Politicians often use poor people as stage props. They talk about their “concern” and “compassion” hoping at once to attract the votes of two groups of people — those who are looking for a government handout and those who just feel good about voting for politicians who espouse nice things. There are far more of the latter, they’re more likely to vote, and can contribute plenty of money to campaigns. Wearing one’s “compassion” on the sleeve may be sincere, but mostly it’s just an election tactic.
Some voters are utterly captivated by it. One is the dean of UNC’s Law School, Gene Nichol, who in a recent op-ed piece published in the News & Observer of Raleigh heaped praise upon two politicians who were, as he put it, “bringing the poor to the fore.”
One of them was Gov. Mike Easley. Nichol praised him for recently raising the pay of the lowest-paid state employees, so that they would no longer live in “crushing poverty.” The governor had decided to dip into “emergency state coffers” to pay for a decree that all state employees would earn at least 120 percent of the federally defined poverty level. Nichol was thrilled that the governor was so concerned about “the plight of the most threatened public workers.”
Sorry, but I’m less enthusiastic about Easley’s vicarious generosity. There is no reason to assume that all such employees exist solely on their income from that job. Many live in two-income households and live comfortably. For those who don’t, there are many charities in the state that target their help with food, clothing, and other essentials to needy families. I doubt that there was any “crushing poverty” among state workers.
Nichol also loves Sen. John Edwards’s show of impassioned rhetoric during his recent bid for the Democratic nomination. “You and I have a responsibility together,” Edwards would say in his stump speech, “to lift these families out of poverty.” Then he’d use his trademark tear-jerker about an imagined 10-year-old girl whose father has been laid off: “We see her, we hear her, we embrace her, she is part of our family, and we lift her up.”
Now we can feel sorry for kids in families where there are hard times, but why is that a governmental problem, much less a presidential one? Temporary loss of income from a job doesn’t mean starvation or suffering. Most unemployed workers find new employment within a month or two and in the meantime they can get by. In a free society, there are hardly any jobs that can be guaranteed under all circumstances, but it’s also true that in a free society there are many opportunities for individuals who want to work.
Edwards knows that there is no conceivable policy that could prevent unemployment from occurring. He knows that all the rhetorical embracing and uplifting from silver-tongued politicians won’t really make worried children feel any better. But it’s good political theater.
Lest the reader think that I’m a cold-hearted curmudgeon, I’d like to say that I, too, care about poor people. I would rather live in a world where no one went hungry, shivered through the winter, or had to forego basic medical care. But I know that we won’t get there through governmental action.
The greatest antipoverty program of all time is laissez-faire capitalism. For people to live better, we must produce more and better things. That’s what happens under the economic freedom of capitalism. Before the era of capitalism, the nobles ate well and most of the people struggled to get enough to eat. It was capitalism that liberated the great mass of people in Europe and North America from hunger, and is the only hope for liberating people in the rest of the world from it.
Capitalism, however, requires capital — that is to say, money for investment. Our improved ability to produce food and everything else stems from capital investment. And what makes capital investment possible? Savings.
But now we run into politicians again. Strangely, the ones who are usually so insistent on the need to help the poor are the same ones who push for ever-higher taxes on the wealthy. Edwards and all the other Democratic candidates were unanimous in denouncing President Bush’s across-the-board tax cut, which they call a “giveaway to the rich.”
Sucking more money into Washington appeals to the envy in many people and it may win some votes. But if you really want to help the poor, it’s the exact opposite of the policy you should want.