Chapter 2: WHY HELP THE POOR?

(This is Chapter 2 of "Up and Out," a book condensing my long experience about how to best help poor people.  I pledged earlier to get it up online as soon as possible, so it would be available for free to everyone trying to cope with helping the Katrina evacuees.) 

(These are not the things that need to be done in the next few days or during this immediate emergency.  Rather, this is for the time after that, in which Katrina evacuees will be moving from getting immediate emergency assistance to trying to normalize their lives.  That is when good programs to help them "up and out" of their situation need to kick in.  The following is for that time.)

"UP AND OUT: A GUIDE TO TRUE COMPASSION FOR THE POOR"

PART 1: THE AMERICAN POVERTY TRAP

Chapter 2:  Why Help the Poor?

It has happened to almost everyone.  You stop at a traffic light.  Someone is standing to your left, holding a sign.  He wants money.  What should you do?  If you give him money, will he just spend it on his addiction?  If so, will that money hurt him more than help him?  Why isn't he working, anyhow, like you are?  The Salvation Army or the Rescue Mission will give him a meal and a bunk.  So he has to listen to a sermon first - is that any reason to bother you instead?  However you respond, you have just been reminded again that the poor are still with us.

The problem of the poor has existed throughout all human history.  All civilizations have had to deal with it.  Politicians have long found the poor useful.  In Rome, politicians stayed in power through winning the votes of the poor by providing them free "bread and circuses."

All great religions have taught that the poor are to be helped.  But people of non-religious persuasions have taught the same thing.

Marx, and the revolutionaries he inspired, dreamed of ridding the world of poverty.  Their goal was "from each according to his means, to each according to his need."  They wanted to eliminate poverty by forcing the sharing of all wealth and income.  This hope was the powerful motive for accepting the horrors of living under the terrible dictatorships that soon grew out of the communist movement.

The failure of communism left many wondering, all over again, what should be done about the problem of the poor?  Once the Iron Curtain fell in 1989 and the world got its first, fully uncensored view of the disaster behind it, the near-total bankruptcy of the communist system could no longer be denied.  Except for a large military, good science and good education, Russia was a poor, third-world country. 

Every Russian was poor except a favored few: politicians, crooks, and stars of entertainment, science, sports and the arts.  The economy was a basket case.  Production was incredibly backward.  Russian agriculture could not even feed its own people.  Even now, Russia still struggles simply to achieve the working economy that many other poor countries attained by the 1980s. 

Not only did its struggle to help the poor not succeed, the effort brought Russia to ruin.  The seeds of that ruin were contained in the very system originally devised to help the poor.  And the loftiness of their motives could not stop the ruin.

So what is the lesson of the Russian experiment?  Is it that the poor cannot be helped?  Or that it is futile, even dangerous, to try?  At the very least, the world was given a lesson in not helping the poor the socialist way.  And that socialism must inevitably lead to a repressive dictatorship, because the only way a minority can rule an unwilling majority is through repression.

It is good that Americans are concerned about helping the poor.  But we also need to be very cautions about how we try to do it.

In America in the affluent 1960s, we thought we had found another way.  We radical 60s economists sneered a little, impatient that Americans did not see, as we did, how simple the solution would be.  When asked "what should we do about the poor?" we responded, "Well, you give them money!  If you give them enough, then they won't be poor anymore, will they?  Then - no more poverty.  It's simple!"

When President Johnson started the War on Poverty, his answer was not all that different.  Enough money should solve the problem if you got it into the hands of the poor.  The Welfare System became a fixture of American life.

But poverty did not vanish under the Welfare System; it increased.  And life on Welfare did not seem to help the poor much either.  Sociologists began writing of the "unintended consequences" of the good intentions behind Welfare.  Their conclusions were more and more that Welfare was very bad for the poor it was meant to help.

So in 1996, in a time of unparalled prosperity and more-than-full employment, President Clinton signed the Welfare Bill, and the Welfare System began to be dismantled.  There was great protest, with predictions of children starving in the streets and huge numbers of new homeless.  But Welfare was soon mostly gone, with scarcely a ripple.  None of the dire predictions happened.  It happened sooner, and with much less dislocation, than expected.

In fact, it helped sustain the economic boom times of the 1990s.  Chairman Alan Greenspan of the Federal Reserve testified before Congress that the sudden entry of new millions into the job market as they left Welfare, helped fill many of the jobs that there were not enough workers for before, keeping the boom going longer. 

And yet, the poor are still with us.  At a time when, literally, almost anyone who wants to work can work, when moving up is common and ordinary, how can that be?  And what is to be done about the millions still in poverty?  Can we really help them?  This book says "Yes!"  Its purpose is to show how to do it. 

Still, if we want to help the poor, we need to remember that the vast majority of them are outside this country.  But also that the "how-to" of helping the poor differs from country to country.  That is because, in each country, there is a different mix of the causes of poverty.  That means that the remedies for poverty should also be mixed in a way that fits each country.

Sometimes the main cause is oppression by the government and a few rich.  Sometimes it is famine, deliberately caused for political goals.  Sometimes it is that a thieving dictator sells everything in the country - even private food aid - and puts the money in his Swiss bank account.  Lack of education and exposure to many illnesses can contribute too.  There also can be poverty resulting from bad decisions or laziness or neglecting opportunities that could be used, just as happens in the richer countries.

But - to address the problem at the first of this chapter - should we help the poor?  The answer is an unambiguous "Yes."  The reason is that it is in the self-interest of everyone to live in a country with as little poverty as possible.

Frankly speaking, levels of drug and alcohol abuse, disease, illegitimacy, illiteracy, crime, violence and incivility are all higher when poverty rates are higher, and lower when they are lower.  There is more resentment and anger when more people are poor.

Any society is healthier, more literate, safer and more civil when poverty levels are lower.  It is also more prosperous.  Our incomes are higher, investments do better and the stock market goes up more.  Our own selfish interests are best served when people are helped "up and out" of poverty.

So there is a need for true charity, whether the motive is religious faith, compassionate non-faith, or self-interest.  That true charity, the only truly compassionate charity toward the poor, is helping them out of poverty.  True charity is the kind that helps without harming, that gives and loves, but wisely enough to do it right.  It is also one of the most gratifying things that can be experienced.  We actually do get more than we give.  (In between the bumps, that is.)