And many other similar passages of Scripture warn about how wealth presents the temptation to idolatry (see Deut. 32:10-18; Isa. 2:5-18; Jer. 5:7-8; Ezek. 7:19-24; Hos. 2:5-9; Matt. 6:19-21, 1 Tim 6:6-7 and 17-19; James 1:9-11; Eph 5:5; Col 3:5 and so on). In fact, Jesus warns against the love of money more than any other single sin.  

So (to get very practical) when we choose to orient our life decisions, as so many American do, around what a job will pay and how much profit we can make from such and such an activity, we are in danger of idolatry.  Instead, according to the Bible we are to trust that God will provide for our needs; our job is to seek first his kingdom and his righteousness more than chasing after increased wealth and worrying about things like clothes and food and economic provisions.  I realize how insanely simple this sounds.  The Sermon on the Mount has a habit of coming off that way.  Yet I think Jesus really is addressing our oikos (our economics) when he invites us to seek first his kingdom.  As you'd heard before, John Wesley interpreted this as a command to "gain all you can, save all you can, and give all you can."  (By the way, the word "save" there doesn't mean put money in the bank; it means be thrifty).  

So in terms of personal economics, the biblical message would mean something like this:  Worry not about your 401(k) or your stocks.  Don't invest your money in stocks and bonds (that would be to "tear down your barns and build bigger ones;" the one who does so is called a fool since "this very night your life will be taken from you.")  Instead, work hard, earn honest wages, live simply off of those wages so that you're not a burden on anyone else, and then give the rest away.  Trust God with the rest.  Your future is in in His hands.  This all might sound like pious jibber-jabber in light of the complexities of the modern American market, yet today I sat and ate with people who practice this very way of life.  So perhaps their table fellowship -- the free food that they offered to me and my family through Christian hospitality -- is the economics of the kingdom.  That would be one way that the conversation is shifted by bringing the Bible into economics.  (Of course, I am not extrapolating from that act that we must become communists or socialists on a political level; just noting the economic orientation that must mark the life of a believer.  I believe that the Bible never endorses any particular form of government as better than another.)

To finally go back to your question about what economic terms/concepts have different meanings in light of the Bible, I would start with "private property."  Private property was, of course, such a concern for men like Locke and his compatriots;  they wrote of the right to "life, liberty, and property" -- the basic building hocks of a "free" society.  Interestingly, the Bible calls even this fundamental concept into question at times.  Take Leviticus 25 and the Jubilee laws.  Although we have no indication that they were ever put into practice (perhaps because Israel proved too stubborn), they reveal the heart of God's economic values.  As Christians who take the whole Word of God seriously, we must read such a neglected chapter and ask, "Why was this written?"  I'd suggest that the best interpretation is this:  God does not will that in any society 1) there would be a class of people permanently dispossessed of land or 2) there would be a large, permanent gap between the rich and the poor.  The Jubilee laws were intended as a guard against both.

But turning to the New Testament, the guiding principle for Christian practice regarding private property is stewardship, not ownership.  We do not actually own or possess anything.  We, as those who bear the image of God in his good creation, stand as stewards, keepers, and protectors of God's property.  This means that Enlightenment notions of private property are relativized since I no more own what is in my bank account than I own the ocean.  All of it is God's.  What is in my bank account is for me to use to meet my family's needs (since doing so pleases God), but beyond that the use of those resources are up to God.  The biblical teaching of stewardship is a far cry from the Enlightenment insistence on private property as an inalienable right (… and can we just please note the irony of the fact that these very men who demanded the right to private property also owning other human beings as slaves?)  The ethic of stewardship found in Acts among the early disciples (see especially chapters 2-4) was what motivated Wesley to ask the early Methodists who were part of the select societies to keep all of their money together in a "common stock."  He deeply feared that as Methodists began to work hard and earn more money as the result of that work, they would stop giving all that they could and that the ensuing riches would corrupt the heart of the movement.  It was a prescient insight.  The upward mobility of the later Methodist movement proved to be its downfall as a movement.  And almost the exact same thing happened among us Free Methodists only a century later (Have you read Robert Wall's insightful article "The Embourgeoisement of the Free Methodist Ethos"?  If not, its a great read about the changes in our own denomination.  Here's a link to the journal it appears in:  http://wesley.nnu.edu/fileadmin/imported_site/wesleyjournal/1990-wtj-25-1.pdf)

I've focused this letter on "private property" and how the Bible challenges that concept on different levels.  My argument is not that the concept is entirely unbiblical (otherwise, why would we have the commandment, "Thou Shall Not Steal"?!?), but it does relativize and deabsolutize it, especially in light of the theme of stewardship as opposed to ownership.  In future letters, I will look at other commonly used economic concepts in the light of Scripture and see how the Bible often challenges some of our basic assumptions as Americans about what economic life should look like.  Also, I have not forgotten about you letter of October 11 and points 2-6.  In fact, I'm especially anxious to answer the charge you made in point #2 that I need to "blame God" for the "rigged game."  I have lots of thoughts on that one!  But this letters seems to be long enough so I'll end it here.  No need to reply unless you want to.  Even if you don't reply, I plan to write a second letter that gets back to your points that we have missed from earlier.  

I do think we're making some progress.  I know that I am certainly being challenged and am learning, at least.  

One final question:  What would you think about opening up this correspondence to a few other chosen folks who could contribute on occasion?  That way we don't always feel the pressure to be the only ones to reply.  (I know that I, for one, am not an economist so I feel unprepared to answer some of your questions/challenges to me; that's why I've taken a decidedly theological turn in this letter -- I feel like I should write about what I know.)  But the idea would be that our blog could have a small forum of contributing authors (maybe four to six, with an even split between those on the "right" and those on the "left").  Does that sound good to you?

Grace and Peace be on you, Jack.

- Greg

Jack: Simply Put, Free Markets Solve Poverty

Greg:

I like my responses to have some planning and structure to them; but I want to get something to you that you can chew on.  So'll I'll just offer a numbered list of comments on your last memo.

1.  You objected to my characterization of our poverty level as "stunningly low" and suggested it was actually "stunningly high."  The context of my original remark involved the great success story of free markets and the fact that poverty in America is a small exception to the rule rather than the overwhelming rule, as it has been almost everywhere else for all of recorded history.  Your 643,000 homeless people (BTW, I don't think there's been anything close to a consistent way of discovering their numbers) sound like a lot; but as a percentage of our population it's "stunningly low."

Lest I get tagged as heartless, let me hasten to one of my most basic points.  When you point out a social problem such as hunger or homelessness, you're talking about the fate of all of us absent some kind of productivity that has delivered most of us from it.  Your complaint arises from the fact that our great productivity has only rescued most of us and not all of us.  But systems other than free markets have failed, over and over, to rescue more than just a few within a population.  

And...an important "and"...people living in a free market are not without compassion.  Conservatives, as I've pointed out, are famously big-hearted in a free country.  Their compassion is expressed through private agencies that are much more efficient, with the resources given them, than are government agencies pursuing the same need.  But the taxation extracted by the government, to fund the public agencies, reduces the money remaining for taxpayers to contribute to these more-effective private agencies.  This is why I have argued that it's not good enough to say that the government programs have at least tried to do something.  In their attempts, they have squandered good resources on very sub-optimal achievements.  Good intentions don't guarantee good results; and it's the results that the poor need to eat!

2.  You spoke of free markets as a "rigged game," favoring those born with resources and talents and opportunities.  OK; but that's not injustice unless you want to blame God.  The important thing is this:  if it's a game, "rigged" or not, it's a win-win game.  In a free exchange, both parties gain--unlike those exchanges dictated by government.

3.  You show intense and genuine concern about people in the inner city who would apply for jobs if any capital owners would build workplaces there.  You recognize that owners don't do it because the labor resources there are not very capable of the high productivity any new enterprise would need; and you express frustration because it leaves unemployed, people you know personally and care about.

But consider the viewpoint of someone who owns financial capital.  She wants to invest that capital in places where it will initiate a large volume of profitable exchanges so more wealth can be created for all involved, including both herself and the new employees hired.  If she tries to go to the inner city, where businesses have failed or fled, she'll probably turn out to have wasted her resources--producing goods whose value falls short of the value of the resources consumed.  She'll face loss and possible bankruptcy, instead of the profit that would demonstrate that she has created wealth in the world.  Inner cities have already killed most of their businesses; how can she hope to survive in that kind of bleak environment?  Would you place a garden on ground where all the plants have died?

Now, does that mean that the people still living there have no hope?  NO.  But they have to go where the jobs are.  Example:  In the early 1900s Henry Ford needed reliable workers to make cars.  He needed to stay in Michigan because that's where the iron processing could be transported in on cargo ships from Minnesota.  So he advertised jobs for unusually high wages, to people all over the country, as did other nearby manufacturers who supplied his plants.  In the Deep South, where conditions were as bad as inner cities, thousands of men (of any color) hitched north to apply and to prosper.  These poor people entered the middle class thanks to the partnerships that made Ford so rich.  But they did have to move.  That's what happens in a dynamic free market.

Now, would it be good to help inner-city dwellers to train and relocate?  Yes, that's a fine appeal to people who'd like to give to a productive cause.  But in Ford's case it also appealed to an entrepreneur who wanted to build a prosperous business.  Is that unfair, offering only an opportunity that requires them to leave their home environment?  No, because building the auto plant in Jackson MS would just have meant that it couldn't compete profitably and therefore wouldn't happen at all.  In this description, "escaping poverty" involves a real movement, geographically and not just economically.

Building a plant in the inner city means a business that can't support itself and would require continuing infusion from the more prosperous parts of the company.  That means that the employees continue in a dependency only slightly different from handing out food packages to them each week.  But if as individuals they go to where their work actually creates product worth more than their wages, then they are in a self-sustaining enterprise.  Poverty is not just relieved; it's replace by prosperity.

3.  You saw "irony" in my reference to hospitals and the fact that so many were established by Christian organizations, apparently because they were not started to generate profit for their owners.  I don't see that.  Free markets are what makes it possible for people to to have the needed prosperity, to generate enough wealth for them to donate it to causes like that, and like other causes you pursue. Imagine trying to raise donations of that size in a country without free markets, where the people would be much poorer.  Not every successful organization needs to be set up for profit; and those set up to keep their surpluses (so-called "non-profits) are more efficient with their resources than are those finances with forcibly-extracted tax money.

Regarding profit-making hospital organizations, I disagree with the idea that they are immoral.  To conclude thus, we'd also have to say that foodstores and housing contractors are immoral; since what they produce is also necessary for life.  We require medical care; but we also require food and shelter.  Why shouldn't those who provide all of these exchange them to us and make a profit?

4.  You raised a point about where resources would go if the government did not tax them away for public purposes.  You argue that the saved resources would "simply not be in the hands of the poor," but "in the hands of those who control the means of production."  Yes, of course they would; we want them to be there!  First, these people have the resources because they created them out of their own entrepreneurial efforts, so it's just that they should have first claim over them.  But more important, they are the ones who know how to make these resources productive.  That's what creates jobs to make poor people into prosperous people.  You can kill that golden goose to give a meal to a poor family; but you'll get no more golden eggs.

5.  You pointed out an apparent contradiction in my statistics about what happens to poor families over the years.  I probably should have offered more detail.  In a University of Michigan study of hundreds of thousands of families, surveying their income levels from 1975-1991, we find that the bottom quintile mostly escaped poverty--all but 3 to 5% of that 20% of all households.  Those people--the 3%--represent the persistent poor with the multi-generational behavior patterns that I referred to.  This 3-5% of a quintile--less than 1% of all families--are a small but real group, with a problem they need help with.  But pause to note that the rest of their quintile--the 15-18%--are indeed escaping.  This is the miracle, so different from countries and eras of permanent stagnation.  On the other hand, the ones remaining permanently in poverty produce so many of our prison occupants and illegitimate babies.

6.  I ask you now to concede that there are not two, but three fates for the poor: you've spoken of two:  they have no help and either starve or find some bootstraps on their own; or a government program somehow gives them help that doesn't create incentive-killing dependency.  But I advocate for a third way:  private individuals exercising compassion, who interact with the poor one-on-one in private help programs, funded voluntarily by donors convinced of the programs' efficacy.  These donors can cut off funding the moment they suspect that the program is growing wasteful or ineffective, and choose alternate programs to help people.  (Try that with government programs!)

7.  You brought up the very interesting topic of what "freedom" means.  I suppose some philosopher may have at some time written a sentence or two about that, right?  But you've a right to ask me to express if I can, what I mean.  I think I'd say that Freedom is a condition of being unconstrained, of having a genuine capacity to select among options without restriction by another.  And in answer to the fine point you raise, I think that Jesus might have tolerated my poor attempt at definition, so long as it recognizes that it's not just other people or organizations that put bonds on us, but Sin, which comes from within us.  He sets us free from that.  And it's for us to set each other free from the bonds we keep placing on each other.  Government limits our freedom, as it must, in cases where we use it to interfere with the freedom of others.  "...and governments are instituted among men to secure these rights, deriving their JUST powers from the consent of the governed."

How are we doing?

Greg: Quick Addendum, that Money Alone Is Never the Answer

Jack,

I realize that I forgot to emphasize one very important point in all of my meanderings yesterday.  Unlike the liberals in Washington, I do NOT believe that throwing money at the problem is ever the sole solution.  Ultimately, the problems that people deal with when caught in poverty are spiritual/relational.   When we began this blog I defined poverty as the breakdown of the relationship between self and God, self and others, self and world, and self and self.  The root issues that cause chronic poverty -- things like broken families, drug and alcohol addiction, chronic unemployment, a culture of dependency, poor education, etc. --  are, in my opinion, more spiritual than physical (if that distinction can be made).  That's why I became a pastor instead of a social worker.  Therefore, the answer to the problems of the inner city is not money, but spiritual wholeness.  I think that you would agree with me on that.  I do still think that money is needed for basic necessities and for "bandaid" work, even if it isn't providing the ultimate cure.  So, I'm just writing to be clear on that point.  The ultimate answer is not money, even if it still does have an important role to play.

- Greg

Greg: My Failed Attempt to Answer Every Concern

Jack,

I think you're right.  I think that I need to respond very directly to the points that you made several posts ago and I can see that I've left you unsatisfied.  Perhaps we actually agree on more than we think we do since I actually do consider myself a capitalist and believe it to be the best way to generate wealth.  So this response will be divided into two sections.  First, I will pull some quotes or points from your most recent e-mail, offering a brief response and then, second, I will return to the post of your blog dated September 5 in order to respond directly to the seven answers you gave.

Part 1

First, you claim, "the level of poverty is stunningly low in our nation."

My response:  Of course American poverty is low if you compare it to underdeveloped or so-called "third-world" countries!  And I am sure you'd attribute the difference between the "first world" and the "third world" to the form of capitalism that has dominated in Europe and North America.  In part, I'd agree (although I'd also point out that our systematic exploitation of native peoples -- both in North America and in the subaltern world -- might have even more to do with our modern prosperity and their poverty).  

Yet in our own nation I'd hardly call poverty "stunningly low" in light of the facts.  According to the most recent census data, 16% of Americans currently live at the poverty level and 20% of children do.  These are our highest poverty levels since 1993.  In fact, 1 out of 6 children live in homes that cannot provide consistent access to adequate food.  And without government programs such as SNAP, WIC, subsidized school lunches, etc. these children might literally have nothing to eat.  Astonishingly, most Americans (58.5%) will spend at least one year in poverty between the ages of 25 and 75.  And currently there are an estimated 643,000 homeless people living in the U.S.  These are not "stunningly low" numbers; I'd call them "stunningly high."

You also said, "In order to find even the small amount of poverty we do, and to make it seem large enough that we would need government's forceful hand to correct it, we have to keep on redefining poverty upward.  Where once it meant widespread lack of food and shelter; today it means not feeling confident that these will continue, or receiving less material goods than others."  I am not knowledgable enough to know if the standards used to define poverty have shifted as you say.  But let me be clear:  I am not calling for more than a minimal safety net to meet the very basic needs of those in the most desperate of circumstances.    Yet I would ask, Jack, at what point exactly do you go from saying that there is a "stunningly low" level of poverty to an amount worth our collective attention?  When the number of homeless tops a million?  When the number of food insecure children rises from 15.9 million to 16 million?  Because to me, our poverty already seems quite noteworthy.  

Meanwhile, you praise the entrepreneur as the real hero of the story.  Yet if we are to witness the emergence of those meritorious entrepreneurs from among said 15.9 million, is it not fair that we as a society ensure that the 15.9 mil are provided with a stable learning environment, quality education, basic healthcare, and similar (dare I say "equal"?) opportunity to that of their middle and upper class peers?  Otherwise, the expectation that these unfortunate children (who simply, it would seem, lost the lottery at birth) will be able to participate in the free market at the same stratum and with the same wherewithal as their peers will be able is unrealistic.  The game is rigged.  The starting lines are uneven.  I can't beat you in a game of Monopoly with an inheritance of one house on Mediterranean and Baltic while you inherit hotels on Park Place and Boardwalk, no matter who ingenious I may be.  The proposition that seems so scandalous to so many laissez-faire libertarians is actually rather modest: Let's be proactive a making sure the game isn't rigged before it starts.

Second, you state, "The process of hiring the labor puts more income into the laborer's pocket than he could earn elsewhere, and so his wealth has increased.  That is how people escape poverty, and there is no other way."  I agree with that statement.  But why are there so many who are willing to work in the inner cities who have no businesses willing to hire them?  I'll answer that.  Because those who live in impoverished locations are oftentimes unreliable, difficult to work with, untrained in the etiquette and basic manners of the middle class, sometimes mentally ill, and even tend to be felons, etc.  So we have a quandry:  1) Poverty is alleviated when laborers are hired, but 2) those who can hire chose not to hire in the places of the greatest poverty.  The only solution that I can see is that profits must not be the primary goal of the businessman and businesswoman.  Of course, we do see some examples of this taking place, but they are precious few.  The truth is that, left to self-interest alone and the guidance of the invisible hand (and when we say "the invisible hand," do we not mean basic human nature?), the businesses go elsewhere.  What proposal then, based upon the free market, do you offer that will help people "escape poverty" since "there is no other way"? 

As for point three, you point out to me that hospitals were originally created by Christians -- which is why so many bear the names of saints and biblical characters.  Yay!  We're finally on my turf.  I am a church historian.  And you are exactly right.  The irony in the context of our conversation is that these hospitals you point to were not created for the generation of profit.  In fact, the idea that someone might profit from the care of one who is ill would have been considered unthinkably immoral.  Hospitals were originally set up as agencies of Christian hospitality, a tradition dating back to Abraham which demanded care for the guest because the guest her/himself is an end in and of her/himself.  To treat the guest as a means to another end (i.e. profit) was inconcivable to early Christians yet it is the reason the modern medical-industrial complex exists.  If only we had some Christians today who were more committed to treating people ends in and of themselves as opposed to putting profits first (whether in the insurance industry, the medical field, or all those jobs in between). But the system has made us all guilty and made it impossible to treat individuals as ends in themselves.  In other words, I believe Capitalism has offered an alternative religion.

As for your forth point, which states, "There are two kinds of compassion:  one which speaks compassionately and likes to persuade or compel others to behave benevolently but gives little personally; and the other which actually gives, from their own means, to those who suffer.  The first we call "liberal Democrats"; the second "conservative Republicans."  Wait now, that sounded snarky, you're thinking.  It comes from a recent census study by economist Arthur Brooks of Syracuse University, currently president of the American Enterprise Institute; published in his recent book, 'Who Really Cares.'"   Yes, I do think it is snarky.  And, worse, I think it falls into the logical fallacy of a false dichotomy.  Nevertheless, I won't argue with you on this.  Republicans are generous.  I know many who are -- including most of my family.   I'll just points out that it is logically possible to hold the position that for the sake of the poor it is necessary to BOTH give generously from your own wallet AND also advocate for a progressive tax.  I, and many I know, fall into that category.  I think these dichotomies (and stereotypes) are unhelpful.

Fifthly, you state, "When I say government is inefficient I mean that government has wasted resources that could have done far more for these poor had they been left in the hands of those who created the resources.  The government action, in the big picture, has left the poor worse off than they would have been."  My response is quite simple.  Those resources that would have been saved would simply not be in the hands of the poor.  To claim that they would have been is a tremendous leap of faith.  Such resources would be in the hands of those who control the means of production.  Without "directed" distribution of resources, we know that the bottom 40% of the people control only 0.2% of the wealth while the top 5% of the population controls 61.9% of the population.   So when you talk about how the social safety net "wastes resources," you're right.  But it just wastes the resources of the top 5%.  (Link to the academic paper -- it is from 2007 so things may have shifted a bit:  http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_589.pdf).  It is far more likely that dollar X would go for a yacht for someone making six figures than it would go for a childcare payment for the single mother trying to make ends meet on about $20,000 per year, and given the extreme wealth disparity in our nation, it seems disingenuous to me to suggest that the "waste" caused by reallocating funds for the poor actually damages the poor by, in essence, "wasting resources that could have done more for [them]."

On your last point you say, "[P]oor families, over spans of a decade or two, cease to be poor.  Only a few of those in the lowest quintile of family income--maybe 3-5% of them--remain there after a US census or two.  And that fact does, in fact, come from the US census."  Now that's odd.  First, because it doesn't line up with my experience at all (or the that of my many, many friends who work in the inner city), but, hey, if you have the data, then who am I to argue?  But secondly, it seems strange, in light of that data, for you to make the claim on Sept. 5 that 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."  After all, you can't have it both ways.  

Now, at this point, Jack, I just want to say that this debate is not personal.  I may sound very passionate and that I because I am and it is because I care very deeply, but it is not because I am angry at you or at any other of my conservative family or friends who genuinely believe that the government should not have a role to play in poverty alleviation (beyond what you have suggested such as enforcing private property laws, etc.)  That said, I will move on to the second section and try to address, very briefly the points you made in the blog of September 5.

Part II

1.  The primary point here seems to be that 1) welfare programs de-incentivize people from working and 2) it wastes valuable resources.  As for the first, I believe that is entirely untrue when you consider who very low the standard of living is for the person who lives off of the system.  This is why I believe that welfare and unemployment benefits should remain low (as they are) so that there is still plenty of incentive for such people to find work.  (SSI and Disability is different and I think those should be higher since those are people who CANNOT work even if they wanted to).  It boils down to the question of how much incentive you think is appropriate.  Let's take two scenarios.  In the first, if you don't work, you starve and your kids starve.  End of story.  In the second, you don't starve, but you also don't enjoy the delicious foods you see others eating around you; you don't get to clothe your children in new, quality clothes for schools so that they avoid insults; you don't get to s occassionally plurge and celebrate a birthday or vacation; you don't get to buy that car you've always dreamed of.  Now, in my opinion, the first scenario is just plain cruel.  Does it provide incentive to work?  Of course it does!  It provides very strong incentive.  The second scenario also provides incentive though.  Does it provide as much as the first?  Perhaps not.  And yet I believe it provides plenty of incentive for any able-bodied man or woman to try to find work and become a productive member of society.  

As for the wastefulness of resources, I believe I've already discussed that earlier.  In my view, a somewhat wasteful program that cares for the vast needs of the poor is better than no program at all.  You counter that it is wasteful and that this actually hurts the poor because the resources that are wasted could actually end up back in the hands of the poor themselves.  I counter with that:  yeah, right.  When the top 5% of the population controls 61.9% of the wealth and the lower 40% of the population controls 0.2% of the wealth, I'm highly skeptical that much of that those "wasted resources" are going to "trickle down" to the lowest of the low.  Those facts, combined with the church's pitiful efforts at poverty alleviation in our own nation -- let alone around the world -- leave me gladly accepting the crumbs that fall from the government's table.  I believe it's the best option that the poor have right now.

2.  You write,  "It was good for both sides, since the business owner got low priced labor and the new workers got the best pay they'd ever had.  They're both exploiting each other; but for some reason only the employer is accused of 'exploitation.'"  First off, I think you misunderstand me terribly.  I never have and never will accuse a businessman or woman who deliberately enters the inner city to create jobs of being an exploiter.  Yet your answer baffles me since I was involved in many conversations for many years, trying (begging) businessmen to set up shop in the inner city, but to no avail.  The last sentence of this quote aside, this investment in the inner cities simply is not happening at all in our nation today. And where it IS happening, it is happening by Christians who are deliberately setting aside the pursuit of profit as their number one agenda (a violation, I might add, of capitalism's rulebook).  Either that, or the businesses are being built in areas of cities that are being gentrified, which is an entirely different endeavor.  

The first part of your answer though, I agree with.  I think you are right that the ability of people to set up their own businesses and begin to sell and trade is a wonderful solution to poverty.  One problem:  As you know, setting up a business requires capital.  Where does that come from for a typical inner city family?  Problem 2:  You must have consumers:  Where do they come from?  And where do they get the money to buy your product?  In other words, I really like your answer in theory, but what does it look like in practice on a large scale in modern urban America?

3. Perhaps we need to have a discussion about the word "free."  I think we use it in different ways.  The way that the word "free" and "freedom" is used by John Locke and the Post-Enlightenment thinkers such as those who drafted the American constitution (Jefferson, etc.) had a very different understanding of freedom than did the authors of Scripture.  When Jesus speaks of freedom, he means something very different than the economic freedom you speak of in your posts.  We should discuss this because we could easily start talking past one another and equivocating on our terms.  That's not a response; just a reflection.


Know what? I think I'm going to stop here.  First of all, because I'm tired and I think I've addressed a lot of material already, but also because as I look ahead I see some topics coming up that will take some posts in and of themselves.  So I've tried to response more directly to your ideas.  If I still am too indirect, I apologize.  I'm not an economist and so you'll have to give me some grace for writing outside of my academic discipline.   But, beyond that, I'm not a logical positivist not even a foundationalist.  So perhaps were are dealing with some differences in our epistemological assumptions.  I suppose any discussions of this nature must begin with defining the philosophical and epistemological methods, mustn't they?  And perhaps that is part of our problem.  I read history different than you.  I imagine I have a very different theology than you.  And I likely have arrived at a different idea of "the good" than you.  And perhaps that is precisely what makes our conversations so interesting.  Till next time...

- Greg

(And I really MUST stop neglecting my Ph D studies for this.  Paul Ricour, Hamid Dabashi, and Achille Mbembe are calling my name and they won't stop until I appease them).

Jack: "The Level of Poverty Is Stunningly Low in Our Nation"

Hi Greg.  

Took me awhile.  As I sketched in my mind what to say, my original plan was just to ask you to take out my last letter or two and look again.  I had broken your previous statement into its implied component questions; got your agreement that I was reading you clearly; and then offered responses to each.  But what I thought (and still think) would help us would be for you to give at least a quick response to each numbered point.  If on some of your points you believe I've successfully answered your question, you could gratify me by so stipulating.  And then for those points where you remain unsatisfied, you could focus your logical firepower and ask for further response.

The alternative, which I'd prefer to avoid, is one in which I respond with my best to each point you make; and then without comment you simply come back with yet another point.  "But what about this; but what about this?"  So I was going to reiterate my previous answers and then ask you how well each of them satisfies you.  And I would have put off my response to your most recent, holding that off as an incentive to getting you at the same table with me.

But I do see some things in the most recent that I'd like to respond to now.  So:

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?  

Your argument begs the question.  In fact, the level of poverty is stunningly low in our nation.  We, and a few other capitalistic states, have become a historical anomaly, in which poverty is the exception rather than the rule.  And that reduction of poverty has come about almost entirely by private means.  By that I mean that entrepreneurs have created ways to make us far more productive of the things we desire.  In order to find even the small amount of poverty we do, and to make it seem large enough that we would need government's forceful hand to correct it, we have to keep on redefining poverty upward.  Where once it meant widespread lack of food and shelter; today it means not feeling confident that these will continue, or receiving less material goods than others.  Even a glance at most people in the world, or at most people in our country prior to the last century or so, show how little poverty we have by comparison with either.  Did you maybe mean "obscure" rather than "obscene"?

One would also expect... 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.)

The US economy has a huge rate of private giving, compared to that of any other country.  The more socialistic the country, the less private giving there is, as a percentage of income.  But when a commodity is free, the quantity demanded will always exceed the quantity supplied; this applies to philanthropic gifts as much as to anything else.  

However, you want to know why profitable corporations don't do more to eliminate poverty.  And once again I point out that elimination of poverty, wherever it has happened, as resulted from companies engaging in the earning of profit.  To earn profit, you take resources and convert them in to products and services whose value exceeds that of the resources.  "Resources" here includes labor, and in fact labor is the predominant resource in business.  When we convert labor into products worth more than the labor, we create wealth.  The process of hiring the labor puts more income into the laborer's pocket than he could earn elsewhere, and so his wealth has increased.  That is how people escape poverty, and there is no other way.  (Unless you count Taking by Force, which is how Royal Families get their wealth)

We could add that the profitable company also is producing good we desire at lower prices than previously achieved; which means that this poor laborer, now with higher wages, finds that each dollar of his wages goes a bit further in exchanging for the things he desires.  As they say in math, Q.E.D.

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?)

Turn your questions around; you're still seeing people (and by extension corporations) as consumers rather than creator/producers.  As (businessman) Oskar Schindler asks himself in the movie, "How many more could I have saved?, so we could ask "When has a business created enough new wealth to be shared by its workers and customers and owners?  Or "When do corporations get to a place where they are content with how much better off they have made their society (and their owners)?"

As you express your sincere frustration over being unable to find resources to solve a $65,000 medical problem; think about how odd that is.  If not for all the great wealth creation of American corporations, you wouldn't even be able to find this woman among the vast hordes of people in similar positions.  The very fact that she stands out attests to what our economic system has done for most of us.  And it allows us the "luxury" of being able to look at the isolated problems of ones like her and trying to find solutions for them, too.

And lest you think that there aren't enough well-off people willing to help, look in the yellow pages for a big city's hospitals and notice how they're spelled.  A huge number come under "S" for "Saint-something."  They exist because of Christians who wanted to give their own money to establish a facility that would help everyone, especially the poor.  (The rich, remember, would have had doctors and nurses come to their home a century or more ago.)

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.  

We do live in such a world.  First, because capitalists love to set up business arrangements that benefit both themselves and their prospective laborer.  (If it didn't benefit the laborer, he wouldn't stop doing whatever else he would have been doing.)  Second, because as people grow wealthier they love to give more to those who suffer.  

We might point out something about that, however.  There are two kinds of compassion:  one which speaks compassionately and likes to persuade or compel others to behave benevolently but gives little personally; and the other which actually gives, from their own means, to those who suffer.  The first we call "liberal Democrats"; the second "conservative Republicans."  Wait now, that sounded snarky, you're thinking.  It comes from a recent census study by economist Arthur Brooks of Syracuse University, currently president of the American Enterprise Institute; published in his recent book, "Who Really Cares."

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.

I need to clarify the meaning of economic efficiency here.  I mean much more than it seems.  When I say that government is less efficient, it leaves you to think I mean that even though they were a bit slow and wasteful, they still achieved a positive result that is better than no result at all.  But that's not what I mean.  When I say government is inefficient I mean that government has wasted resources that could have done far more for these poor had they been left in the hands of those who created the resources.  The government action, in the big picture, has left the poor worse off than they would have been.

I'll strain for an example.  Say, a major flood has numerous families clinging to their rooftops, while some of the local boat owners drive around rescuing them.  Now the government confiscates all their boat fuel to power a government barge that creates huge waves that wash the families off their rooftops as it lumbers around.  Those in government who sent the barge and grabbed the fuel feel very compassionate; but they are the definition of inefficiency:  They do a poor job; and they waste resources that could have been used to do a good job, and they have reduced the condition of those they said they wanted to help.  And they took resources by force from their rightful owners.  

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.  

That sounds like saying that medicine isn't working because the hospitals are still full of sick people.  Poor people who emerge from poverty cease to be visible as poor people.  What you see are those that remain.  But poor families, over spans of a decade or two, cease to be poor.  Only a few of those in the lowest quintile of family income--maybe 3-5% of them--remain there after a US census or two.  And that fact does, in fact, come from the US census.  It's hard to picture the people who have ceased to be poor, because they have escaped from the inner cities and reduced these masses of the poor from what they would have been.

Greg, I hope that my selection of quotes from you is a fair sampling of what you were saying.  It may be that I cherry-picked statements I thought I could most readily answer, and omitted some compelling points you think I should have addressed.  If you think that, be sure to try not to do the same to me!  Oh, and tell me.

Jack: Try Again

Hi Greg--

You are correct that some people, not all of them conservatives, have at times stereotyped the poor based on the derelict behavior of a few.  However, we could point out that some relief programs, by their very structure, do encourage that kind of dereliction.  But that's not where my arguments have centered.  If you lump me in with these anonymous "conservatives" who do this stereotyping, doesn't that open you also up to the charge of stereotyping us conservatives based on the careless comments of a few?

Could you indulge me by re-reading my last note to you, attached below--where I listed your questions (and got your approval of the list) and then dealt with each one? I think that I gave a good explanation about why "government programs aimed at poverty alleviation actually make matters worse."  I didn't dwell on the reduction of incentives--though it's a reality--nor did I suggest that the poor are just chiselers, nursing on the public breast.  I emphasized--go read it and see--that the problem is that when the government funds these programs, it diverts--by force--resources that otherwise could be used to address poverty by private means.  And I think history shows that the private means would address poverty more efficiently and effectively. (and permanently!)

You actually supported that latter point (without acknowledging it) in your description of the fine things you've done to help set up programs to help the poor.  With (I presume) very limited resources, you managed to buy clothes for a job interviewee; advocate for a library branch and public transit systems (neither of which is a government anti-poverty program); spread the word about job openings; help maintain a food pantry; help set up (or was it your co-worker?) a program to educate poor people on how to dress and act in applying for and getting a job; and distribute a list of employers willing to hire felons.  

Greg, consider how modest was the dollar investment in your efforts, even including a portion of whatever salary you were drawing.  Then imagine how little a government agency would accomplish, pursuing those same goals, if limited to such a small amount of money to spend.  The government agency would require a far larger budget; and I suspect would do a much poorer job of establishing one-on-one relationships with the people being helped.  By having you do it, fewer resources were diverted from other good things.  It wasn't free; but it was very efficient.  When government does things, it is also not free; but it is less efficient.  Now imagine a world in which the government ceased to tax or borrow resources out of the economy for poverty programs, so that taxpayers had more left over to fund the efforts of people like you.  

Of course, then people could pick and choose which charitable efforts to fund; and one that starts looking wasteful gets cut off almost immediately in favor of others that the donors are more satisfied with.  None of this can happen easily with a government program.  They turn into embedded fiefdoms, using their shortfalls of performance to justify more funding--the very opposite of the fate of private charities (and businesses) when they perform poorly.

Again, I'd appreciate your reviewing what I wrote last time; I think some of your comments really may have been directed toward another correspondent.  I offered numerous points, with some thought, that I thought you would appreciate.  And I'll look forward to your differentiating between taxation and theft. (I'm not saying you can't do it; I'm just interested in how you will do it.)

Jack

Greg: "The Poor are Just Lazy" and Other Devilish Lies

“So wickedly, devilishly false is that common objection, ‘They are poor, only because they are idle’.” - John Wesley, 1753

Jack,

There is so much to address here.  I feel like we are juggling a dozen topics all at once. Part of the reason I take so long in replying is because it always seems like such a daunting task to write on this wide set of issues.  So, for the sake of clarity and to keep this exercise more enjoyable for myself, I will respond to only one or two of your points right now.  Perhaps we can cycle back around to some of the other ones at a later time.

In this post, I want to state why I disagree with your contention that government programs aimed at poverty alleviation actually make matters worse.  First of all, conservatives just love to point to the worst abuses of the welfare system, medicare, etc. in order to justify their opposition to providing a just and robust safety net for those in need.  To be sure, you can find examples of those who abuse the system -- plenty of them.  But is this as widespread as you and many others claim?  I do not believe that it is.  Not long ago one of my research professors investigated the welfare system and found that, at the time of his study, of those currently on welfare, 70% had been on it for less than two years.  Another 20% or so had been on it less than five years.  And only 7% of those on welfare could be considered "chronic abusers" of the system.  To hear some conservatives talk, you'd think the inverse of these figures would be true.

The fact is that the majority of those Americans who are caught in poverty genuinely desire to work and would prefer to have a job as opposed to receiving a handout.  My own experience as a pastor and community organizer in the inner city for four years confirmed this fact for me.  Far from the picture that many paint of the poor as lazy couch potatoes who would prefer to draw a free paycheck instead of doing an honest day's work (and there ARE those people, but they are a very small minority -- 7% is about right according to my own encounters with hundreds of people), most are eager to work and are even willing to do menial tasks or hard labor -- tasks that I would personally hate to do -- for a minimum wage paycheck if it were available to them.  In fact, whenever I announced a job opening at our weekly food pantry, I would have people lining up to ask me about how they could apply.  One time one of my co-workers announced a free class would be offered to help people acquire basic employment skills such as learning how to dress for an interview, what businesses look for and expect from their employees, etc. and we literally had to keep going back to make more copies of the flyer we had created because the demand was so great.  And when I managed to acquire a database of business in the area that hired felons, I ran out of copies of the list on a weekly basis.  No matter what the talking heads may say about the poor, no one will convince me that they are a mass of leeches on society unwilling to lift a finger to help themselves.  Instead, a whole host of factors contribute to chronic unemployment in the inner city.  Allow me to offer just a few scenarios/factors from real life:

- Teens (and adults) who want to get a job but literally have nothing presentable to wear to an interview.  I knew a teenage girl whose mother would sell her daughter's clothes for drugs.  The girl kept wanting to apply for a job, but every time we'd buy her a set of clothes for the interview, they would be gone by the next morning.

- Being geographically located in an economic desert in which jobs are simply unavailable.  And being unable to find transportation every day to the suburbs or downtown where businesses are actually hiring.  Public transit is the best option for most of in this situation, but even coming up with bus fare on a daily basis can be very difficult for the unemployed.  And it doesn't help when local politicians keep cutting funding for public transit.

- Inadequate access to computers and the internet for the purposes of finding job listings and submitting applications.  Some have called this the "technology gap."  Middle and upper class families take for granted the tools they have in their own homes for research and communication.  Job hunting is immensely more difficult when you have no internet, no computer, no phone, and sometimes no electricity at home.  (This is one reason I fought so hard to keep our local public library branch open in our neighborhood.  Our Republican mayor wanted to shut it down -- along with five other branches in inner city neighborhoods -- but together we raised such a fuss that he had to back down.  Interesting that he didn't propose shutting any libraries down in the wealthy suburbs.  If you're interested in this, here's a link for you: NUVO article )

- Lack of basic social skills make employers less likely to hire people who speak with improper grammar, who are unfamiliar with protocols of etiquette that middle class folks learn by osmosis, who struggle with issues of literacy, etc.  Not to mention racial discrimination which is still a very serious issue even in 2013.

- If the only job you qualify for is manual or physical labor (and it usually is if you're a high school drop-out), then what do you do if you deal with chronic pain?  Or if you've been restricted from lifting anything over 10 lbs by your doctor?  This automatically eliminates you from a huge percentage of the jobs available in your area.

- Young adult males who can make ten to twenty times as much money selling drugs on the corner than competing for that one position that just opened up at the Dollar General down the street.  Capitalists are right about this:  human beings are rational and will do what they need to do to survive.

- Felons who are immediately disqualified from 95% of employment opportunities before the interview even begins.

- The woman whose husband has abandoned her with three children that she alone must care for and who somehow must find a way to job hunt and hold down a full-time position that will actually be profitable after deducting the costs of childcare.

- Middle aged workers whose parents require constant medical care and attention and who cannot afford the expense of a nursing home or elderly living facility.

These are only a few examples of the obstacles that the poor face when seeking employment (and I'm sorry they are so roughly written -- I'm typing this all very quickly because otherwise it won't get done).  Of course, the government is not the answer to all of these problems.  No one is saying that.  But some of these issues can either be exacerbated or alleviated according to how as a society we choose to address them.  

I submit to you that the "invisible hand" does very little to rectify much of what I've listed above.  Guided purely by self-interest and the pursuit of profit, a business owner will simply not choose to locate her business where the threat of break-ins is constant, where the workforce is uneducated, where the base of consumers have little to no disposable income, where real estate prices are in free fall, where the broken down infrastructure makes "importing" and "exporting" supplies through the economic desert a hassle, and so on.  If businesses are to be located in the inner city in order to provide jobs for the urban poor, the business owner must be motivated by more than the bottom line.  They must see it as their mission.  (There are examples of this being done in our country -- often by Christians -- and I applaud those efforts.  But they are far too few.)  The invisible hand does not provide that sense of mission.

Meanwhile the government can actually address some of the issues in productive ways.  We can provide cheap (or free!) public transportation.  We can maintain a robust and well-funded system of public libraries in order to lessen the technology gap.  We can ensure that the poor have basic healthcare so that a freak accident like a broken arm doesn't cause a family to go bankrupt.  We can fund our schools and pay our teachers adequately so that every child in our nation can learn to read and excel academically.  We can provide funds for counselors, psychiatrists, and social workers who want to address the complexities of poverty on an individual level and bring healing to damaged minds.  We can fund summer lunch programs in the park so that children don't have to go hungry three months each year.  We can provide re-entry programs for rehabilitated felons seeking to enter the workforce.  We can provide programs like Jobs for Life that equip unskilled workers with basic tools to make themselves more employable.  I could go on and on and on.  But here's the thing:  doing these things costs money.  Money isn't the ultimate solution, but it is an important part of the equation.  And the question I am asking is this:  As the richest nation that has ever existed in the history of the world, can we find enough money to make sure that our poor are given ample opportunity to work themselves up and out of poverty?  Will we collective address on a system-wide level the systemic causes of poverty in our nation?  And when people do hit hard times due to loss of a job or major medical issues, will we provide a safety net to catch them when they fall and see them through until they can get back up on their feet?  I believe we can.  And as a Christian I believe that we have a moral obligation to see that it gets done.  

Next time I write, I want to address this frequent claim by libertarians and conservatives that taxes are theft.  But I think I should wrap up this post for now.  I'm enjoying this dialog so let's keep it up. My replies may be somewhat infrequent in coming months due to how busy my Ph D work is keeping me, but I will reply eventually.

Be Well,

Greg