OK, T, this is funny.

I actually do have to work today so I might not be able to engage in a rapid fire debate until later this evening (plus I need some time to get in to the asbestos body armor) but just so I know do you want my idealized prescription for poverty or a more pragmatic and realistic one given the American system as it exists right now.

Judd:

Both, actually, though I think I’m pretty familiar with the idealized pie-in-the-sky can’t-ever-possibly-work-because-of-human-nature version that libertarians tend to ascribe to.
tgirsch´s last blog ..The Libertarian Solution to Poverty

The pie-in-the-sky vision is so out of the question right now and you probably know what that is for me anyway so I’ll stick to a more pragmatic approach.

In 1964 LBJ declared war on poverty. It’s now 2009 and *channels Harry Reid* “This war is lost.”

First off there are different levels of poverty and people are where people are for different reasons. What ought to be done varies wildly depending on a few different things. I’ll try carving some time out of my lunch break to go more in to that.

Don’t know how to post gifs, so the youtube version will do

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYiHaq_hl1s

(It’s just the same 10 second clip looped over and over, don’t really watch it).

In 1964, LBJ declared war on poverty. By 1973, the poverty rate had dropped from 19.0% to 11.1%, a 42% decrease in poverty. Poverty stayed more or less flat from there until the Reagan/Bush 41 era (“government is the problem!”), at which point it bounced back up to the 15% range.

LBJ’s “war on poverty” didn’t fail, it simply wasn’t kept up, especially after Nixon (who, contrary to what most people expect, wasn’t too bad on poverty comparatively speaking). Then Reagan came along and tried to kill it completely.

For what it’s worth, there are essentially three watershed moments in the nation’s history that resulted in sizable reductions in poverty: Social Security (1935), the Civil Rights Act (1964), and Medicare (1965). Notice what all of these have in common.
tgirsch´s last blog ..The Libertarian Solution to Poverty

Poverty dropped from 22.3% to 19% from 1959 to 1964, prior to the declaration of the war on poverty so a significantly improving economy had something to do with it.

Inflation and incredibly high interest rates that hit the world in the early 80’s may have also had more of an impact on increasing poverty than Reagan/Bush.

Oh shit, here comes the peanut gallery (which I mean in the nicest possible way, digg )

T:

Went for Old Reliable first I see there, huh? The thing with the statistic you cite on the poverty rate when LBJ declared war in 1964 is the poverty rate was already in decline with the economic expansion that was underway. All Johnson did was continue to ride the wave and then take the credit for it. The decline became stagnant when the economy went in the tank in the early and mid-70s and it’s been essentially flat since then. There are instances of it going up and down but those are usually tied to recessions and economic expansions. It hit 15% again early in Reagan’s first term but then again unemployment was also in the double digits at the time. Lack of jobs, I suspect, has a lot to do with the poverty rate.

Given the poverty rate was about 22.4% in 1959 and declined every year until it hit 12.1% in 1969 before beginning to tick back up then how do you figure Medicare and the Civil Rights Act get the credit?

Actually, the biggest driver in the late 70’s and early 80’s was the Arab Oil Embargo and the ensuing energy crisis.

As for why Medicare and the Civil Rights Act get the credit, look at the year-over-year changes in the poverty rate. Yes, thanks to a booming economy and civil rights gains, the poverty rate was trending downward. But the biggest single-year improvement was from 1965 to 1966 — a 15% reduction in poverty in one year — not coincidentally, the year after Medicare took effect. Second best year? 1968, nearly a 10% reduction from 1967 (see below for why). Third best? 1965, an 8.95% reduction from 1964, when the Civil Rights Act was passed.

Of course, year-over-year allows for a lot of noise, so instead go with a three year comparison, comparing the poverty rate in a given year against what it was three years earlier. by that measure, the three best years of poverty reduction, by far, were 1966 (24.62% lower than 1963), 1967 (25.26% lower than 1964), and 1968 (26.01% lower than 1965).

By either measure, the biggest gains by far were made in the immediate aftermath of the passage of the Civil Rights Act and Medicare.

And, of course, you pointed out that the downward trend started prior to 1964 — it actually started in 1961. What happened then? Oh, yeah: a 15% increase to the minimum wage, followed by another 8.7% increase in 1963 — a 25% overall increase to the minimum wage in just three years. (Hey, isn’t that supposed to kill jobs, and thus drive poverty up?) And remember that big 1968 poverty drop I mentioned above? A 12% increase in the minimum wage took effect in 1967, followed by an additional 14.3% increase in 1968. That’s a 28% increase from 1965 to 1968, and a total minimum wage increase of 60% from 1960-1968.

Unfortunately, we don’t have reliable poverty stats prior to 1959, so it’s hard to say what the trends were prior to that. Still, the numbers seem pretty clear here. By increasing wages for low-wage workers and creating programs that targeted assistance toward historically poor and disenfranchised groups, substantial gains were made.

Of course, this is a great example why statistics don’t really convince anyone of anything. You’ll no doubt attribute those large gains to nebulous “other factors,” and there’s probably not any evidence I could present that would convince you that those government actions had a substantial effect.
tgirsch´s last blog ..The Libertarian Solution to Poverty

As a side note, the poverty rate didn’t “begin to tick back up” in 1969. It had a minor uptick for that one year, but otherwise continued declining until it bottomed out in 1973. Between 1972 and 1979, it was essentially flat until the Iranian revolution drove oil prices up to record highs and caused the second oil crisis.
tgirsch´s last blog ..The Libertarian Solution to Poverty

It’s also worth noting that in 1969 they changed the way the poverty rate was calculated. Prior to 1969 things were calculated off of the cost of four meal plans the Department of Agriculture just made up and were deemed adequate. After 1969 things were based off the Consumer Price Index. Comparing anything before that change with anything after is a little apples to oranges.

We’ve previously discussed the meaning and accuracy of data on the effects of increasing the minimum wage and I don’t feel the need to revisit it again so I’ll just accept at least a portion of your premise. Let’s say that, yes, jacking up the minimum wage lifted from poverty all those people that made it out that year. What about those others left behind? It may be peaches and cream for everyone who got a raise but to those who either lost their jobs because their employers couldn’t afford to keep them on through a 25% government-mandated raise or who found jobs that much harder to get, the mountain just got harder to climb. If you were a member of the working poor before and then lose your work, well, those stats you cite don’t indicate any difference.

Back to the original issue of the libertarian solution to poverty, the solution depends on who the person is and what one defines as poverty. *securely fastens asbestos underoos* There will always be poor people. So long as resources are limited and human beings have varying degrees of ambition and talent, there will be economic inequality. The definition of what it means to be poor is a nebulous enough thing by itself. An income that would leave you pretty comfortable in Indianapolis or Topeka will leave you with practically nothing in San Francisco or Honolulu. I know there’s a set standard in words for what it means to be impoverished but I have somewhat limited faith in the government’s ability to paint a clear picture of it based off a line that supposedly means “If you make more than this you’re fine but if you make less you’re fucked.”

I want to share an article I read over a year ago on NPR that really affected me. It tells the story of a mother and daughter in Ohio struggling to make ends meet. Even within that family, what I see as the correct solution is very different. The mother, to me, seems like an utter waste. 40 years old, never had a job, not even a high school diploma. Claims to be depressed and disabled and therefore unable to work because of a car accident that happened 17 years ago. Even if I accept that (which I, uh, have a hard time doing) that still left all the time between whenever she dropped out of school and when her accident happened at the age of 23 to do something. From the sound of this article she didn’t. I, frankly, have no problem cutting her off and letting her either do something to support herself or starve to death.

Her daughter is a different story. Unlike a good many of my libertarian brethren I’m not in favor of just burning down the social safety net we’ve constructed. What I’ve observed of human nature suggests a number of us aren’t too good at constructing safety nets of our own, especially if we’re born in freefall (as this girl appears to have been). Despite her circumstances she seems to want to be a productive member of society and so I’m not opposed to spending something for some type of job training program for her or other form of assistance. Despite my normal natural revulsion at the idea of government spending in general, if she’s going to contribute a lifetime of work then the feds should make back in tax revenue whatever they spent on her now. And that makes the capitalist in me happy in the long run because there’ll be one more person helping to foot the cost when the bill comes due for the new highway or new robotic super-ninjafied al-Qaeda smasher.

That part about people saying “Why don’t your daughter have a kid?” [sic] hit me like a ton of bricks. These people are being advised, for the purposes of drawing more government aid money, to bring forth in to this world a child they are unable to support. I think it’s a pretty safe assumption that some of the people advising that course of action have already done just that. For those children I am fully in favor of a great deal of government assistance. A child born for the purposes of collecting a government check has the deck stacked against them. While I personally had nothing to do with any particular child born in such a circumstance the politicians who created that incentive system were legitimately elected, set that system up in my name and so that makes me responsible for it.

That’s probably enough red meat for one post.

Stupid internet! After my having been soundly defeated by html I’m forced to just leave you to copy and paste the link to the story I referenced in my previous post.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92592545

Kudos for the phrase “safety nets [are needed by those] born in freefall“. I’m sure we’ll be thumping libertarians (maybe including you) with it in the future. It’s a good sound bite.

Judd is entirely correct and his well-written post deserves a better response than the sneering 2-liner that Dan shiat out. Judd – congrats to you for stepping into obviously unfriendly territory and putting up well-thought, reasonable opinions. Don’t expect a warm response or to be treated fairly here. Pearls before swine, as Dan clearly shows.

Let me share a one of my personal maxims: when solving a problem, one must start, as much as possible, with a clear, complete and accurate understanding of the problem. This is why the left’s approach to “The War on Poverty” is wrong-headed right from the beginning.

The left says that the poor are “less fortunate” or “down on their luck”. While this is true for some, it is not true for all. Despite what the left says, some would rather sit on their asses than work. Some would rather beg than do something productive. Of course you’ll never hear that from the left or anyone in the poverty industry. The left loves to portray the poor as helpless victims who, if it were but for their tragic circumstances, would be CEOs, doctors, lawyers and engineers. This faulty view is why the left’s approach to the problem is doomed from the beginning.

Poverty is the result of personal failure (definitely for some, I think for most). A failure of responsibility to one’s self. There’s no government program that can compensate for that, therefore poverty will always be part of society. There will always be those who can’t or won’t take care of themselves. Programs need to focus on coping with, rather than eliminating poverty. We don’t want people starving to death in the midst of abundance. We do provide for basic needs for those who can’t or won’t look after themselves because we are a kind, benevolent society, not because it’s owed to them.

Here are my suggestions for improvement:
1. Find some reasonable and effective way to restrict low-cost luxuries (alcohol, tobacco, lottery) from those being supported by the government.
2. Educate them properly – teach them responsibility. Stop telling them that their station in life is beyond their control.
3. Find some reasonable and effective way to deal with welfare babies. Paying mothers to crank them out just creates a larger pool of potential criminals.
4. Find the most efficient way of providing basic needs (clean shelter, healthy food) to people over the long term. I suspect that dormitories would be it. Require anyone drawing welfare for more than five years to move into them.

Judd:

On the 1969 measurement change, that’s a valid point, but it also goes to my point that there’s little evidence I could give you that would convince you that government programs actually worked. There’s always a reason to discount the evidence. At the end of the day, however, I don’t think it’s fair to assert, as you did at the outset, that LBJ’s War on Poverty “failed” on its merits. At worst the data would be viewed (by people like you) as inconclusive; there’s no evidence at all that it failed completely.

Let’s say that, yes, jacking up the minimum wage lifted from poverty all those people that made it out that year. What about those others left behind?

Taking a holistic view, what about them? Even assuming your premise that some got out of poverty at the expense of others, at the end of the day there were substantially fewer people in poverty than there were before the changes. On what planet is that not an improvement? Sure, on a person-by-person basis, there will be some who are left behind, and for whom the change is difficult. But isn’t that the case with ALL progress? When determining public policy, the individual shouldn’t be forgotten, but the cost-benefit analysis has to be done in the aggregate, no?

On the official definition of poverty, you may be surprised to learn that I largely agree. It’s silly to try to set a fixed dollar amount and say “anyone above this is not poor, anyone below it is poor, period.” But you have to start from some kind of metric if you’re going to get meaningful information that can be compared year-over-year in the aggregate. That it’s not perfect doesn’t mean it’s not useful. And in the abstract, I think a definition of poverty is pretty easy to come up with. Can a person/family afford their basic needs: food, clothing, shelter, and health care? If no, poor. If yes, not poor.

Where I take exception, and where we’re not likely to agree, is when you try to argue that ambition plays a key role in poverty. There are lazy rich people, and there are people who bust their asses every day yet stay poor, and this has a lot more to do with their individual circumstances — often accident of birth more than anything else — than with their ambition or lack thereof.

As for your NPR example, taking your description of it at face value, it’s not something I necessarily find compelling. Yes, there are shitty people out there, and people who don’t really seem to deserve assistance of any kind. But I see no reason to assume that they’re the rule rather than the exception, and punish people who genuinely do need and deserve assistance in the name of giving the bad apples their comeuppance. To me, examples like this inform us as to what sorts of assistance we ought to be providing, not whether we ought to be providing assistance.

And this is where my view of how the world works begins to color the picture. Unlike you, I don’t buy the Horatio Alger myth that through nothing other than hard work and gumption you can get by okay in this world. The people who actually do get by (not get rich, just have a lower-middle-class existence) do so with a whole lot of help and a whole lot of luck, often without even realizing they’ve gotten it. (Insert Outliers plug here.) The concept of the “self-made man” is largely fiction, or at least exaggeration.

Let’s take your alleged 40-year-old waste of space as an example. Suppose, just for the sake of argument, that she turns over a new leaf tomorrow and decides she wants to become a productive member of society. How does she go about doing this? What’s her path to productivity. The answer to that is, there really isn’t one. Who’s going to hire her? And who’s going to watch her daughter while she works, or goes to school, or whatever it is she needs to do in order to start down that path?

All of this is why I’m skeptical of programs that are simply no-strings-attached hand-outs, but why I don’t want to do away with programs altogether. We need to design public assistance programs that actually remove barriers to success, and enable people to become productive. Hand-outs won’t do that, but neither will simply cutting them off and telling them “you’re on your own.”

My take on this: (and I do apologize to Judd in advance, it’s a nasty opinion.)
In a Libertarian world a few ruthless people can get fabulously rich. They can own peasants, they can have their money gold plated. (I may be confusing Libertarians and Pimps)
In a Socialist world some people have more money than others but the basics, health care, a good education, affordable housing are all guaranteed. Nobody has to sleep under bridges, nobody has a dead end life because they’re uneducated, nobody dies of poverty.
It’s a lot less glamorous but Id take a world with no big winners any day if nobody has to lose.

Sorry for the lack of intonation over the internet, but that two-liner wasn’t at all sneering. I’ve got plenty of sneering comments, but that wasn’t one of them. I haven’t yet had time for a thorough response, but the part I quoted was correct and eminently quotable.

TG,

To me, examples like this inform us as to what sorts of assistance we ought to be providing, not whether we ought to be providing assistance.

Another excellent and true sound bite. (No, wait, that can’t be a sound bite; it’s “like this” referent is far too complicated.)

As for minimum wage reducing employment among the had-been-working poor, I’m glad to say I’ve never had to make the choice, but isn’t easily imaginable that one might prefer (a) being unable to make ends meet and having poor prospects of getting a job that allows one to do so, to (b) being unable to make ends meet while having a unpleasant job that consumes your life without any prospect of it letting you do so nor allowing time to look for anything else?

As a middle class white collar worker, I certainly have chosen to quit a shitty job and live off meager savings so that I could better look for a good job.

At this point, I have a question:

I have never heard of “a great deal of government assistance,” even if just for some, described as a libertarian position.

So, aside from disinterring the old canard about the “deserving” versus the “undeserving” poor and invoking John 12:8, what is “the libertarian solution to poverty?” We still don’t seem to have one. (I don’t regard SC’s supercilious condescension as a contribution.)
LarryE´s last blog ..Passing thought

T:

To me, examples like this inform us as to what sorts of assistance we ought to be providing, not whether we ought to be providing assistance.

Me too. That’s actually what I was starting to get at when I’d decided my last post had gone on long enough. “You’re on your own,” is my ideal but it’s impractical to just go straight to that given where we’re at right now. Perhaps in time but we’re decades away, if not more.

All of us have a social responsibility to any child who was born in order to increase their parent’s access to the welfare state. Yes, a libertarian is talking about social responsibility. Any such child is here and in the circumstances they’re in because of what we collectively have done and so we owe them a few things, one of which is a one-way ticket away from their deadbeat parents. If anyone were ever to be described as a victim of America, it would be children like that. This is actually one area where I think the government has too little power and control.

I square my libertarian viewpoints with a dramatic expansion of federal or state power like so: I see the charge of the government as protecting the life, liberty and property of its citizens. Children are citizens, too, and so an adult who has no means to support themselves but then has kids is abridging the life and liberty of that child and so the government is obligated to step in and protect them. I would consider going so far as making it a crime to have a child which you are not able to provide for on your own. As a child isn’t able to provide for themselves it would become the charge of the government to take responsibility until the child turns 18. This could take many forms be it foster care and/or adoption, some type of boarding school or something similar. I think we all know why generational poverty is a killer that’s incredibly difficult to escape from. The best solution, it seems, is to stop the ability for one generation to infect the next. This requires the coercive force of government.

That covers the people who aren’t here yet which leaves us with the people who are here now. There’s a good many who are probably also victims of the welfare state, there are some who are lazy and refuse to work and there are probably a lot somewhere in between. The simplest thing to do to make sure no one is unfairly held out would be to offer job training to anyone who needs it and make it clear that after a certain period of time (which could be as long as a few years) that government teat will no longer be available and that if you haven’t taken steps to support yourself then we won’t stand behind you. If it was good enough for the Iraqi government then it’s good enough for us, too. If that results in a few people going hungry then I’m comfortable with it. I have a tough time with people who claim they’re qualified for nothing. If you’re uneducated, not overly intelligent, don’t get along well with people, don’t comprehend or communicate and it takes you a long time to do even the most menial of tasks then you’re perfect for Verizon’s customer service department.

I’m wondering if part of the point to such a selfish, amoral philosophy is not to have a solution to poverty. Pretty sure this is a worldview that gives not a rat’s ass about poverty.

Judd:

Unfortunately, I don’t have time to respond in depth right now. Suffice it to say that your idealized version involves quite a few “just so” statements which are not in conformance with my understanding of how human nature actually works. That, and it surprises me that you’re so willing to bring the force of government to bear in such a profound way, that even most authoritarians would blush at.

Nigel:

I disagree. In a purely socialist society, you ironically wind up with pretty much the same end result as in a purely capitalist (libertarian) society — a very corrupt, very wealthy ruling elite with disenfranchised masses. This is why capitalism (with its ability to get ahead) and socialism (with its ability to act as an equalizer) must exist in tension with one another, with neither one getting too much of an upper hand.

I get that. Without capitalism there would have been no SST Records, no Michael Moore movies, no I.F. Stone’s Weekly, but when it gets too big, the corporate level, it’s just no good.

T:

I’m aware that advocating the institution of a policy to take people’s children from them is something that would be greeted with….. resistance and on its surface it might seem contrary to my libertarian views. I see it as wholly consistent though.

I believe in complete and total individual autonomy free from government intervention so long as an individual’s behavior does not adversely affect the life, liberty or property of anyone else. Within that any person is free to use whatever ambition they have to cultivate their natural talents to carry themselves as far as they can, or to destroy themselves so long as they’re prepared to suffer the consequences; however, just because you’ve got total freedom to fuck up your own life does not mean you’re free to fuck up your child’s. When you’re unable to provide for yourself and you bring a child in to the world has a profound effect on that child’s life and liberty. As such it is the responsibility of the government to protect that new citizen from their parents. The extreme difficulty apparent in trying to escape from generational poverty only serves to buttress my point. If one is searching for a solution to poverty, shielding children from it seems to me to be a powerful method.

Judd,

I haven’t read the main content of your longer posts, yet, but in your last comment, you set yourself apart from the majority of libertarians I’ve encountered in that you think of children as people rather than property. That earns you a good bit more respect than the rest of them.

(Not that that’s a high bar to meet. I once heard a libertarian claim that it was okay to blow the legs off a few children with landmines if it taught the rest of them to stay out of your tulip bed. I’m afraid that libertarians are like christians; there’s plenty of decent ones out there, but some of the company you keep…)

“In a purely socialist society, you ironically wind up with pretty much the same end result as in a purely capitalist (libertarian) society — a very corrupt, very wealthy ruling elite with disenfranchised masses. This is why capitalism (with its ability to get ahead) and socialism (with its ability to act as an equalizer) must exist in tension with one another, with neither one getting too much of an upper hand.”

Well, that’d be nice! BUT….

Do you really think that is possible? I don’t think it is.
Shoothouse Barbie´s last blog ..Posting forcast: slim to none. Most likely “slim” because I need procrastination material.

I’m aware that advocating the institution of a policy to take people’s children from them is something that would be greeted with….. resistance and on its surface it might seem contrary to my libertarian views. I see it as wholly consistent though

It’s not contrasting at all.

I dislike the state immensely and resent every infringement it makes on my personal lifestyle, even when it is for my own good. However, I have absolutely no moral compunction about aggressively using that state power to restrict the liberty of, and criminalize the, mostly brown, poor.

That seems about right to me. Libertarianism never really was much for internal consistency I can only expect so much from self-entitled, whining teenagers clamoring about their desire for indepence while living under their parents’ thumb.

I’m sure you have some choice words about how you would characterize my political philosophies as well. And, that’s fine. I’m not really interested in participating in this debate; the underlying philosophies between my views and that of the libertarians are so different, I just hardly see the point.

Barbie:

Possible to get it perfect? Probably not. But striving in that direction still works better at the end of the day than anything else. Do you honestly think it would work better to socialize everything (no private property at all)? Or to privatize everything, including roads and schools and air traffic controllers?
tgirsch´s last blog ..The Libertarian Solution to Poverty

Ah. I’m a racist. Of course.

I will give a longer response when I’m able.

I don’t think Digg was calling you a racist per se, though I don’t pretend to speak for him. He was bluntly and correctly pointing out that the policies you advocated for would have an overwhelmingly disproportionate negative impact on the freedoms of minorities. It’s a fair and legitimate criticism, and one that I think deserves more than the take-my-ball-and-bat-and-go-home response you gave it.
tgirsch´s last blog ..The Libertarian Solution to Poverty

I believe the more polite form of Digg’s comment is this: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/anatolefra106266.html

On the other hand, it is worth asking: Who pissed in your cherrio’s, Digg? You’ve been more vitriolic of late. (Not that I have room to criticize. It’s just actually unusual in your case.)

T -

I haven’t been taking part in this exchange because I’ve been down this road multiple times before and I just can’t gather the energy to do it again.

I did want to note, though, that your apparent understanding of socialism is incorrect; what you describe (no private property) is classic communism. Classic socialism talks about “socializing” the “means of production.” How wide a net that last phrase spread varies with who you ask; some would say it meant factories and similar manufacturing and assembly facilities while some argued it should include farms, for example.

The point here, though, is that classic socialism does not do away with all private property or even all private business – a bookstore, for example, is not a “means of production.”

I’d also say that unlike capitalism, socialism does not require a “wealthy ruling elite with disenfranchised masses” although the risk of that outcome is always present, which is why most socialists today are democratic socialists, insisting that a real socialism can only exist is the presence of political freedoms. Without freedom, it ain’t socialism, no matter what name anyone might want to attach to it for their own purposes.

As for classic communism, see Acts 4:32, 34-35.
LarryE´s last blog ..Passing thought

I had a much more articulate response written out, and then I somehow lost it when I was forced to do work.

Suffice to say that I’m not all that far away from saying libertarian = racist. At the very least one has to be okay with implementing a system that in all practicality will produce outcomes very similar to what an overtly racist agenda would. We can sit around and parse out whether that’s meaningfully different than expressly setting out to oppress and disenfranchise specific groups, but I’m not sure how relevant it is unless we’re playing the game of “how guilty should a libertarian feel?” Basically, libertarianism is racist, at least in the way “the War on Drugs” is racist or the “no loitering” law is racist, and possibly more so depending on the person making the arguments.

But race is inextricably connected with libertarianism anyway. Most libertarians are white males. And, many of the underlying assumptions of the while male libertarian are based on the conflation of centuries of institutionalized racism and affirmative action that have benefited the while male with some sort of notable work ethic or accomplishment. One might say, not only are these geniuses arrogant and ignorant enough to conflate with being born on third base with hitting a triple, but they fancy themselves good balplayers because of it, while assuming that those who actually had to hit their way on to first with shitty equipment against top level pitching are inferior players.

A disproportionately larger percentage people in poverty are racial minorities. That had absolutely nothing to do with anything I’ve said in this thread to this point. Obviously anything targeted at the impoverished will have a larger effect of those groups. If I really just wanted to just get rid of all the poor colored folks then I’d have advocated forced abortions for people in poverty so the children they can’t afford will never become a burden on society rather than something that could turn those impoverished children in to my future competitors. Poor children now are having their freedom abridged by virtue of being allowed to remain in situations that force them to have to hit their way to first base with shitty equipment against top level pitching. If I’m not able to start them on third I can at the very least get them to second.

And I will defend myself tooth and nail against even the hint of the suggestion that I’m a racist. Racism is an ugly, ugly thing and I won’t stand for being lumped in with it. I spent enough years as a grad student in the hard sciences to work with people from just about everywhere, I’ve personally lived and worked abroad and have actually gone out of my way to (successfully) sink the careers of racists and homophobes because they were racists and homophobes. Digg, I don’t expect to agree with you on many political things but I at least have come to respect you as an intelligent and somewhat reasonable person so I expect better from you than that.

I can’t speak for Digg, especially not on the matter of race, but I think his comment about “how guilty should [you] feel” tacitly accepts that you aren’t personally A racist. I certainly wouldn’t consider you one, but part of Digg’s point is certainly that a policy can be racist regardless of the intentions of its advocates.

In case you haven’t seen it before, Jay Smooth (who seems to share quite a lot of cultural background with Digg) draws a very clear distinction, when discussing somebody making a racist comment, between “what they did” versus “what they are”. To be perfectly clear here, my claim is not that you’ve said anything racist, but that the policy you’re suggesting sounds (to Digg; I’m afraid I still have to catch up on your main posts) to be racist, without any implication that you are a racist. In Digg’s case here, he’s being brusque in not bothering to make the assumption that that you aren’t one, but that shouldn’t really be seen as the converse, either. And since Jay Smooth’s video is given in the context of how to address a person you think is a racist, and I explicitly am not making such a claim so I wanted a disclaimer, I’ve saved the link to the video to the end here.

When discussing issues of inequality between men and women, we have two different terms, ’sexist’ and ‘misogynist’. Only the latter form means a bigot, while the former pertains largely to situations and consequences, not to feelings or overt agendas. I wish we had a similar pair of terms for racism, but we don’t. I think Digg is calling your plan sexist-racist, not misogynist-racist, and that’s borne out by his reference to loitering as racist. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t mean every person who things loitering should be broken up is a bigot.

“[J]ust because you’ve got total freedom to fuck up your own life does not mean you’re free to fuck up your child’s. [...] If one is searching for a solution to [the fuck ups], shielding children from it seems to me to be a powerful method.”

Again, this really is a huge step up from most internet libertarians.

I note with great interest what happens when you apply this idea (which I’ve edited to make more general here) to Digg’s previous quip that Conde Nast does vastly more damage to people growing up the drugs on the streets do. To me, the result looks an awful lot like the kind of regulation that libertarians consistently oppose, particularly regulation of advertising content that is driven by capitalism and is not facticitous enough to be controlled by fraud regulations.

Basically, I’m saying–using the sexist/misogynist analogy, libertarian policies in action are at least sexist-racist, and potentially misogynist-racist, depending on the motivation behind them. This is so patently obvious, that anybody who advocates them must be at least a sexist-racist, if not a misogynist racist.

Frankly, I don’t care about your denials about harboring any racism. They mean nothing to me; the congruence between your behavior and your expressed ideals are for others to judge, not for you to defend with words. I’ve said it a million times before, I have a sneaker collection that is basically, on one level, an homage to Indonesian sweatshops. To some, that may lead them to determine that I am a total hypocrite, and not really for the people, or for “the workers” at all. Though I can explain the way I reconcile my own potential inconsistencies, it’s really the decision of others to determine whether such a seeming contradiction invalidates my opinions or destroys my credibility. Though I’d rather people reach one conclusion above the other, I accept that those conclusions are for others to draw. In other words, people often filter their own views about things through others expressions of their opinions on those things. You advocate at least implicitly racist policies. I excessively consume the product of Indonesian sweatshops. What does that say about we ARE? I think that’s for those whose opinions we generally respect to judge.

Your onus is to defend your advocated policies/philosophy-in-action, as not being racist, not to tell me that you aren’t racist or to tell me stories about working with minorities in grad school, or your (laudable) attempts to expose homophobes and racists. What’s important here is that while the libertarian philosophy is not racist, as a philosophy, policies implemented in its likeness will be functionally racist because of the point at which we are starting. How do you address this?

If I really just wanted to just get rid of all the poor colored folks then I’d have advocated forced abortions for people in poverty so the children they can’t afford will never become a burden on society

You did say this:

I would consider going so far as making it a crime to have a child which you are not able to provide for on your own.

Same difference.

FWIW, I’d be interested to hear what Larry E has to say about this specific aspect of libertarianism.

Judd:

I accused you of giving a take-my-ball-and-bat-and-go-home response to Digg’s criticism, and challenged you to address the substance thereof. And in response, you gave another take-my-ball-and-bat-and-go-home response. Color me unimpressed.

Let’s try working this from another angle, then. Set race aside for a moment. There are two broad ways to address issues of poverty: one can support programs to help lift the poor out of poverty, or one can support programs that punish the poor for being poor. You seem to support the latter, which seems to imply that it’s somehow the fault of the poor that they’re poor, even as you acknowledge that the effects of generational poverty can be extremely insidious and that that cycle can be difficult to break. How do you reconcile that apparent inconsistency in your position?

As mentioned way above, it all comes down to whether one buys the Horatio Alger myth. Your entire attitude is pervaded by the assumption — false, I’d posit — that if only these poor people would work harder and apply themselves more, they wouldn’t be poor any more.
tgirsch´s last blog ..The Libertarian Solution to Poverty

Examples such as the following show to me that while government handouts and welfare are necessary at times, the biggest decision the poor face in our society is often whether or not they want to improve (and contrary to leftwing opinion, there are a LOT of people who fight for the right to remain poor).

The native bands in Canada are a clear example of the two different approaches and overwhelmingly the ones who decide they no longer want to rely or survive on government funding wind up healthier and happier. You want something to compare the poor’s experience in the US with? The native population in Canada would be a good starting point.

http://www.canada.com/topics/travel/story.html?id=e05e8c9a-f24f-4e97-9b4c-8ccf518db4d4

Judd,

Reading over my last comment, I’d like to rephrase something.

It seems pretty harsh to say that your denials “mean nothing to me.” I just mean that ‘No, I’m not’” isn’t really a defense that any accuser should take seriously.

Might I direct you to the thread where Big U professes his unconditional love and acceptance for homosexuals and proves it by his devotion to Jim Crow…

Big U:

We can’t really use Canada as an analog for ways to beat poverty until we pass universal health care here.
tgirsch´s last blog ..The Libertarian Solution to Poverty

T -

An addendum to your comment:

And as soon as we stop with the Horatio Alger fantasies and reject the sneering condescension involved in claiming that people are poor mostly because of their own personal failings.
LarryE´s last blog ..So, are you satisfied now?

On the topic of libertarianism and racism, I don’t think Judd is racist – at least I can’t think of where he’s given me any reason to think so.

But libertarianism has an ethical hole at its core, one generally unaddressed: As a necessary effect, it leaves existing power relationships undisturbed. The powerful remain powerful (and likely get more powerful over time, having nothing except libertarians’ philosophical assumptions to restrain them) and the weak remain weak (and likely get weaker over time, having nothing except libertarians’ philosophical assumptions to aid them).

So even if the philosophy itself is not itself one of racism or sexism or classism (bigotry against the poor) or whatever, its practical effect is to cement those various isms in place.
LarryE´s last blog ..So, are you satisfied now?

LarryE:

That last may just be the comment of the year. And I’m going to quote it.

…right, so if you understand those dynamics and advocate for such policies to practically be implemented, what does that make you, if anything?

Not a set-up, I’m asking this question seriously. I could see somebody determining that on such a basis any purveyor of libertarian policies is racist, ipso facto. I could see the argument that that is not a viable conclusion.

We can sort of depersonalize this issue a bit by going back to the War of Drugs example. The War of Drugs is racist, in a practical sense, in the sexist-racist sense, at least. Those who enacted the policies had to understand that the results would largely play out along race and class lines. Are they racist? Sexist-racist, or misogynst-racist? Does it make a difference whether the disenfrachisement of those minorities was an explicit and insidious intent of the policies themselves, or is simple disregard for any sort of racial equality that leads to tantamount results different?

That’s why I was reluctant to get into this whole issue of whether libertarianism is racist in the first place, I see the above as a relatively profound question. But, for purposes of the discussion, I’m fine with basically just throwing out, libertarianism = racism. If it might minimize the tangential argument for the rest of this thread, I’d willing to scale back by replacing the equal sign with “tantamount to.”But, again, that’s playing the “how guilty are we trying to make them feel” game.

what does that make you, if anything

It could make you a racist. Or it could make you someone who has simply failed to think through the meaning and impact of their own dreamy philosophic ruminations about “freedom.”

I actually knew someone some years ago who over the course of our acquaintance moved away from libertarianism. Not because he thought it wouldn’t “work” – he remained convinced that it could – but what the effect would be on too many people if it did. He had originally gotten as far as the “Everybody’s FREE! and ain’t it grand!” level that, I strongly suspect, most libertarians occupy and it took a while before he started going “Um, okay, what then?” The more he looked, the less he liked what he saw. He was not – at least not the last time I saw him, which was some time ago – any sort of flaming leftist, but he had come to believe that there must be government sufficient to act as a guarantor and protector of social as well as economic rights and freedoms.

So I guess my bottom line (if you will) is that libertarianism is de facto racist/sexist/etc. in that, like various social/legal practices we have seen in our society, it’s not intended to promote or maintain discrimination of various kinds, but that would be the effect of it.
LarryE´s last blog ..So, are you satisfied now?

to LarryE – as soon as the left gets their heads out of their butts and realizes that in many situations it IS the individuals fault and not the fault of society then things can be addressed properly. Why? Because until individuals accept responsibility for their own actions, nothing the state ever does will alleviate poverty. Only idiots think that to say “individuals need to take responsibility for their part in where they are at” equates that to “being poor is mostly because of their personal failings”. Being poor is caused by a number of issues, one of them being personal choice. Now, I’m sure I will hear the “no one ever chooses to be poor”argument coming from you but the fact is, many people choose to be lazy. Many choose to focus on blaming others. The ones who move up the economic ladder over time (it may take a couple of generations or more) are the ones who have the drive to do so. And as far as the rich becoming richer, more often than not, the rich lose their money within three generations (look up shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves) so laziness and lack of effort is not isolated to the poor.

Listen to many athletes from poverty stricken neighborhoods and you hear them say things like “I had to make a choice, was I going to follow the crowd and head into drugs, gangs, etc. or was I going to get out?” “If it wasn’t for my mom/grandma being so hard on me and pushing me, I’d never have made it away from the negative influences”. Bleeding heart liberals drive me nuts. They want to remove individual responsibility and blame the “state”, “system”, etc. but never the personal choices, never the groups of gangs/friends, etc. that try to pull people wanting to get out of poverty back down.

Big U:

I’m afraid it’s you who needs to get his head out of his butt. If individual effort were the primary factor in determining whether one is / stays poor, then generational poverty wouldn’t be a problem. The mere fact that generational poverty is a problem belies your claim.

What’s the single best predictor of whether or not an individual winds up poor? It’s not race, it’s not gender, it’s not family size, it’s not religion, it’s not level of education, it’s not even employment status. It’s whether or not that individuals parents were poor. So unless you want to argue that laziness is primarily a hereditary trait, you’ve got an uphill battle proving your point. Their “personal failings” appear to consist primarily of doing a lousy job of choosing their parents.

I’m not sure what your example about the rich losing their money in three generations proves what you think it proves. It proves that simply having money can provide two to three generations of protection against laziness and lack of effort. People born into bad circumstances have no such margin of error, and it’s insulting to the extreme that you’re willing to so cavalierly pin their problems on their poor judgment.

And before you start down this bullshit road, let me say that I’m not arguing that all of the poor are completely blameless for their situations. That’s the kind of straw man bullshit that Horatio Alger worshipers like to throw out there, but it has no room in this discussion. The point, rather, is that someone can be poor, through no fault of their own, and that those people have essentially no margin for error. They could do absolutely everything right and still never make it out of poverty. I know it’s easier for you to sleep at night by pretending this isn’t the case, but the fact is, it happens all the time. There are people who bust their asses day and night and never break the cycle of poverty. And there are times where I’d like to put you in a room with just one of them and have you tell them to their face that their poverty is completely (or even mostly) their own fault, while I watch.

Finally, your “athletes from poverty stricken neighborhoods” example is absolutely laughable. To find out why, you can start by googling up “selection bias.” For every poverty-stricken athlete who “makes it,” there are thousands who don’t, and contrary to how you want to view things, it’s not always about their personal failings that they don’t. And even among the small set of athletes who do make it, the track record isn’t stellar. Lawrence Phillips springs to mind, and I’m sure Digg could point out many, many others.
tgirsch´s last blog ..The Libertarian Solution to Poverty

Right, so the way out of poverty is to learn how to be 6′7″ and shoot a fadeaway twenty-two footer of the wrong foot with one of the best athletes in the world hanging all over you, shadowing your every move…

Oh, and guess what happens, when you prove you can hit a baseball 430 feet at the age 15; a huge extended network of people with connections and resources start to give a shit about you and invest in your wellbeing.

Don’t worry, Big U, if you just tried harder you could hold your own in this argument; stop being lazy!

“See the streets is a short stop,
Either you slinging crack rock or you got a wicked jump shot”

/Notorious BIG’d

I forgot to add: nobody here is arguing that the poor shouldn’t have to “accept responsibility for their own actions,” least of all me. But the state absolutely can make a difference: by making health care widely available, by making a decent education available, by making transit available, by making job training and job placement services available, by making day care available, etc. All of these things address barriers to success that currently plague the poor, without amounting to “hand-outs.” The onus is still on the individual to take advantage of the education, to use the transit to get to a job, etc. But at least with that infrastructure in place, the poor have a fighting chance, and they have it explicitly because of actions the government has taken, and services the government provides.

It’s worth noting, too, that in most of Canada, this infrastructure is worlds ahead of where it is in the US, which likely skews your perspective. Much of it you seem to take for granted, and downplay the role that it plays.

reCAPTCHA: California ponies
tgirsch´s last blog ..The Libertarian Solution to Poverty

Big U seriously needs to read Outliers. Can I get a second on that, Digg?
tgirsch´s last blog ..The Libertarian Solution to Poverty

tgirsch > don’t be so sure people aren’t arguing that “the poor shouldn’t have to take responsibility” Based on how you guys like to read into what I say, it is very easy to see comments that would indicate it is the fault of the system/the man/ the rich/ capitalism, etc. that the poor are where they are. Take a close look at a lot of the natives in Canada. Poverty, etc. on reserves and in major cities is astronomically high (having been compared often to the situations in the ghettos in major US cities). This in spite of the fact that the entire infrastructure you cite is in place on top of billions of dollars spent each year for housing, food, etc.. If you have any part of native blood in your system, you can go all the way through University without paying for any of your schooling which is a HUGE foot up and yet many never even consider using it.

If the infrastructure made that much of a difference, then natives should be on top of the world. But they are not. Government largesse has been proven NOT to work.

And Digg, if you were as much of a sports fan as you seem to suggest, you would know that there are alot of kids that have gotten out of poverty by using their skills. Not necessarily millionaires, but successful working individuals who got a college education. You would also know that a lot of people who had the chance to get out, got sucked back into the lifestyle they left and wound up dead, jailed or poor. The same goes for areas where students were put in a position to succeed educationally. The common denominator is their decision to move away from the influences holding them down.

Big U:
don’t be so sure people aren’t arguing that “the poor shouldn’t have to take responsibility”Based on how you guys like to read into what I say, it is very easy to see comments that would indicate it is the fault of the system/the man/ the rich/ capitalism, etc. that the poor are where they are.

Anybody here who endorses this position, please raise your hand. *leaves hand down*

The problem you have is in trying to stake out an absolutist position. No, it’s not all the fault of “the system,” but it’s not all the fault of the individual either. And you’d have to be blind and/or willfully ignorant not to advantage the extent to which the deck is stacked against the poor. (Especially, though they don’t get much attention, the rural poor.) The problem I have with your position is that it puts all of the blame on the poor individual, and refuses to even consider structural or systemic improvements until absolutely all wrongdoing by all poor people is completely eradicated. That’s silly. And that’s why I’ve repeatedly argued for programs, like those I mentioned above, that remove barriers to success rather than just “welfare check” type hand-outs. (Which isn’t to say that there’s no place at all for the latter — just that it shouldn’t be the primary focus.)

Take a close look at a lot of the natives in Canada.

The problem with your supposed proof that government largess doesn’t work is that even if we accept your Canadian natives example at face value, which I’m not sure I do, it doesn’t compare against what the situation would be for Canadian natives if not for the government programs designed to assist them.

Taking the population as a whole, however, the poverty rate in Canada is less than half what it is in the United States, indicating to me that even if there are certain groups who are being missed in Canada, on the whole, they’re doing a much better job than the US. And what, exactly, are they doing differently? They’re providing a more robust social safety net.

In any case, as I alluded to above, I don’t accept that claim on the basis of your say-so. I suggest you either back it up with evidence, or retract the claim that poverty among Canadian natives is “worse than in the ghettoes” (thought the more accurate comparison would be against US Indian Reservations).

[T]here are alot of kids that have gotten out of poverty by using their skills. Not necessarily millionaires, but successful working individuals who got a college education.

Say, how did they get that education? Oh yeah, through outside assistance in the form of athletic scholarships, usually funded by state tax dollars. In other words, because of government largess. (This sets aside the fact that the number of students who get ahead this way is still only a tiny fraction of the total — 126,000 scholarships per year for all students, not just the ones from poor neighborhoods.)

You would also know that a lot of people who had the chance to get out, got sucked back into the lifestyle they left and wound up dead, jailed or poor.

I don’t suppose you have any evidence whatsoever, other than your say-so and some poorly assembled anecdotes, that this is anything like the rule rather than the exception?
tgirsch´s last blog ..The Libertarian Solution to Poverty

There’s that word “lifestyle” again. I do not think that word means what you think it means.

Big U seriously needs to read Outliers. Can I get a second on that, Digg?

It’d be a start.

If the Canadian aborigines are anything like the US ones, they’re internal governments are monumentally corrupt, highly exploitive of their citizens, and their populations have endemic alcoholism and a deep-seated and legitimate resentment against assimilation, while their communities are among the poorest on the continent. You can’t really expect them to be poster boys for economic success. Not to say citation of them is wrong, but it’s largely meaningless in any larger context.

“Not to say citation of them is wrong, but it’s largely meaningless in any larger context.”

See, that’s where you’re wrong Dan M. You have described the situation quite accurately with the exception that you left out the fact they receive billions from the government each year. However, saying you can’t expect them to be poster boys for economic success is where you miss the point. Anywhere that they have decided to no longer rely on government handouts for their economic well-being, they have become very successful to the point where some bands are world renowned in their field (check out NK’MIP Cellars) in spite of incredible opposition from other native bands who don’t want the status quo changed. Here’s a good article to see what can happen when people stop focusing on whining:

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/All+for+benevolent+dictatorship:+Chief+Louie+believes+tough+love+and…-a0168103612

Tgirsch – you say I stake out an absolutist position. Show me where I said government programs have no place in the solution, or where I said they should be dissolved where they are present. I even explicitly acknowledge that government programs are necessary in some situations….so your comment that my position “puts all of the blame on the poor individual, and refuses to even consider structural or systemic improvements until absolutely all wrongdoing by all poor people is completely eradicated” is completely out of touch with what I actually said. Either you did not read what I said or simply chose to cherry-pick random comments out of context which seems odd coming from you.

BU, you really should check your sources better before citing them.

The article you link repeatedly refers to the tribes (bands? Is that the standard term over there?) as kleptocracies. Indeed, that seems to be its whole thesis. One of the interesting effects of stealing from people… is that they don’t have what’s been stolen. Like, for instance, government aid.

(Let’s not even get into the article’s pining for despotism. I’m gonna just willfully believe that’s just a crappy joke. It’s glib use of an exact analog of the racial slur “oreo” is a little harder to ignore.)

But, yes, unemployment is a huge part of the poverty of aboriginal groups, here in the US, too. (Many reservations (I wonder why the US uses those extra syllables.) have 50% unemployment rates.)

All in all, you’ve got a lovely expose about how people are better off when they’re not routinely stolen from and actually have the opportunity to work. Tell me again what this is supposed to tell me about preferring right-wing social solutions.

To be fair, I’m thinking of the US right-wing, which is all about exploiting the poor and keeping jobs low-paying. Since the Canadian right is much closer to our left, maybe my last snark is inapplicable. TG may also be making the same mistake. (Conversely, you help us with this mistake whenever you complain about the left wing with your left in mind. As much as we disagree in reality, sometimes we really are just talking past each other.)

T:

Whether or not what I proposed to help end generational poverty is helping or punishing the poor depends on the perspective from what it is examined. If we examine any policy to address poverty in the context of the either/or in which you framed it, from the perspective of an impoverished adult not able to support themselves (for whatever reason) the government instituting a policy whose de facto effect is not allowing them to raise children then, yes, that would be punishment for being poor. From the perspective of the child born to poor parents it’s helping to lift them out of that poverty. Is it better to leave a child with their biological parent(s) knowing the insidious nature of the generational poverty they’ve been born in to and how difficult it is to escape, or is it better to remove the child from a situation where they’re left little to no margin for error from day one?

Digg:

You’re right that I have no way to prove to you or anyone else what’s in my head and so me spending time pulling anything along the lines of BU’s “Well I’ve got gay friends,” argument wouldn’t be persuasive so I’ll just leave it be.

As I stated above in my response to T, I recognize what I’ve thrown out has the net effect of punishing poverty stricken parents. As a disproportionately larger number of people in poverty are racial minorities they would be disproportionately affected by it when they lost their parental rights. The flip side is it would free a disproportionately large number of minority children from the shackles of the generational poverty that ensnared their parents. What it comes down to is where you place more value. If it’s on the parent’s right to raise their own children regardless of economic circumstance then the policy fits the definition of racist; if it’s on the children’s to be protected from the single largest factor in determining who will live an impoverished life then it is not. I side with the children.

I would add that I’m willing to go the route I am on this issue because I don’t drink the Horatio Alger Kool-Aid. I don’t reject all of Alger outright but I recognize some people are born in to situations where they’re not able to cultivate whatever their natural talents are. If you’re the kid whose mom is going on the Maury Povich Show to find out which of seven possible men is your father then you’ve got a tougher row to hoe and it’s not your fault. A child who lives in a shitty, high-crime neighborhood with substandard schools and where jobs don’t exist is going to have a tough time getting anywhere even if they’ve got a lot of native intellectual ability and a good work ethic. That’s part of why I think removing them from that situation is a net benefit.

Big U:

You’re the one who argued that government isn’t the solution. If all you’re saying is that government can’t be the entire solution, then I don’t think anybody here is going to disagree with you, because you’re arguing against a position that nobody has taken. You’re also the one who has been arguing that if the poor would just get off their lazy asses and do something, they wouldn’t be poor any more. So I think my criticism of you on that point was entirely called for and entirely valid.

Judd:

Welcome back. I noticed you were laying low and letting Big U draw all of our fire.

from the perspective of an impoverished adult not able to support themselves (for whatever reason) the government instituting a policy whose de facto effect is not allowing them to raise children then, yes, that would be punishment for being poor. From the perspective of the child born to poor parents it’s helping to lift them out of that poverty.

What troubles me about this assertion is the implicit assumption that one must do the former in order to accomplish the latter. Obviously, I don’t share that assumption.

Is it better to leave a child with their biological parent(s) knowing the insidious nature of the generational poverty they’ve been born in to and how difficult it is to escape, or is it better to remove the child from a situation where they’re left little to no margin for error from day one?

Again, this assumes that the only way to break the cycle of generational poverty is to remove the children entirely. As I said, an assumption I don’t share. It also seems to assume that the adult poor are too far gone to be saved, another assumption I don’t share. Are some of them so? Certainly. But I’m not sure this is the rule.

But let’s take those assumptions as givens for a moment. When you take the kids out of their poverty-stricken homes, just exactly where do you intend to put them? Even assuming you could find enough good adoptive parents (good luck), such redistribution of children would require a massive government effort and tons of funding. All of which I’d suggest would be much more efficiently done/spent simply investing in neighborhood redevelopment, schools, and works programs (think “ghetto WPA” or some such).

Of course, I suspect you’re not talking about moving kids around, as much as preventing them from being born in the first place. Now if in that case you’re talking about providing universal contraception access with voluntary participation but government advocacy, I’m behind you 100%. If, on the other hand, you’re talking about forced sterilizations/abortions/what have you, then I think Digg’s criticism starts to gain more legitimacy, and that you lose pretty much all of your libertarian street cred.
tgirsch´s last blog ..The Libertarian Solution to Poverty

tgirsch > what I have been saying is that laziness and the desire to hold the guy beside you down to his level is a major problem in the poor communities. Canada is much farther down the path of government intervention than the US is but you guys are slowly heading in the same direction. What I am saying is that we have discovered, after many years of pouring more and more money into social programs, that the biggest difference maker when it comes to poverty is the attitude of the poor person. Their desire and willingness to work to change their circumstances and surroundings has proven to be the most important factor in getting out of poverty. The rural poor (which I came from) is a different issue with different challenges.

This link is an interview between a guy who made a HUGE difference in our downtown core and was highly respected by the people he lived and worked with (while often being despised by people running government programs). His perspective is very much in line with mine. I should have just linked to it sooner. http://www.fcpp.org/publication.php/1442

Just as a random drive-by: You’ve got a thread without tread-jacking, that’s up to 62 comments. I’m impressed. Or something.

T:

I’m getting ready to head out to California for a friend’s wedding this weekend (where I believe I’m going to meet Barbie in person for the first time) and so am frantically working to make sure the world doesn’t fall apart Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Thus I’m forced to limit my internet debate time.

Just to re-establish, I wasn’t talking about every single child from an underclass family being forcibly plucked out. I drew a line at those adults who were receiving government assistance and to whom we’re currently willing to dish out more to assist the child.

I don’t believe all the adult poor are too far gone to be saved. In some cases, yes, but certainly not in all. However even amongst those who aren’t lost causes and are actively seeking to better themselves they’ll stand a much better chance if they’re not also responsible for caring for a child.

I would NEVER advocate anything like forced abortions or sterilization. That’s when you start to get across that line over in to evil.

I realize the idea I threw out at the beginning of the thread will be expensive. I do my best not to live in a vacuum. While many of my libertarian brethren scoff at government spending outright, I do my best to take a longer term view. To me spending fifty cents today that will make you a dollar tomorrow is just common sense. I’m pretty sure I’m safe in saying there’s a high correlation between poverty and crime. Yes, it would be expensive up-front to pull away children and, in effect, leave the government to raise them. That should be weighed against the fact people born in to poverty are likely to stay there (thus being at best minimal contributors to the tax base) and that best as I can tell, there’s a strong correlation between poverty and crime and I’d rather pay to keep someone in boarding school now than in prison later. On top of that once the cycle of generational poverty is broken the children of the person originally born poor are themselves less likely to need any assistance at all. If the numbers add up then the capitalist in me will support it.

That would however be predicated on the ability of the government to accurately project the cost of a program and I don’t want to open that can of worms so close to me heading out for a long weekend.

Judd:

I’m going for a long weekend vacation myself starting tomorrow morning, so this thread’s about to die an abrupt death, I imagine.

Suffice to say that I still think that supporting programs that give people who live in poverty a viable way out is preferable to forcibly taking children out, even if the latter were the slightest bit practical, which it’s not.

Big U:

I think your example does more to prove my point than it does to prove yours. As you say, Canada is much further down the road than we are, and Canada’s poverty rate is less than half what ours is. What that means, essentially, is that those in Canada with the desire and willingness to work their way out of poverty have a much more viable path toward doing so than their counterparts in the US do. The support structures that backstop their efforts are far ahead of what we offer here in the US. I don’t think anyone questions that.

Now, of course, you’ll never completely eliminate poverty. (As a Christian especially, you should know this: your big cheese specifically told you so.) So what that means is that as you do a better job of addressing the issue of poverty and helping people get out of poverty, a larger and larger percentage of the people who are left are going to be people who don’t want to be helped or can’t be helped. That’s just common sense. And as I said, you’re much farther down that path as a nation than we are.

What I’m saying, and have been saying all along, is that we shouldn’t punish all of the poor for the transgressions of some of the poor. So I’m not about to oppose various forms of public assistance programs on the basis that some people will inevitably abuse them, or that such efforts will be wasted on some of them. As long as such programs are beneficial to a substantial number of people who genuinely need them and are genuinely appreciative of them, then those programs are, to me, a no-brainer. And this is why I’ve said, over and over and over again, that the emphasis needs to be on programs that remove barriers to success, and open up paths to success. Yes, it’s still up to the poor person to take advantage of those paths, but unless and until those paths are meaningfully open and available, it makes no sense whatsoever to gripe about how the poor should simply “work harder.” Especially during a time of double-digit unemployment.
tgirsch´s last blog ..The Libertarian Solution to Poverty

So, just to share with the rest of you…

I was thinking about what happened to this discussion and how it’s a bit of a loss. And than made me think of another kind of loss.

… and that make me come up with the phrase “Lesbian Thread Death”.