I think that the argument that we need to carefully shepherd the poor through life is not only kind of creepy, it's also contributing to the fact that we need to shepherd the poor through life. People dependent on the system don't get good at behaving like middle class people--paying their bills on time, etc. Instead they develop a lot of skills at dealing with government bureaucracy (or they give up). Once the gas has been turned off a few times, one generally learns to pay the bill rather than go without heat. What one learns from bureaucracy, on the other hand, is that the world is a capricious yet rule-bound place where you are either powerless against the system, or looking for a way to cheat it.
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I should add . . .
30 Oct 2007 12:48 pm
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Once the gas has been turned off a few times, one generally learns to go without heat when there's not enough money for gas AND cigarettes. What one learns from bureaucracy, on the other hand, is that work is for suckers.
My dad had a pithy saying about this, "People are as delinquent as circumstances will allow."
my guess is, if your gas gets turned off more than once its not cuz you won't pay the bill on time. it's probably because you CANT pay the bill on time. And if the choice is, freeze to death, or have a govt bureaucracy to help prevent you from freezing to death, most people would probably come down on the side of government...
Freaktown, define "can't."
I think that's Megan's point. People make choices, and what they "can't" do is usually a function of their choices.
The upshot is when you take away the posibility of thinking for yourself and then dealing with the consequences of that, you get people who simply don't think for themselves, or at least beyond themselves. Ultimately THAT is an act of disrespect on the part of government, and also an act of power stealing. Helping someone up is different from walking FOR them. When you walk for them, their muscles atrophy...
People dont make a choice to be poor. Megan makes it sound like the gas gets turned off simply because you cant be bothered to mail in the check on time. She seems to overlook the fact that maybe they don't have the resources, IE a paycheck, that you can use to pay the bill on time. The problem with poverty and the poor isn't one of choice. It's a lack of resources:training, education, good jobs. If you can figure out a way to fix all of those problems without getting the government involved...i'd be glad to hear it. But seeing as how these issues are all interconnected- look- governments were created to solve the problems that were too big for individual people to solve. I think poverty is one of those problems. We can certainly argue about the effectiveness of certain programs, but i don't think one can seriously argue that the government has no role at all in solving poverty or helping someone pay the gas bill if it means a mom and her babies won't freeze to death on a bitter winter's night.
Freaktown you missed the point of the post, which admittedly plays off the previous one. I've advocating giving people some sort of a minimum basic income, and then letting them figure out whether they want to pay the gas bill or buy new sneakers.
"we need to carefully shepherd the poor through life": who's this "we", madam? I'll grant you that if the state does it, the results will be bad. But the state ain't "we". If "we" is friends, relations, neighbours, employers, churches, charities and Samaritans strolling past, then "we" might do some good.
I think what makes some people dependent on government is that these are the sort of people who might not have been born or lived to adulthood in harsher times. There is a certain "Idiocracy" effect at work here: the modern welfare state enables those who would otherwise be unable to make a living in a first world country to survive and reproduce; we shouldn't be surprised if their children have difficulty making it on their own.
Jesus fucking Christ. Poor people don't fail to pay for the heat because they don't understand what one does with a damn bill. My family failed to pay such bills on a fairly regular basis as I was growing up *because we coudln't.*
This post is so bad, it might qualify as a form of torture. The worst things they say about you are all true.
Mike, you completely miss the point. First of all, you're wrong; anyone who has been a social worker will tell you that, whatever your family's circumstances, they have had clients who did things like buying a television instead of paying the gas bill. But the point is not to moralize about the behavior of the poor; if you want television more than gas, fine by me. The point is, we should not pay the gas bills of the poor for them; we should top up their income until it's enough to pay for food, housing, utilities, and other basics, and then let them decide what to buy.
Jesus fucking Christ. Poor people don't fail to pay for the heat because they don't understand what one does with a damn bill. My family failed to pay such bills on a fairly regular basis as I was growing up *because we coudln't.*
But why couldn't you? Sorry, I mean, Jesus fucking Christ, why couldn't you?
Liberals tend to massively exaggerate the problem of poverty in this country. The typical American officially classified as living in "poverty" in 2007 enjoys a material standard of living that is in most ways far superior to that of a typical middle-class or middle-income American of just a generation ago.
The point was absolutely missed.
Anyone here like the idea of the Earned Income Tax Credit? It's the prime example in the US of the no-strings-attached cash assistance to low income people that Megan is talking about.
"we should top up their income until it's enough to pay for food, housing, utilities, and other basics, and then let them decide what to buy." M
er, see this is where I disagree, but don't have a different take... The REASON we don't give cash money is because originally this was about helping someone up, not making it a lifestyle. Unfortunately that hasn't proven to be the way it works in many cases. The problem is, at the moment, no-one is doing anything. What would the denizens of Cabrini Green done in an era where there was no welfare? Unfortunately since living there is PART of the whole welfare gig, it becoems a place they can't escape because they never have the capacity to, and then they raise generations that think of that as the norm...
Again, this neglects the reason behind most of our government's assistance to non-elderly people: these are families with children in them. So I'd prefer that the gas not be turned off the first time.
Also, Megan appears to be ignoring the specific problem created by cash instead of vouchers/ in-kind benefits: transferability. Will having the gas turned off once because your neighbor in the projects stole the cash keep that neighbor from stealing it again? Will it keep the single mother from turning over the cash to her abusive boyfriend again?
"if you want television more than gas, fine by me."
You're kidding me. You are *kidding me.* You actually wrote that sentence?
It's fine to say in the abstract that some people pay more for a television than for the heat bill. What wasn't okay was to pretend that means they don't understand the necessity of paying bills. And what is unbelievably, totally not okay is to sit there and fucking tell me my family did that. That I was cold or hungry or we didn't have electricity one day because my family loved TV so much. We didn't even *own one* until I was six. And it was black and white.
But that's not the point -- the point is that you think you're justified in assuming anyone who suffers does so because they're stupid and they make ridiculous decisions that nobody could possibly fathom.
As for your larger point, great -- the fact that you want to give the poor money doesn't excuse your behavior or your *total ignorance.*
Side story: last year when our water was briefly turned off (it wasn't that our landlord *couldn't* pay the bill, it was that she'd neglected to tell the county she'd moved), I panicked, since that had never happened to me ever, and my now-husband didn't, since his family had had their water bills turned off a couple times when he was growing up. And unlike our no-longer-landlord, his family didn't have enough money to cover every bill. Which is to say that rich kids can get shepherded through life, too -- that's actually more likely, I would say.
I think the word that you're not using here, Megan, and should, is "paternalism." I'm not very pro-paternalist behavior on the part of governments, myself, just because it would have the potential to expand in ways I'm not comfortable with. On the other hand, I would offer the Bolsa FamÃlia plan in Brazil (it has a different name in Mexico) as an example of cash transfers to the poor with a paternalist edge, done quite effectively.
There's a book I read in college and want to read again (Outcast London) which I found an eye-opener at the time, because of how it described how charity and paternalist desires on the part of the charity-givers in Victorian London. I.e. the middle- and upper-classes of Victorian London were very generous, but their generosity came with certain expectations of how the poor would behave, and when the poor failed to meet those expectations, class tensions -- namely, the vilification of the poor by the upper classes -- increased. (Take that description, taken from a ten-year-old memory, with a grain of salt, though.)
Mike, once again, it is you, not I, who are revealing your ignorance. Go talk to some welfare officers and tell me that there are not people out there who buy consumer goods rather than paying basic bills. For that matter, go read Jason DeParle's excellent American Dream, David Shipley's The Working Poor, or any of the volumes of work describing this very behavior. There are a lot of seriously dysfunctional people out there with no impulse control, and those people tend to be poor. If "television" bothers you, substitute "drugs" or "booze" and then tell me with a straight face that no one ever got their lights turned off because they drank up their paycheck. That is not the same as saying that all the poor are irresponsible, which is indeed easy to refute, but also, not what I said. Your anger is inappropriate, and your allegations would not be defended even by the lefty social workers I've worked with. They might argue about root causes versus personal culpability, but the behaviour is simply indisputably there in parts of their clientele, as anyone who has ever worked for any sort of poverty-focused social service institution at all will tell you. If poverty were a simple question of money, with no other factors intervening, we would have ended it thirty years ago.
Megan:
"If poverty were a simple question of money, with no other factors intervening, we would have ended it thirty years ago."
Then why does anyone who is able (mentally, etc) but poor need "some sort of a minimum basic income" without any expectations or strings?
Living in the USA virtually guarantees a minimum basic income. If this were not the case, we would not have a problem with illegal immigration.
Mike:
While not all are, a large portion of the "poor" are that way precicely because they make ridiculous decisions, and those decisions have consequences.
"my guess is, if your gas gets turned off more than once its not cuz you won't pay the bill on time. it's probably because you CANT pay the bill on time."
Freddie, I've known people that got their gas turned off repeatedly - while spending more than the gas bills on cigarettes. I've supported a family of four on Air Force E2 pay, well below the official poverty line even with all the service benefits - and we weren't poor, we just budgeted very carefully. At the lower edge of the middle class, the difference between them and the "poor" isn't their income but how they spend it.
The fundamental issue is, if we were willing to actually let a family with children freeze and starve in the dark until they learned to distinguish necessities from luxuries and pay for the necessities first, Megan's idea would work. But what really happens is that you hand them money, they spend it foolishly, and then someone bails them out - and what they've learned is that they can use any available cash to buy themselves a temporary good time and let others worry about keeping their children alive. And, perhaps regrettably, keeping them alive along with the children.
Or maybe what we should do is to more clearly define failure to support your children as "neglect" and have a more agile CPS, ready to swoop in and take the children away, and then let the damfool adults starve and freeze to death. I'm not enthusiastic about that plan either, because I know from my own experience that the horror stories about foster care are not exaggerated, and that the average CPS social worker is a well-meaning, poorly-trained idiot wrapped in arrogance. But could it be worse than the present system where irresponsible parents hold their children hostage for support from our tax dollars?
My anger is inappropriate? I'm glad you're enlightened enough to be able to tell which monstrously stupid statements I should be pissed off by.
I'm not denying that poor people make poor decisions, I'm not denying that some poor people are stupid, I'm denying that I "prefer television to heat." You said *I* could do that all I wanted, and you can pretend it's a hypothetical me all you want, we both know that after my initial sharing of my story of being a poor kid who had problems for reasons other than parental stupidity, phrasing it that way was a childish stick in the eye at best.
What I'm denying, and what you claimed, is that there are actually poor people who need to learn that paying bills is how you get heat. The fact that they sometimes behave in ways that don't make perfect sense in that situation doesn't prove they're so totally idiotic they don't get that basic principle, but because you look down your nose at those of us who obviously suffered in poverty because we aren't as good or smart as you, you conflate the two.
I'm sure it'll be a relief to you that I've vowed never to read this blog again unless for the purpose of understanding posts by other bloggers, but I wonder if your editors are as thrilled about your pissing all over everybody in the lower class as you are.
Mike, what post are you reading? I am unaware of your economic background, and wrote nothing about you, personally; the idea that I would is considerably . . . umm, I have better things to do than look for ways to gratuitously offend angry college students.
It's good to know you don't actually *read the comments to which you respond.*
It's ridiculous how untelligent mike is that he can't understand the concept of this.
Lets say in scenario A. gas cost 50units a month (I'm using unit because someone will invariably come back with "But gas doesn't cost that") and the government pays your gas bill and you have heat
Now scenario B. Gas is still 50 units a month and the government still gives you 50 units but now instead of sending it to the gas company it comes to you as a check. Now you have the choice of paying for tv, booze, drugs, etc. or paying for Gas. In this situation you cannot say that the person couldn't afford gas for any other reason than his own because you're still getting the 50 units for the gas you just personally get to choose if you want to mail in the check or not!
I don't particularly agree with Megan on this because of other factors but your argument is ridiculous
Mike,
I don't know if your girlfriend left you today or you got a bad grade on a paper but you sound really silly right now. Megan is not making ANY of the arguments you are attributing to her. Perhaps it would be best for you to step away from the computer for a while.
I also have better things to do than offend angry college students, but they're not nearly as fun.
Also for the "Personal attack on you" which you refer to. It doesn't exist because the government didn't give you the money to pay the bills for which Megan is referring to.
Although, considering the apple doesn't fall far from the tree maybe you were "a poor kid who had problems for reasons NOT other than parental stupidity"
Alright, I'm now officially done insulting you
Once the gas has been turned off a few times, one generally learns to pay the bill rather than go without heat.
You assume here they can pay the bill in the first place. Try being broke, with 2 elementary school children and if you want, thrown in a delinquent spouse for good measure. Poor doesn't equal lazy.
I really don't understand the commenters who really don't understand Megan's original point, which is that SOME (not all) poor people neglect to pay their bills, EVEN WHEN THEY HAVE THE MEANS TO DO SO, because they CHOOSE to buy something else instead.
Now, we can argue about the way one's childhood experiences influence one's behavior. We know that some poor people, in fact, need to be taught that you have to pay the bills before you buy fun stuff, because no one in their family ever paid bills.
I worked with a girl whose family regularly and repeatedly moved in the middle of the night to avoid repossession of everything they owned, and who thought it was normal for stuff like bicycles and cars and TV sets to disappear because payments had not been made. She was grown and living on her own before she realized that lots of people, even poor people, don't have that problem because they actually pay their bills before they buy the fun stuff.
There was a lot of attention devoted to the Tunica MS area when the gambling boats first got going there - they were hiring people who had never held jobs, whose parents and sometimes grandparents had never held jobs, and they had to be educated about everything connected to money and money management. It's not something everyone understands naturally.
So yeah. Some people do "choose" in be poor in that they do not handle their money rationally or sensibly. Sometimes that's their conscious decision, sometimes it's not.
Megan is not assuming that all poor people are lazy and irresponsible. But you should not assume that they are all industrious, thrifty and possessed of sound judgment.
The primary contributing factors to poverty in America are:
1) lack of high school diploma
2) having children young and out-of-wedlock
3) felony convictions.
So yes, being poor is a function of making stupid decisions. Sorry if that's mean to say, but if you or your parents were dealing with abject poverty, it's most likely because of these factors. Of course, that's also a silver lining to this debate. It means that not being poor in America is simply a matter of finishing high school, using birth control, and staying out of serious trouble.
Btw, I find it funny that liberals deride the need for vouchers, or something similar to let poor kids have good educations, but simultanously complain that poor people can't help being poor because they typically have sub-standard educations.
I think that the argument that we need to carefully shepherd the poor through life is not only kind of creepy, it's also contributing to the fact that we need to shepherd the poor through life.
So you only favor shepherding them through a couple of decades or so. Swell.
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You've been on fire lately... so good!
When can we look forward to you and Ezra on Bloggingheads RE: Healthcare?
Posted by Withnail | October 30, 2007 1:10 PM