Posted on 09/01/2014 4:47:51 AM PDT by Kaslin
Economist Milton Friedman said “The economic race should not be arranged so everyone arrives at the finish line at the same time but so that everyone starts at the starting line at the same time.”
Those on the left and the right have always contended whether economic outcomes for any given set of individuals is the business of government. But few, on the left or right, dispute that government should work to assure that every American starts the game under fair conditions.
It’s the latter point, fairness at the beginning of the game, that defines the motivation behind Republican Congressman Paul Ryan’s vast and sweeping new set of ideas for taking on poverty in our nation.
According to the Census Bureau, there are almost 50 million Americans living under the poverty line.
Since President Johnson’s “War on Poverty” half century ago, government has spent $15 trillion dollars fighting poverty. The federal government now spends $800 billion per year on means-tested anti-poverty programs.
Yet, we see no change. The incidence of poverty has remained constantly at around 15 percent of the population. And the racial component has been constant, with black poverty rates consistently at three times the rate of white poverty.
Paul Ryan’s important contribution here is to show that not only are these vast government anti-poverty programs not working, but also they themselves contribute to the persistence of the problem.
Because these programs are means-tested – they’re tied to how much money you earn – they perversely discourage work and advancement because earning more means losing a huge array of benefits.
Beyond creating a universe of disincentives to work and advancement, many of these individual programs create their own unique perversities.
HUD housing vouchers, for instance, simply subsidize slumlords and build ghettos because they can’t be used freely anywhere, but only with landlords authorized by HUD.
The end of it all is we wind up with entrenched areas of poverty, which foster crime, drugs, unemployment, frustrated youth, and then, inevitably, tragic incidents like we just witnessed in Ferguson, Missouri.
The left yells racism and calls for more government, more money, even though this is most often the source of the problem, not the solution.
If we are going to spend the money, says Congressman Ryan, let’s try to do it in a way that will lead people out of poverty, rather than perpetuate it.
Ryan is proposing experimental programs – Opportunity Grants – that consolidates 11 distinct government anti-poverty programs into one cash grant to states, allowing states flexibility to propose new and creative ways to use these funds.
I am currently working with state legislators in Oklahoma, led by Senator Rob Standridge, to show how government assistance for the poor can encourage, rather than discourage, work, marriage and family, education, and savings.
Low-income families with children would get matching grants from the state up to an annual income of $30,000. So as a married couple earns more, government grants kick in – up to $30,000. For every year the couple stays married, $2500 is deposited in a household retirement account, $2500 in a housing down payment account, and $5000 in an education savings account. A monthly housing grant of $500 is provided while household income is under $50,000.
Ten hours of monthly volunteer service at a community non-profit would create eligibility for prizes at monthly raffles.
Beyond this, minimum wage laws that discourage employment should be addressed, as well as taxes and regulations that discourage opening businesses in low-income neighborhoods.
Low wage workers and America’s poor need freedom to labor, not laws that penalize businesses that come to their communities or laws that keep them from moving to the second or third rung of the economic ladder. They need freedom from policies that keep their kids trapped in government subsidized, union controlled schools, and government housing policies that keep them trapped in ghettos.
The rats have created their trap so as not to look like the racists they really are they put the national black caucus in charge to act as the candy man and funnel tax payer money in the form of feel good programs to keep thier peeps down on the farm and dependent. The peeps on the other hand are allowed to shed thier responsibilty to themselves thier offspring thier committment to thier women embrace the thug lifestyle, gangs, drugs, domestic violence and alcoholism, loot, burn down thier communities and blame the white folks for thier ills and inequallity. The rats have created a socialist state withing the united states with the help of the media, the racebaiters and now Washignton dc
The GopE solution? Move 10,000 illegal Mexicans into the area as a border “compromise”?
It sounds like a very complicated program to administer. with the government getting more and more into your business. I don’t believe his plan is workable. It should be simpler not more complicated.
Who determines what is a volunteer program? Will programs like Acorn be considered a volunteer program. If you spend time taking care of a sick relative will that count?
The whole purpose of the $15 trillion invested in these programs is to create a permanent class of dependent people while employing massive numbers of bureaucrats and government employees. On that basis, it's been a huge success, not an abject failure.
Give and it shall be given unto you. Continually demand that more be given you and you will never have enough. NEVER.
Produce, create, contribute. Cut the whining.
Self-control, hard work and an appreciative, grateful positive outlook is the key to success,
A negative, ungrateful, resentful, hateful attitude guarantees a life of misery.
His solution is more government intrusion and more government programs right down to monthly prizes. Think of how many more government employees we can hire to administer this program.
Paul Ryan is a GOPe / U.S. Chamber of Commerce amnesty pimp. A fake TEA Party guy if ever there was one.
I wish Paul Ryan and Romney would just go away. They had their chance. We need someone who believes in limited government.
It sounds like a possibility, although one of the problems with so many of these people is that years of having the government do everything for them has created such passivity and ignorance that it’s going to be hard for them to take even that much responsibility for themselves.
I had a family member who worked for a Habitat chapter in the South. Theoretically, the people who received the houses (the “homeowners”) were supposed to be employed, but in practice, they had ended up accepting people with 100% “government income,” as it’s called. And while the program was open to anyone, virtually all of the families (loosely speaking - usually an older lady with her grandchildren or even great-grandchildren) were black.
The problem is that they really had none of the skills that would enable them to run their own lives, much less own a home, because they were so used to having government come along and pick up after them. There were exceptions, but many of them (and their strapping but lazy grandchildren) managed to avoid the sweat equity, and then when they got the house, they could never manage to realize that they actually had to make the mortgage payments.
And they couldn’t do even the lightest maintenance chores on their houses: if a doorknob fell off, they didn’t know how to go and get a screwdriver and reattach it, and in fact, they felt that it wasn’t their responsibility to even do such menial tasks. They were encouraged to take the basic home repairs classes that the local Home Depot offered (for free) but they never did. And it’s not like they were too busy working to fit it into their schedules...
In fact, even routine cleaning was beyond them. Within a couple of years, the originally nice shiny new Habitat homes looked like every other decaying slum house around them.
I honestly don’t know what can be done about the bottom of the bottom. Clearly, what we’re doing now isn’t working.
I’m not sure this would work either. Ryan’s plan offers them a lot of carrots to change their behavior, and I do think that’s necessary; but Habitat certainly offered them a lot of attractive benefits, and they didn’t change because they knew that in the end, they really wouldn’t have to. The government would rescue them once again, and the grandchildren could go on dealing drugs, stealing granny’s check and committing robberies, using the proceeds to buy themselves new rims or maybe street guns to blow away their rivals.
In other words, in addition to the carrots, there probably needs to be a stick in this plan, where failure to meet standards would result in a reduction of benefits. That was actually what worked to get a lot of people off their backsides and off of welfare several years ago.
It’s very hard to deal with, because these people (not only blacks, btw; we have some rural poor whites around me who are no better) now have accumulated generations of helplessness and dysfunction and don’t even know anybody who works.
Not only is it too complex, the pitfalls are yawning chasms.
Define “being married”.
Is that common law or is that a legally licensed marriage?
Is that “gay marriage” too? Why of course!
Is that multiple people in a marriage? Oh yeah...
If someone lives together but isn’t legally married, how can the government discriminate against them, after all, if they are together and in the home with the children...
What about those who get married and stay legally married, but who have in reality split up and gotten involved with other people?
I’m tellin’ ya, Paul Ryan lives on another planet.
Together with his best bud, Luis Gutierrez of total amnesty fame...
All I’m gonna say is: That’s your opinion and you’re entitled to it
Define “being married”.
You pointed out a lot of pitfalls in just one aspect of the program. Think of all the new government jobs just in deciding who is considered “married” and monitoring them to make sure they are in a government sanctioned “marriage”.
This is really the crux of the matter, and I can't really see how Ryan's proposal addresses this very basic problem. However, I grudgingly give him credit for at least trying to take the feds out of the micromanagement of it all.
bttt
In Chicago hey have a unique antipoverty program. Give the young men guns and then allow them to kill each other.
Reduction of the surplus poor saves the federal money for the administrators
A monthly housing grant of $500 is provided while household income is under $50,000.
I don't see a lot of difference Mr. Ryan.
The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) is a United States federal law considered to be a fundamental shift in both the method and goal of federal cash assistance to the poor. The bill added a workforce development component to welfare legislation, encouraging employment among the poor. The bill was a cornerstone of the Republican Contract with America and was introduced by Rep. E. Clay Shaw, Jr. (R-FL-22). Bill Clinton signed PRWORA into law on August 22, 1996, fulfilling his 1992 campaign promise to “end welfare as we have come to know it”.[1]
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Bill Clinton was coerced into signing it, but he did. Now Obama gutted it:
2012
In July 2012, the Department of Health and Human Services released a memo notifying states that they are able to apply for a waiver for the work requirements of the TANF program, but only if states were also able to find credible ways to increase employment by 20%.[10] The waiver would allow states to provide assistance without having to enforce the work component of the program, which currently states that 50 percent of a state's TANF caseload must meet work requirements.[11] The Obama administration stated that the change was made in order to allow more flexibility in how individual states operate their welfare programs.[12] According to Peter Edelman, the director of the Georgetown Center on Poverty, Inequality and Public Policy, the waivers would reduce restrictions that increase the difficulty for states in helping TANF applicants find jobs.[13]
The change has been questioned by Republicans including Dave Camp, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee and Orrin Hatch, who requested further details from HHS over concerns that the memo would remove the main focus of PRWORA.[11] Mitt Romney attacked the measure, saying that Obama was “gutting welfare reform”. However, PolitiFact stated that Romney's claim was “not accurate” and “inflames old resentments”, giving it a “Pants on Fire” rating.[14] CNN also reported that assertions that Obama was “taking the work requirement off the table” was false.[15] In response to Republican criticism, Kathleen Sebelius, the Secretary of Health and Human Services said that states, including some with Republican governors, had previously asked Congress to allow waivers.[16]
Ryan's plan will just create more government employees. It doesn't really matter what law is passed until Congress gets a backbone and stops Obama and any other future President from gutting the laws passed by Congress. They should just pass a law to enforce the current laws.
“Paul Ryan’s important contribution here is to show that not only are these vast government anti-poverty programs not working, but also they themselves contribute to the persistence of the problem...”
What is she talking about?
Paul Ryan is an idiot.
Anyone who would try to breech contract with veterans’ widows doesn’t know anything about the basics of economics
Government and politicians can enact all the programs they can think of, but until individuals change their attitudes and actions, nothing will change. I’ve seen people who live off the government and other people, value nothing because it was given to them, they didn’t have to work for it, there’s more where that came from. Democrats want to keep the poor, angry and poor and blame anything and anyone but the very people who don’t even know how to live a fruitful life because of generational dependence on government.
Most of the people who I have seen change on were people who became true Christians. They made things right with God, they changed their actions, attitudes and worked to better themselves. Most importantly they had hope they could live a new life with Gods help. Of course the left will pretend to believe in God but demand God stay out of it because of supposed separation of church and state. It’s a racket for the democrats; they need these people dependent on them so they will vote for the very people who keep them in property. There will be a special place in hell for those who use people and keep them away from God.
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