The question is whether private charity would step up to meet the needs of the poor. History doesn't give us much reason to think that would be the case. And yet, there must be reforms. The present system simply doesn't work.
Not irrelevant. You cannot assert that past behavior is a tell-tale for future results without considering all the corollary variables.
In saying "guarantee," you're engaging in a nirvana fallacy. What's being done today is incredibly destructive. Institutionalized poverty has been wreaking havoc on society, and it broke the downward trend of poverty that we were witnessing before the government decided to "war."
When you consider that we have no evidence at all in recorded history that those who are better off will voluntarily contribute enough to meet the needs of the poor, I'd say that I am on pretty firm ground. That's the current system isn't working is a fact. The question is what's the alternative or should we try a series of reforms. For example, teenage pregnancy is a strong indicator of future poverty. Why not pay girls to not get pregnant and provide free birth control?
Second, if the cure is worse than the disease, shouldn't we start by pulling back on the cure? I didn't get into the moral hazard argument, or into the "how much wealthier would society be if that $15B hadn't been burned" question.
Third, it is indisputable that poverty was decreasing prior to the Great Society, and became entrenched after the War began.
Claiming that this is a failure of implementation, which appears to be your argument, is like claiming socialism is a failure of implementation. How many times must it be tried, how much misery must be caused, how much destruction must be wrought, before the nirvana fallacy is recognized?
When have incentives such as what you suggest ever worked as intended?
Want to make a positive change? Make birth control over-the-counter. There's no reason not to. Democrats don't want to, however, because it would remove a wedge issue and a "we are giving you a gift" buying of votes gambit.
Reform must start with acceptance that the entire enterprise is a failure, not that "we just need to tweak it." Unraveling it will take decades, but such unraveling won't even start if the attitude is "it's fixable."
It is not. It is creating more harm than good, by far. It has destroyed generations of minority families, among many other harms.
I would define enough in terms of access to adequate shelter, clothing, food and medical care. I would not agree that the cure is so bad that the system should be torched. I am old enough to have known the times before the war on poverty and things could get pretty bad especially for poor kids. I would suggest as well that the real nirvana fallacy is to think that private charity is ever going to take up the slack.
“Why not pay girls to not get pregnant and provide free birth control?” Maybe rather than pay people to be more responsible we let them suffer the consequences of their mistakes and learn to take care of themselves.
Unfortunately, that's like closing the barn door after the horse has left. The consequences are life long since we're talking about a child being born to a mother in circumstances where she may not even be able to take care of herself let alone a baby. It sets up an unending cycle of poverty and worse.
Whether it does or not, the federal government has no constitutional authority to be involved in any charitable endeavors anyway. And let's be honest - with government, it's not charity; it's theft. In any other situation, someone forcibly extracting money from one person (taxes) in order to give it to another (wealth redistribution?) would be called theft (or looting, or mugging, choose your poison). Even James Madison said, "Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government."
I think that most people are uncomfortable with the idea of people losing everything including their lives once they're too infirm or old to work. I am old enough to have known people who lived during the days prior to FDR and I can understand why they revered him so.
People are uncomfortable with that idea, and that discomfort should lead them to acting, on their own volition, to rectify the problem - not having government make everyone else pay. It's always easy though, as our friend Peter here likes to say, to spend OPM when you have the force behind you to do it.
As for FDR, I recently wrote a piece about Social Security, one of his signature programs - one that should never have been created. I get the reasoning behind it, and during the depression, for many, I'm sure it seemed like a very noble and compassionate piece of legislation. Yet what it really amounts to is a government-run Ponzi scheme. People working today are having money taken from them (most working people mistakenly believe Social Security is, a government-mandated retirement savings plan) to give to those who are not working today (whether due to age or disability, or many other reasons including being in the country illegally, when it isn't just Congress raiding it for other expenses). Then those who have paid in will receive payments from workers who join the labor force later. It's robbing Peter (today's workers) to pay Paul (yesterday's workers, or never-workeders). Anyway...
As I stated in that piece, such a concept was utterly foreign to the framers of this great country. If it wasn't, it would not have taken 150 years after the founding of the country to see it implemented. One of my favorite pieces regarding such government charity is titled "Not Yours to Give", and I share it frequently (Peter also has shared it): https://fee.org/resources/not-your-to-give/
In the words of Thomas Jefferson, "A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circlue of our felicities."
Honestly, I think the government should pay them out in full, with interest, along with anyone else who has paid in (because most people can manage their money far better than government), then shut it down. Maybe that's unrealistic, and I know it means other recipients (those who haven't paid in and aren't paying in) would need to find a source for that lost income, but such is life. This is where family, friends, charity, and religious organizations can step up and step in. Will everyone be provided for? Perhaps not. That, for better or worse, is life. There is no guarantee in life to have your needs met though, (and Peter and I would likely disagree on this), according to Scripture, if we first seek God and His kingdom, our basic needs will be provided. Otherwise, there is no right to be provided one's necessities; there is a right to pursue them and be left to do so. That is the essence of liberty - personal responsibility.
It can't go on forever. Herb Stein's Law is irrefutable.
The question is whether private charity would step up to meet the needs of the poor. History doesn't give us much reason to think that would be the case. And yet, there must be reforms. The present system simply doesn't work.
The history that's available to look at was a time of far lower wealth. When was the last time we didn't have government charity?
True but irrelevant. Having more wealth is no guarantee that it would go towards helping the poor.
Not irrelevant. You cannot assert that past behavior is a tell-tale for future results without considering all the corollary variables.
In saying "guarantee," you're engaging in a nirvana fallacy. What's being done today is incredibly destructive. Institutionalized poverty has been wreaking havoc on society, and it broke the downward trend of poverty that we were witnessing before the government decided to "war."
When you consider that we have no evidence at all in recorded history that those who are better off will voluntarily contribute enough to meet the needs of the poor, I'd say that I am on pretty firm ground. That's the current system isn't working is a fact. The question is what's the alternative or should we try a series of reforms. For example, teenage pregnancy is a strong indicator of future poverty. Why not pay girls to not get pregnant and provide free birth control?
First off, define "enough."
Second, if the cure is worse than the disease, shouldn't we start by pulling back on the cure? I didn't get into the moral hazard argument, or into the "how much wealthier would society be if that $15B hadn't been burned" question.
Third, it is indisputable that poverty was decreasing prior to the Great Society, and became entrenched after the War began.
Claiming that this is a failure of implementation, which appears to be your argument, is like claiming socialism is a failure of implementation. How many times must it be tried, how much misery must be caused, how much destruction must be wrought, before the nirvana fallacy is recognized?
When have incentives such as what you suggest ever worked as intended?
Want to make a positive change? Make birth control over-the-counter. There's no reason not to. Democrats don't want to, however, because it would remove a wedge issue and a "we are giving you a gift" buying of votes gambit.
Reform must start with acceptance that the entire enterprise is a failure, not that "we just need to tweak it." Unraveling it will take decades, but such unraveling won't even start if the attitude is "it's fixable."
It is not. It is creating more harm than good, by far. It has destroyed generations of minority families, among many other harms.
I would define enough in terms of access to adequate shelter, clothing, food and medical care. I would not agree that the cure is so bad that the system should be torched. I am old enough to have known the times before the war on poverty and things could get pretty bad especially for poor kids. I would suggest as well that the real nirvana fallacy is to think that private charity is ever going to take up the slack.
“Why not pay girls to not get pregnant and provide free birth control?” Maybe rather than pay people to be more responsible we let them suffer the consequences of their mistakes and learn to take care of themselves.
Unfortunately, that's like closing the barn door after the horse has left. The consequences are life long since we're talking about a child being born to a mother in circumstances where she may not even be able to take care of herself let alone a baby. It sets up an unending cycle of poverty and worse.
Whether it does or not, the federal government has no constitutional authority to be involved in any charitable endeavors anyway. And let's be honest - with government, it's not charity; it's theft. In any other situation, someone forcibly extracting money from one person (taxes) in order to give it to another (wealth redistribution?) would be called theft (or looting, or mugging, choose your poison). Even James Madison said, "Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government."
I think that most people are uncomfortable with the idea of people losing everything including their lives once they're too infirm or old to work. I am old enough to have known people who lived during the days prior to FDR and I can understand why they revered him so.
People are uncomfortable with that idea, and that discomfort should lead them to acting, on their own volition, to rectify the problem - not having government make everyone else pay. It's always easy though, as our friend Peter here likes to say, to spend OPM when you have the force behind you to do it.
As for FDR, I recently wrote a piece about Social Security, one of his signature programs - one that should never have been created. I get the reasoning behind it, and during the depression, for many, I'm sure it seemed like a very noble and compassionate piece of legislation. Yet what it really amounts to is a government-run Ponzi scheme. People working today are having money taken from them (most working people mistakenly believe Social Security is, a government-mandated retirement savings plan) to give to those who are not working today (whether due to age or disability, or many other reasons including being in the country illegally, when it isn't just Congress raiding it for other expenses). Then those who have paid in will receive payments from workers who join the labor force later. It's robbing Peter (today's workers) to pay Paul (yesterday's workers, or never-workeders). Anyway...
As I stated in that piece, such a concept was utterly foreign to the framers of this great country. If it wasn't, it would not have taken 150 years after the founding of the country to see it implemented. One of my favorite pieces regarding such government charity is titled "Not Yours to Give", and I share it frequently (Peter also has shared it): https://fee.org/resources/not-your-to-give/
In the words of Thomas Jefferson, "A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circlue of our felicities."
In the meanwhile, many retirees have SS as their primary source of income. What are we to do with them?
Honestly, I think the government should pay them out in full, with interest, along with anyone else who has paid in (because most people can manage their money far better than government), then shut it down. Maybe that's unrealistic, and I know it means other recipients (those who haven't paid in and aren't paying in) would need to find a source for that lost income, but such is life. This is where family, friends, charity, and religious organizations can step up and step in. Will everyone be provided for? Perhaps not. That, for better or worse, is life. There is no guarantee in life to have your needs met though, (and Peter and I would likely disagree on this), according to Scripture, if we first seek God and His kingdom, our basic needs will be provided. Otherwise, there is no right to be provided one's necessities; there is a right to pursue them and be left to do so. That is the essence of liberty - personal responsibility.