. . . give him a fish.
This diary is second in a series of contrarian monologues directed against a prevailing attitude in America: the overriding fear that someone, somewhere, is getting something that they don't "deserve."
This attitude, profoundly anti-Christian, is an historical legacy of our uptight, rigid and punitive Protestant origins. It finds its expression in our political dialog in such terms as "moral hazard, "welfare queens," "pulling oneself up by ones bootstraps", theocratic Christian reconstructionism, and pretty much the entire Randian libertarian political and economic philosophy.
My previous diary examined immigration policy from this perspective, the present diary is inspired by two currently recommended diaries by Free Chicken and Beer, and Jane Stillwater on the subject of food stamps.
My thesis:
Generosity and cooperation are not merely admirable but pragmatic.
In most situations the generous response pays off in ways that our ongoing national policy debate consistently overlooks. Part of this is due to our censorious attitude towards giving people what they need rather than what they deserve, and part to a political penchant for back-end solutions at the expense of front-end solutions.
Systems Thinking: Front-End or Hind-End Solutions? A pony parable.
If the goal is a bigger and better pony there are generally two approaches: front-end solutions and hind-end solutions. (Plagiarism note: I got this pony metaphor from somewhere, but darned if I can remember where. Surely someone will let me know if I need to credit Molly Ivins or some other thinker/writer far better than me).
A policy dedicated to the front end will nurture the pasture with water and fertilizer, so that Dobbin will grow large and healthy. This sets up a positive feedback cycle as the pony eats more, produces more poop, further fertilizing the field.
By contrast, the hind end solution revolves around punishing the pony for not growing faster, paying the cowboy a princely salary on the theory that somehow he will make the pony grow, rationing water and fertilizer to make sure that the grass in the pasture is not getting lazy, and by pretty much generally encouraging the pony to develop more, bigger, and better assholes.
This is the conservative, Republican approach, along with all too many Democrats. Our national debate on a wide range of issues has been largely characterized by this tension between front-end and hind-end solutions: health care, financial regulation, welfare, terrorism, the war on drugs, immigration, you name it. So:
Welfare: Food Stamps, WIC, ADC, EITC, etc.
A sizable plurality of the country has made the decision that it dishonors a country as prosperous and dedicated to personal freedom as ours to have widows, orphans, and the elderly starving amidst plenty. To keep this from happening we have enacted a social safety net, which is under constant and bitter attack by those who basically think that every human being should root for their own food or starve.
The political dialog on the social safety net in this country has become trapped in some very unproductive blind alleys. This is partly with malice aforethought in the case of politicians who calculate that they can benefit from whipping up resentment and anger against unfortunates who can be portrayed as taking advantage of the system, partly because of largely unexamined prejudices that masquerade (as do so many things that are imbibed with our Mother's milk} as common sense, and to be fair, partly out of a legitimate appreciation for the positive effects of personal effort and sacrifice on the human character.
Over the past fifty or more years this three-way dialogue has swung back and forth between generosity and punitive strictness. As a sub-argument of the overall fight we have had the development of a massive bureaucracy dedicated to determining if help is needed, deserved, and available, and to prevent the possibility of cheating which besides being morally wrong and wasteful of resources also gives ammunition to those who would attack the very existence of the help, and a sub-sub argument about whether that bureaucracy itself is bloated, irresponsible, corrupt and lazy.
If you think about it though, we are all welfare queens. Take my own case: raised in an educated family, my parents are still alive and together these 55 years this past June. I never had to wonder where my food was coming from and when I got ready to go to college a faculty dependent scholarship was available, renewable quarter by quarter depending on my somewhat uneven grades. Until somewhat late in my early adulthood my parents footed my health insurance and when life handed me ups and downs I was always welcome to return home until I got back on my feet. I worked for my father for a time. Because we chose fairly different fields I cherish those few years since it was our only chance to collaborate on something together. My family deals in real estate and during a period when I was underemployed allowed me to live in a family rental unit rent free. When I was encouraging my GF to seek a college education I closed the deal by calling a bachelor's degree a "white collar union card." A degree doesn't guarantee that you will be an effective employee but at its best it does indicate your ability to complete a long term somewhat difficult project. In any case, it changes your life in many ways tangible and intangible, not all of them strictly related to merit.
I don't believe that I'm an extraordinary case. Consider legacy admissions to the Ivy League, trust funds. Think of the bank vice presidents you may have known....how many of them reported directly to the bank president, AKA Dad? All of these things can be viewed from two very different perspectives. On one hand they can all be explained as the natural benefits of hard work, a parent's if not your own. On the other hand, it is not a difficult effort of imagination to see them as unearned benefits received not because of personal merit but by wisdom in choosing to be born to a particular family.
In the end, I don't think that there are two defendably different classes of unearned benefit. If a trust fund or a graduation gift of a car is just a paternal boost to help you get on your feet and make your way in life, so is Aid to Dependent Children. If food stamps are corrupting of individual initiative, so is a trust fund or a legacy admission to Yale.
My personal conclusion? Both upper class welfare and lower class welfare are bad things to the extent that they undermine individual initiative and good things to the extent that they allow an individual the freedom to maximize his or her own potential, leading to increased net productivity for the system as a whole. We are strongest when we realize that we are all dependent on help and cooperation, have an obligation to contribute when we are able, and a right to help when we need it.
A program of enlightened generosity:
I'm by no means the first person to suggest any of the following ideas. Nor am I an expert in social services or the tax system. These are just tentative suggestions to illustrate the basic thesis of the diary, that generosity pays. Fix the underlying problems and quit wasting so much time and money on back-end patches. Don't worry too much about making people lazy. Work hard on creating conditions in which everyone can prosper.
- Enact a universal subsistence stipend. No applications for food stamps, no ADC, no WIC. No "welfare" as we know it. Certainly no "welfare cheats." Just a check in the mail every month. Pay for it the way we pay for everything else: a progressive income tax. The stipend should be enough to pay a minimal rent and buy enough food to keep from starving. Everyone gets it. Taxpayers in the form of a credit. Non taxpayers in the form of a check.
- Re-task the social services bureaucracy from detection and avoidance of cheaters to providing counseling and social support to individuals who choose to live on the basic stipend alone, to determine if their situation is voluntary and, if voluntary, contributory to their personal and the common good. In some cases these might entrepreneurs who are allowing the system to pay their basic expenses while they develop a new business or creative work. They might be individuals who are using the basic stipend to support their community organizing or while they spend a time of their lives contributing their training skills and time for the good of all. They might be physically handicapped and incapable of work. They might even be classic Reaganesque mooches (victims of learned helplessness). The goal of the intervention would be to help, or at times require, the individual to access additional resources, training and other opportunities to improve their situation.
- Allow individuals to receive a much increased stipend for short, defined periods (1, 2, 4 years) based on the design of a limited term plan of personal improvement.
- Expand opportunities for (non-military) national service. Recruit heavily from the ranks of those taking the stipend.
- Complete the transformation of our national health care system to permit all to receive the best possible care, at the earliest opportunity, for the lowest possible individual cost.
- Many small adjustments to the system. Example: Seriously empower public school teachers to identify problems and provide assistance and access to help and resources on their own authority. Quadruple, quintuple, octuple Headstart and other programs supporting public grammer school and kindergarten education.
I'm entirely aware of the entire list of criticisms that this suggestion will provoke. And provocation is to some extent the goal of this diary. I'd like to encourage thinking outside the stuffy confines of the current debate.
The overall shift in philosophy advocated in this and the previous diary in the series is guided by a belief that people by and large want to be productive and to better themselves. Those who don't need special help of one sort or another, not punishment. I would maintain that by designing a system that relieves people from the nagging concerns of mere subsistence while providing avenues of self improvement, with a maximum of opportunity and a necessary minimum of compulsion, a basic stipend or negative income tax would over time actually decrease the number of people "on welfare" and increase the productivity of the entire system.
respectfully submitted,
Baz