Far be it from me to assume I know the answer to eliminating poverty. It has been with mankind since the beginning and I suspect it always will be, mainly because to at least to some extent it involves human decisions and actions.
It seems to me that neither Republicans or Democrats have the answer given the less than stellar record of the last fifty years or so.
Democrats claim that Republicans are uncaring and only want to cut spending on the poor. Republicans say Democrats only want to throw more programs and money at the problem. I suspect there is some truth in both positions, but that doesn’t help the situation.
Too many programs, too many subsidies, especially the kind that discourage economic advancement for fear of loss and hence no net gain seem counterproductive. Too few programs that are necessary is meanspirited.
You can’t simply throw money at the problem and you can’t not spend what is necessary. You can’t define success unless the poor of today are not the poor of tomorrow and the poor of tomorrow are less in number.
It is obvious that we need to address the root causes of poverty in a better way. It is equally obvious that we must establish expectations and incentives for the poor to help themselves out of their condition which I believe most want to do.
We need targeted programs with metrics that will tell us definitively of their success or not. Real progress will only come with a decline in the number of Americans receiving assistance not because they have been ejected, but because they have no need.
Clearly we need a new direction; we simply are not making progress.
I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer. – B Franklin, On the Price of Corn and Management of the Poor (29 November 1766)
QUINNSCOMMENTARY 