As libertarians go, I'm close-ish to a "left libertarian"; among other things, I think there's a role for government in guaranteeing a decent life for the needy, and intervening to right environmental problems that stem from unpriced negative externalities.
So what's different from liberalism? To the extent that the problems of the poor are inadequate money, I think that we should solve this problem by . . . giving them money. Not giving them food, shelter, or health care; just giving them money, and letting them decide what they want to buy. If they want to eat cornmeal mush for a month while watching cable television, let 'em. I think the government's job is to make sure people have the ingredients of a decent life, not to tell them what that decent life is.
(Health care is complicated, because there's a free rider problem and some pretty huge cost variance; I'll deal with that in a different post. But as a principle, I want to make sure that people can afford the stuff I think constitutes the bare minimum of a decent existence; I do not want to march them down to the store and make sure they buy it.)
Will the poor make bad decisions? Yup. Most poor people have already made a lot of bad decisions about things like schooling and childbearing; they'll probably make more. But they're not children; they're adults. It is not the government's job to make sure that they make good decisions. If someone is so impaired that they need the government deciding what kind of consumer goods they should buy, then they certainly shouldn't live on their own, much less vote; they should be placed in a group home or an institution where they can be properly supervised.
It's not as if poor people are the only kind of people who make bad decisions . . . I could regale you with some personal horror stories, starting with majoring in English, and moving on through the belly button ring to last night's attempt, while working late in an office near no restaurants, to substitute 14 flaxseed oil capsules for dinner. But had a government official stepped in to tell me that I really shouldn't waste years of my life on a guy who wasn't any good for me . . . well, shotguns are illegal everywhere I've lived, but that's the proper response to any government that fannies about dispensing such advice.
The government is really very good at distributing cash, with only the normal deadweight loss attendant on taxation. But it is an abysmal dispenser of advice on how to live your life, which is why the Declaration of Independance promises not happiness, but only the space to pursue same. I'm very open to arguments that private charity can't cover the cash needs of the poor, but I'll pit a private institution against the government in the "better living through social work" game any day of the week, and twice on the last day of the month.
Obviously, I'm against most forms of government help for adults, but is there anything as creepy as the notion that the government is supposed to improve you? If I want to be improved, I'll take on the project myself, thank you very much, and I extend people who are short of cash the respect of believing that they are probably much like myself in this regard. Either help them, or don't; there are valid arguments on both sides. But don't badger them to death.
These nannying arguments always make me think of one particularly bitter New York night, seeing a woman in a fur coat sweep past a homeless man braving the subzero weather in a sweatshirt. Figuring that no matter what he had done to himself or others, he didn't deserve to be left out on a night like this, I gave him five bucks on my way into the deli. Therein, the fur-coat lady said to me "He'll just spend it on drugs, you know."
It is one of the few times that I, whose middle name is "L'esprit d'escalier", have ever managed to muster a snappy comeback line on time. "I hope so," I responded, "because personally, if I were out there tonight, I would want some serious drugs."
In the case of kids, I'm game for a little more supervision; I'm happy to mandate vouchers for schooling and health care to make sure that they get some of each, and I'm willing to make those contingent on meeting some basic set of criteria. (Don't get too excited, liberals; I'm talking "Teaches reading, math, and a science class that includes evolution", not "Employs only union teachers with education degrees and a ream of useless certifications".) But I am left cold by the notion that we have to keep poor parents from having any say in the lives of their kids. If the kids are that badly off, pull them out of the home (indeed, adoption by more affluent families is the only broad remedy that is actually demonstrably effective at improving the lives of poor children, a remedy whose effectiveness is matched only by its utter repugnance).
If you are not going to do this, and thank God we aren't, do them and their parents the service of believing that even poorer, darker skinned people with a variety of social and economic problems love their kids every bit as much as you love yours--and certainly a lot more than you love theirs.
"To the extent that the problems of the poor are inadequate money, I think that we should solve this problem by . . . giving them money."
so your solution to people who don't know how to use money wisely is to give them more of it?
hmm. in a country where poor people are wearing $200 sneakers, how can this possibly be a solution to any problem -- other than the relieving the need for such people to get a better lifestyle, a better education, and a better job?
100 years ago, people were complaining that the poor wasted their money on electricity and daily baths. This always gives me pause when I start to get all moralistic about other peoples' consumption.
As I say, I think it's fine to argue about how much people need, or to argue that they don't have any right at all to help no matter how poor their earning prospects. But once we've decided to help them, I think we should just give them the cash, not supervise them. If they really can't take care of themselves unsupervised, then they need to be in a home.
>>"well, shotguns are illegal everywhere I've lived, "
Uh? Even in pro-gun control NYC where I lived most of my life shotguns were legal. Can only imagine where you've been living. TTFN.
I enjoy reading what you write, and would fight to defend your right to write it...but I would not let you plan my menu.
"I think there's a role for government in guaranteeing a decent life for the needy"
Did I read that right??
I guess not, since the rest of the article implies that we (gov't) should not "intrude" in the decisions that poor people make, but rather just throw some cash at them. Then what? Hope for the best? And who decides just what a "decent life" is anyway?
I guess I differ in that if I am going to be forced to make a donation to "the poor" then I want to know that I am really helping to solve the problem, or at the very least that I am not just enabling it. Sorry...my money comes with some strings attached.
moving on through the belly button ring
Do tell.
As libertarians go
Now, are y'all really going? Because if you're just teasing the rest of us, that is really uncool.
hmm. in a country where poor people are wearing $200 sneakers, how can this possibly be a solution to any problem -- other than the relieving the need for such people to get a better lifestyle, a better education, and a better job?
Well, no, see the basic problem right now is that if a man who is poor on average manages to pull in $200 from somewhere, he has the option of buying $200 in luxury goods and services because the government will still step in with food stamps and subsidized housing/utilities regardless of how that $200 is spent.
On the other hand, if that same person is given a basic stipend from the government and told that the spending of the stipend will not be monitored BUT government giveth not two figs whether he starves and freezes to death this month, the odds that he will discover some basic principles of money management go up quite a bit.
Another way to improve on that further, assuming it could be regulated carefully to minimize abuse, would be to deliver, say, a 75% monthly stipend with the promise that the final 25% will be delivered at the 15th of the month upon showing a housing receipt in that person's name. (Multiple names on a lease are fine, which would encourage -- but not force -- resource pooling.) No receipt shown by the 15th, no final 20%; better luck next month.
By setting some basic goals in that manner, it would give a person both the means and an incentive to actually look into the cost of housing and budget out the remaining money on a biweekly basis, rather than stare at the entire wad at once and then blow it frivolously without considering what s/he will be eating when week 3 comes around. Again, this has the potential to teach basic personal money management in ways that the present system cannot, which improves the odds that the person will be less poor in the future.
The problem with simply giving money is that, outside of a small minority, society isn't going to allow any members to starve or die of exposure, etc. So, in the end, food and shelter are goods we will supply (albeit badly) no matter what the poor spend their money upon.
Donating in-kind is our means of minimizing what we feel we have to give to the poor, as well as a method of not rewarding those who spend their money on what we consider non-essentials.
I'm kind of puzzled by what makes opposition to cash subsidies for the poor a hallmark of liberalism, specifically.
This reminds me of a forward I received from a brother of mine this morning in which the author complained about the fact that he has to submit to random urine tests for his job, while poor people on public assistance don't. He was incensed at the idea of people sitting around getting high and getting paid by the government for it.
Of course you could take that idea to its logical extreme and force all recipients of public assistance to submit to tests for drugs, alcohol, and nicotine, in effect requiring them to be straightedge. I wonder how such a proposal would be received by the nanny-statists.
>> moving on through the belly button ring
> Do tell.
Tell if you like. No more about the results of the flaxseed oil capsules, though, PLEASE!
"And who decides just what a "decent life" is anyway?"
They do! Hence, giving them the money to choose what they prefer.
Although, I too believe in attaching some strings for a proper incentive structure, that doesn't necessarily mean giving them money isn't the way to go.
If someone rather be drunk than warm what gives you the right to say they are wrong?
It's like when parents give their kids an allowance and responsibility. If the kids waste all their money on day one therefore not being able to get something they'd like later AND the parents don't bail them out; the next time around they're probably not going to repeat what they did.
The belly button ring was my 25th birthday present to myself. Ultimately, my body rejected it, slowly forcing it out through my skin until one day it just painlessly fell out in the shower. Weird but true. I still have a small scar and some ill-advised photos.
The flaxseed oil wasn't nearly as bad as you think. I take a lot of flaxseed oil every day; just usually when I've had something more to eat than some steamed veggies at noon. The ultimate result was nothing worse than a fairly severe case of the queasies.
But had a government official stepped in to tell me that I really shouldn't waste years of my life on a guy who wasn't any good for me...
You know, my mother (who works for a federal judge) spent years telling me that the guy I was with at the time was a waste of space. And she was quite right, as it turned out. But now I feel better for not having listened: I was just being libertarian!
"If you are not going to do this, and thank God we aren't, do them and their parents the service of believing that even poorer, darker skinned people with a variety of social and economic problems love their kids every bit as much as you love yours..."
Do they? It may be a function of having more children, on average, than middle class whites, but there is evidence that they don't. African American mothers appear far more likely to let their kids ride their bikes in busy streets, for example, than white mothers, judging from copious personal observation. Also, my sister, who is a labor and delivery agency nurse, and has worked in hospitals serving predominantly low-income blacks and Latinos as well as hospitals serving middle class whites, has told me numerous times about how black women recovering from their second, third, or fourth delivery are less interested in spending time with their babies, often turning down offers to hold them and preferring to eat, watch TV, or sleep instead. This is the opposite of what she's observed with white (and Asian) mothers.
But the virtue of in-kind benefits is that they self-select according to need and they have in-built incentives to remove onesself from dependence on them.
You don't go to a soup kitchen unless you're actually hungry.
Cash benefits are both too cruel (often they're insufficient), too generous (they allow the system to be gamed by people who aren't very needy), and too ineffective (there's no guarantee that they will be spent on solving the problem -- ie hunger -- that the donor is looking to solve).
Ahhh, majoring in English. Oh how I wish I could tell my 17 year old self not to do that.
Me three JasonC.
He who pays the piper calls the tune.
I consider myself a Libertarian as well and am willing to pay some assistance for poor people. However, if I am going to give them charity I also think I have a right to make sure it goes to something I actually think is good for them and achieves MY goal for giving the money not their goal.
Clearly if I buy someone food it may free them up to buy other things with their remaining money, but at least it provides some constraint on the way it is spent.
Megan, presumably, you were able to get a higher GPA majoring in English than she would have majoring in, say, chemistry. And that higher GPA helped you get into Chicago's GSB. Also, b-schools like to mix in liberal arts grads (as well as women) for diversity purposes. So majoring in English might not have been such a bad decision for you. Am I off-base here?
I'm kind of puzzled by what makes opposition to cash subsidies for the poor a hallmark of liberalism, specifically.
Me too, but this question is more properly aimed at all the many, many liberals who do oppose cash subsidies (i.e., vouchers) when it comes to education.
cash subsidies (i.e., vouchers)
Vouchers restricted to education spending only are precisely not cash subsidies in the sense meant by this post.
I'm specifically speaking to the many, many people who have informed me that vouchers are bad because, unlike us, poor parents don't care about their children's education, or are too stupid to evaluate the school.
I guess I'm more conservative than Megan, because I don't think government should provide much assistance to able-bodied, non-retarded adults (i.e. persons capable of holding a job) beyond what government would provide to me, such as unemployment benefits if I have been working in the past. And my idea of government assistance appears to be the one the federal government is following, as TANF and associated programs are based on having children. Because, as Megan says, we don't want to take children away from parents who aren't actually neglectful/abusive, the only way to provide for those children is through their parents. But we do our best to make those in-kind benefits: school breakfasts and lunches, food stamps, Section 8 housing, Medicaid.
I get really tired of people who think public policy should turn on "love." It's a stupid argument for same-sex marriage and it's not much better as a reason to give poor parents cash. A mother can love her children and still be driven by addiction or abuse by another to spend that cash in ways that are not for the children's benefit. Remember that set of bad choices she's already made? Not being a conservative, I don't think she made those choices because she's a Bad Person, and if she makes bad choices with her kids, I don't think that makes her a Bad Person either. She's just not very competent at either running her life or caring for her children. She's an adult so her competency at running her own life is none of my business, but her competency at ensuring her children's basic needs are met does matter to me, if for no reason other than I don't want her kids robbing me once they're big enough. If she's just competent enough not to be found unfit, then she gets to keep custody of her kids, but that doesn't mean she gets total discretion over the money from my taxes that goes to help those kids.
I don't care whether a parent "loves" her child; I care whether that child is healthy, educated and safe. Some therapy will get the kid over not being loved, but it's a lot harder to regain what was lost by not being fed.
Fair enough, but I'm not sure about the word "precisely" there, because the typical liberal program for education is even more "precisely" opposite to cash subsidies (i.e., far from letti8ng poor people have cash even for the restricted purpose of education, they want to restrict poor people to whatever actual school the local government happens to provide).
Someone cheaped out on inferior metal, it sounds like. 24 karat gold and proper sanitation will keep your body from wigging out.
As was pointed out above, society is not going to let people starve to death or die of exposure even if they make bad decisions... so giving money to people who have already demonstrated bad judgement is likely to not result in them making good decisions... and if they make bad decisions again, they'll end up getting help to avoid starving.
I'd rather provide for a way for the truly poor to get enough food and shelter to survive through some kind of in-kind program. Neither the food nor the shelter should be particularly high-quality or luxurious... they should be adequate.
The above is especially true for adults with children.
Maybe the safety net should be a way to voluntarily commit oneself to a "Home for the Chronically Dependent" where one will be sheltered and fed and taken care of. Anyone who wants to be independent and have control of his life will have to figure out how to support himself.
EI
But every voucher program, as they are currently constituted, or will be constituted in the near future, simply increases relative inequality for the kids left behind. I understand you want 100% private education. But that's nowhere near coming true anytime soon. What about the kids left behind by vouchers? To me, we need to devote every possible resource to improving the public education for everyone, if we it truly needs improving.
Freddie, what do you mean by "relative inequality for the kids left behind"?
Sounds like Charles Murray's idea to do away with all entitlements (incl Medicare and Social Security) and give everyone a monthly cash stipend (with caveats of course). The proper premium would instantly be placed on management rather than the whole game of demonstrating need.
It's also interesting to speculate as to what forms of low-level entrepreneurship might blossom from such a plan.
Earnest has it right. If you hand me $400 for a month, I suppose I could scrimp and save and live in a cheap flat and have no fun. Or... I could spend it on booze and weed, party for a week, get some girls, then throw myself on the mercy of society. I'm a victim! I couldn't control myself! Help! What, you're gonna let me starve? But... I'll do better next month, I promise! I'll do rehab (if you pay for it)!
Show me the state that has the political will to let people starve and freeze to death, and I'll show you a state that does not need to give out any welfare of any kind, none at all. Like, say, America of 100 years ago. (Somehow they survived.)
But let's now return to the present. We do not have the will to let people starve. We are going to give them food, one way or another, anyway. So, forget the cash. If they want my help, they can have it only on my terms. Food, yes. Cash, no.
So what's different from liberalism? To the extent that the problems of the poor are inadequate money, I think that we should solve this problem by . . . giving them money.
This post is a demonstration of why the ideas of Left and Right (and worse, invective like "Leftists") have become little more than ways to insult.
Back in the day, it was the liberals who were giving out too much money directly. The image of the Welfare Queen driving a Cadillac was used, by conservatives, against the idea of "free money." Similarly, the idea of "workfare" was introduced by "compassionate conservatives" to offer a hand up, not a hand out.
Both of these ideas (less direct cash, welfare tied to work incentives) sold very well to the middle, but they were "conservative" in origin, not liberal, and both could be considered nanny-ism.
[* I am not suggesting that either of these ideas were bad, per se. There is a real argument against incentivising poverty, and one for providing a solution as well as assistance. As always, the devil is in the details.]
Tom West: We do in fact allow some homeless people to die of exposure every winter, partly by not forcing them into shelters, but also partly by not always having shelters for them. (And often, homeless people will get thrown out of local shelters for disruptive behavior, which means they may not have anyplace welcoming them.)
Fred:
I think some of the risk tolerance stuff is just cultural, and doesn't imply much about how much the parents love their kids. My parents let me range pretty far (and I went further than they thought!) as a kid, and I'm pretty sure they didn't love me any less than I love my kids.
More broadly, if you are going to make one default assumption about who cares most about a child's welfare, his parents are a much better guess, across the board, than a government employee or the electorate. And government has a lot of other competing objectives other than the well-being of the child, as witness bilingual education and historical segregated schools.
In medicine there has been a growing movement against medical paternalism, the tendency for physicians to retain decisions. More and more we talk of empowerment and involving the patient.
However, some patients demand things that are not in their best interests, such as cold remedies and unnecessary antibiotics, inadvisable screening and unproven technology as sexy as a messed-up belly-button ring!
Some people need good advice and others more independence, but not at the price of diverting scarce resources away from the rest of us. Tough call.
Post in response at http://executivephysician.blogspot.com/2007/10/woman-in-fur-coat-and-homeless-man-in.html
Jessica
"You know, my mother (who works for a federal judge) spent years telling me that the guy I was with at the time was a waste of space. And she was quite right, as it turned out. But now I feel better for not having listened: I was just being libertarian!"
Nope: you were quite possibly being dumb. There is a VERY VERY big difference between your mother and a govt official.
Your mother knows you and what makes you tick to a degree of intimacy that the govt not only does not have, but MUST NOT HAVE.
Your mother actually genuinely cares about you and how you turn out. The govt does not. This thread even argues - and I'm tempted to agree - that it *should* not.
But you say we've decided that it is government's job to insure children get an education. If that's true then isn't it also true we've decided at it is the governments job to make sure people make good decisions, since in fact we have many offical policies that attempt to ensure just that?
When convienient you hold that the job of government is whatever the people say it is, and when otherwise convienient you say the job of government is independent of what the people have chosen.
Which is it?
And where do you think the Scandinavian Social Democracies factor into this shopworn argument, Megan?
Libertarians would brand them all "nanny states" and imply that they've treated not just the poor, but everyone, as children.
I would point out that because of these very policies that you excoriate, they have very few poor at all.
And I think that's Q.E.D. Just go there and check it out.
The only people who are remotely poor are recent immigrants from places like Bosnia, Iraq, and Algeria, and these people aren't poor through the fault of the Nordic governments. If they're poor, it's because they entered those countries with next to nothing.
But I defy you to make a cogent, rational, and FAIR argument that social democracy is bereft of public policy reason.
It's only when, through neglect and laissez-faire economics, that a society slips over the proverbial edge of the entropy cliff, that we pretend that social democracy won't work and it's nothing but a nanny state. The fact is that it does work, and if we had implemented it in the US from, say, 1900, we'd be a much different, and much more humane, country today, in all ways.
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