The default view is that the government should dramatically expand redistribution programs, forcing the well-endowed – especially business and the rich – to provide a decent standard of living for everyone. I strongly reject this default view.
Tag: poverty
Killing the American Meritocracy
It is my belief that those who prefer a centrally planned society to one based on freedom, liberty, and personal achievement are intentionally rewriting history so as to make people believe that so-called “privilege” rather than merit has been the primary factor in achieving success throughout American history.
Apology for a Trainwreck
The ethnographies of Oscar Lewis paint a bleak picture of lower-class life. The thousands of pages of published interviews in books like Five Families, The Children of Sanchez, Four Men, and La Vida show a relentless trainwreck of impulsive sex, unplanned pregnancy, child neglect, child abuse, drug addiction, drunkenness, degenerate gambling, intra-family violence, near-random violence, parasitism, and gross financial mismanagement. …
Poverty and Success
Poverty is not the fault of billionaires or of “greedy capitalists” or of some systemic injustice that keeps “po’ folks” down. Poverty is the natural and predictable result of ongoing poor choices, and until people realize this and start taking responsibility for their own culpability in their financial situations, we will continue to hear the growing chorus of complainers demanding political intervention to redistribute money from those who earned it to those who did not.
Reflections from my Panama Cruise, II
Falmouth had the most lavish port shopping area; I’d compare it to Reston, Virginia. The area beyond, though thinly inhabited, was fairly poor, but with quite a few middle-class homes mixed in. Our tour guide said that many Jamaicans spend years building their own homes so they can live rent-free (but not property-tax-free) for life.
On Income Inequality III
I am not totally opposed to the ideal of economic egalitarianism. I don’t want poverty to exist, and I do want those with means to bring about its eradication in an ethical, efficient, and lasting way.
Rainwater’s Motivated Reasoning
If a brilliant, eminent, and mainstream scholar of the 1960s could be right for such wrong reasons, the brilliant, eminent, and mainstream scholars of today could easily be mired in their own brand of motivated reasoning. Indeed, so could you. Or me. There’s no easy remedy, but the first step is being hyper-aware that we have a problem.
Banfield on the Hyperbole of Urban Bankruptcy
“When a mayor says that his city is on the verge of bankruptcy, he means that when the time comes to run for reelection he wants to be able to claim credit for straightening out a mess that was left to him by his predecessor.”
Fight for 15% More Low-Skilled Jobs
Instead of pressuring companies to raise wages, activists should instead pressure them to hire more low-skilled workers. Why not abandon the “Fight for $15” in favor of the “Fight for 15% More Low-Skilled Jobs”?
Gratis is Not Great
Almost every psychologically normal human is delighted to here about products everyone can enjoy free of charge. “The schools are free!” “Health care is free!” “Lunch is free!” According to basic welfare economics, however, gratis goods are almost automatically inefficient. Unless the marginal social cost of the product miraculously happens to be zero, setting a price of zero leads to socially wasteful behavior.