A working wage is available, despite the press associate with the
book Nickel and Dime. It is possible to work and live in this
country as a household with working parents and steady work.
Jobs are available but one must be hirable.
Certainly local programs to assist those who want help is perhaps
the most effective approach.
Does helping and encouraging the Undeserving poor
hurt the deserving poor?
When someone asks for your support, it's natural to wonder, "Why do
you need my support in the first place?" Some answers are better
than others. If your friend asks you to pay for his lunch, "I was
just mugged" is a better reason than "I already spent my whole paycheck
on beer." If your girlfriend misses your birthday, "My car and
phone both broke down" is a better reason than "I forgot." If a
co-worker goes home early and asks you to cover for him, "I have the
flu" is a better reason than "I want to play Skyrim."
The key difference: If there are reasonable steps the person could
take - or could have taken - to avoid his problem. Your friend
didn't have to spend all his money on beer. Your girlfriend could
have put your birthday on her calendar. Your co-worker could wait
to play Skyrim. These steps may not be appealing, but they are
reasonable. There are grey areas, but you can usually tell which is
which.
I propose to use the same standard to identify the "deserving" and
"undeserving" poor.
The deserving poor are those who can't take -
and couldn't have taken - reasonable steps to avoid poverty. The
undeserving poor are those who can take - or could have taken -
reasonable steps to avoid poverty. Reasonable steps like: Work
full-time, even if the best job you can get isn't fun; spend your money
on food and shelter before you get cigarettes or cable t.v.; use
contraception if you can't afford a child. A simple test of
"reasonableness": If you wouldn't accept an excuse from a friend, you
shouldn't accept it from anyone.
If I sound harsh, notice: by my standards, many of the poor are
clearly deserving: low-skilled workers in the Third World, children of
poor or irresponsible parents, the severely handicapped. Still, on
reflection, many people we think of as "poor" turn out to be
undeserving.
Let's start with healthy adults in the First World. Even the
least-skilled full-time jobs pay more than enough for adults to
comfortably support themselves. In the U.S., the average income
for janitors is about $25,000/year; the average for maids is about
$21,000. A household with one janitor and one maid averages
$46,000, enough to put them at the 96th percentile of the world income
distribution - and well above the U.S. poverty line.
Even
Americans below the poverty line typically possess a long list of
luxuries that the Kings of France would have envied: 80% have air
conditioning, nearly three-quarters own a car, two-thirds have cable or
satellite t.v., one-third have a plasma or LCD t.v. My point isn't
that all healthy adults in the First World do enjoy such living
standards, but that there are reasonable steps they can take - or could
have taken - to do so.
The same logic applies to everyone who used to be a healthy adult in
the First World. Were there reasonable steps you could have taken
earlier to avoid poverty? Sure. The elderly could have saved
more. The sick could have bought insurance. It's tempting to
say, "When they were young and healthy, they didn't have the money!"
But didn't they have the money for cable t.v. and beer?
Some people think it's pointless to talk about desert. I
disagree. If you're a libertarian who opposes any government
spending on the poor no matter what, you should still consider desert
when you give to charity. Starving Haitian children really do
deserve your help more than almost any American. If you have a
more expansive view of the proper role of government, you should still
see a big difference between forcing taxpayers to help starving kids,
and forcing taxpayers to help irresponsible adults. If you've ever
told a frustrating friend or relative, "It's your mess, you clean it
up," you should see the injustice in forcing taxpayers to support
undeserving people they don't even know.
The most important lesson, though, is that First World governments'
priorities are upside-down. The Third World contains hundreds of
millions of deserving poor: desperate people who would love to work as a
janitor for $25,000 a year. If we owe charity to anyone, we owe it
to people who struggle to earn a dollar a day. But when First
World governments hand out charity, the deserving poor in the Third
World get next to nothing. Foreign aid's about 1% of the budget.
Indeed, First World governments actively prevent the world's deserving
poor from helping themselves: They make it illegal for them to move to
the First World and accept a job from a willing employer.
Even if we owe charity to no one, the least we can do is stop kicking
the world's deserving poor while they're down.