But What About the Poor?

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The following is from John Stossel. Give Me a Break. pp. 217 - 229

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The policy of the American

government is to leave its citizens

free, neither restraining them nor

aiding them in their pursuits.

—Thomas Jefferson

A few years ago I was in a New York City youth center about to interview a group of foster kids who were upset about their experiences in "the system," when a tall man in khakis, wire-rimmed glasses, and a button-down shirt came up to me and, his voice filled with venom, said, "I know who you are—you are evil. I really hope you die soon." When I recovered enough to ask why, he said, "Your TV programs hurt poor people; you don't deserve to live." He turned out to be a lawyer for a public-interest group that claimed to help the poor.

His accusations infuriated me. I wanted to argue with him, but I just walked away. I've learned that people who spew that kind of venom are rarely open to reason. Because I was a TV reporter who defended capitalism, I was simply "evil." It's not surprising people believe that because the mainstream media consistently suggest that capitalism is cruel. It "exploits" the poor. The Reverend Jesse Jackson has been on CNN so often saying, "There is no roof for the wealthy, and no floor for the poor," he could probably trademark the phrase.

I certainly believed that when I started reporting. My Princeton professors had taught me capitalism was a problem and government was the solution. President Johnson's Great Society would tax the rich and use the money for welfare benefits, job training, and programs like Head Start, and this would mark the beginning of the end of American poverty. I wrote college papers on the ways government programs would "level the playing field," if only a serious effort were launched.

Then a serious effort was launched. The War on Poverty doled out more money than was spent on World War II and the Korean and Vietnam Wars combined. Today means tested government spending totals more than $400 billion a year. How much actually gets to poor people still isn't clear. In 2000, the Rockefeller Institute of Government estimated $13,476 per person. The conservative Heritage Foundation says it's about $8,000 per poor child. A liberal Urban Institute study came up with an average of about $10,000 per child. These numbers alone demonstrate the failure of the War. If you simply gave that money to a poor mom with two kids, their income would be well above poverty level (I'm not suggesting we do that).

Politicians can proudly point to people who were helped by the War on Poverty. I would hope they could point to some! When you give away a trillion dollars, some people will be helped. Look at Table 2.

TABLE 2: POVERTY RATE, 1965-2000

Year US population Number of "poor people" Percentage

(in millions) (in millions) of population

1965 191.4 33.2 17.3%

1970 202.2 25.4 12.6%

1975 210.9 25.9 12.3%

1980 225.0 29.3 13.0%

1985 236.6 33.1 14.0%

1990 248.6 33.6 13.5%

1995 263.7 36.4 13.8%

2000 275.9 31.1 11.3%

In 1964, the year President Johnson's "war" began, 19 percent of the population lived below the poverty line. In 2002 the number was down to 11.3 percent (of a larger population). That is an impressive achievement, if you don't look (and the media usually didn't) at the poverty data for the years before (Table 3).

TABLE 3. POVERTY RATE, 1959-1964

Year US population Number of "poor people" Percentage

(in millions) (in millions) of population

1959 176.6 39.5 22.4%

1960 179.5 39.9 22.2%

1961 181.3 39.6 21.9%

1962 184.3 38.6 21.0%

1963 187.3 36.4 19.5%

1964 189.7 36.1 19.0%

Table 3 shows that the percentage of Americans living in poverty was steadily decreasing before President Johnson rushed in to "help." Just living in America gave poor people the opportunity to lift themselves out of poverty. After the war began, there was a surge of progress but then it slowed and stopped. Some years, the percentage of people living in poverty increased. Bizarrely, the War on Poverty perpetuated poverty.

How can this be? It happened because government welfare programs teach people to be dependent.

I was clueless about all this when I started work in Portland, Oregon, in 1969, but I soon sensed something was off as I covered the initiatives of the War on Poverty. At the press conferences, the goals were noble, but when I followed up, the promised success was rarely evident. The activists had nicer offices and bigger organizations—lawyers had been hired to sue or lobby for more money. The poor were still poor. And now they were angry, since they'd been told they were "entitled" to a monthly check and more.

This was the time of riots in ghettos, and Portland had its share. Activists I interviewed told me they and their "clients" had a right to more of America's wealth. Since America was a racist, classist society, the underclass "deserved" welfare, food stamps, and housing allowances to level the playing field. Reporters I talked to agreed. When Charles Murray wrote Losing Ground, which suggested that welfare kept people poor because it rewarded dependency, my colleagues were horrified.

Years later, when welfare reform was proposed, every expert quoted in the mainstream press predicted disaster. "Families will fracture," wrote the New Republic. Richard Gephardt predicted, "A million children will be forced into poverty." Daniel Patrick Moynihan predicted "trauma we haven't known since the cholera epidemics."

But the failure of the current system was so obvious that welfare reform passed anyway. We waited for the disaster, but—surprise—it didn't come. Welfare caseloads fell by half. Some people have suffered, but welfare reform inspired millions to better their lives by finding work. Do the doubters admit they were wrong? Never.

TEACHING DEPENDENCY

The left's vision of an America "that exploits the poor" is just a lie, promoted by politicians who thrive by telling people they are helpless "victims." In truth, opportunity abounds for those who are willing to work. The success of immigrants proves it. Children of immigrants typically earn more than the average American.

There is so much opportunity in America that the "poor" people Americans encounter most frequently are often con artists. I'm talking about panhandlers. For a segment of "Freeloaders" we taped people standing on street corners in Denver holding signs that read, "Will Work for Food." The signs moved me—these men didn't want a handout, they wanted work.

But then we asked them what work they would do. One man's answers were particularly telling.

Jeff Hubert: I just can't work for anybody.

ABC: Would you flip burgers at Burger King?

Jeff Hubert: I wouldn't do it. It's a monotonous job.

ABC: Maybe construction?

Jeff Hubert: I can't do it. My back.

ABC: Would you work five days a week?

Jeff Hubert: That I can't do.

ABC: Why not?

Jeff Hubert: Well, why should I? Why does a human have to work every day if he don't want to?

We approached every "work-for-food" guy we saw and offered him a hot meal and a job mowing grass. We gave them bus tokens to get to where the job was. More than a dozen promised they'd come, but only one did. He said he was an alcoholic who wanted the work only to get money for booze.

Later, in Denver "homeless" shelters, men proudly told me how they cleverly work what they called the "circuit" of 21 soup kitchens. There was never a need to work for food. "If you got the IQ above an eggplant," said one, "you'll end up with more food than you're going to eat."

The one Denver homeless shelter that actually has a track record for rehabilitating addicts is run by a former homeless alcoholic named Bob Cote. He says government shelters fail to rehabilitate because "they feel comfortable keeping people helpless, telling them, 'Don't even try:" He said the welfare state has created a "poverty industry"—an army of bureaucrats and social workers—that is reluctant to put itself out of business. "They've made those people dependent, and they keep them there."

A POVERTY INDUSTRY?

I found it hard to believe that a "poverty industry" would want people kept dependent, but the more I watched the professional antipoverty activists work, the more plausible that seemed. They were overtly hostile to ideas that might diminish dependency.

In my hometown, Mayor Rudy Giuliani demanded that welfare recipients clean streets and parks—"workfare," they called it. "Advocates for the poor" were furious. We taped their demonstrations, where they chanted, "Workfare is slavery!"

ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), one of the coalition of 100 nonprofit and religious groups denouncing workfare, assembled a group of "victims" who told us why workfare "is like slavery."

Pierre Simmons: Somebody gets a call somewhere upstairs, "Hey, man, we need 10 workers on some highway." That's not your job, but they can snatch you from your park and put you on a highway.

John Stossel: And that's like slavery?

Pierre Simmons: Yes, it is.

Carrie Tillman: Why not give me a real job?

John Stossel: Because you didn't get a real job on your own.

Pierre Simmons: I'm picking up dog crap all day long, dead animals. I’m tired of it. I don't like it.

Elliott Roseboro: We make less than $5,000 a year.

John Stossel: So quit and get a job. Nobody's making you do this. Most people find work in America. You could. You're well-spoken, smart people. You don't have to be on welfare.

Jose Nicolau: Where are the jobs? Where are the jobs at? Come on, Be real!

I pulled out that day's New York Post and started reading from the long list of help-wanted ads.

The ACORN group laughed derisively.

Jose Nicolau: You've got to look at how much the pay is, too,

John Stossel: ... delivery person, warehouse work...

Pierre Simmons: How much is it paying? Four seventy-five an hour?

John Stossel: Not enough?

Pierre Simmons: A minimum-wage job would kill me. I'd be crushed. No

benefits, no medical...

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. First jobs don't pay well, but they are the first rung on the ladder of opportunity. They teach people how to show up on time, follow instructions, and handle responsibility. They give them the self-respect that work alone brings. Then the workers can move into better jobs. ACORN and the rest of the "poverty industry" hurt poor people by deriding entry-level work.

And calling workfare slavery is an insult to those who suffered real slavery. Yes, it would be nice if all workers earned more, but the perfect is the enemy of the good.

"What you're hearing is the absence of vision," said Errol Smith, a radio host. "I have worked as a waiter. I have worked as a janitor. I've had some of the most menial jobs that you can imagine. But they were all means to an end. I learned something."

We featured Smith in "The Blame Game." We chose him because he is so passionate about opportunity. He grew up poor in Harlem. His first business, a hot dog stand, failed. But he kept trying, and 10 years later was a successful business owner.

"If you're looking for opportunity, you'll find it," he says. "What we should be doing is the same thing that immigrants routinely do. They see the opportunity and they go about taking advantage of it."

The "we" he was talking about was American blacks.

If anyone has a right to label themselves victims, blacks do. No other group has had to endure slavery, Jim Crow laws, and continuing discrimination. The question, however, is what does one do with that? Smith said "so-called black leaders like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton" teach a destructive message: Racism has stacked the deck against blacks. We're victims, and therefore we cannot be expected to compete on an even footing.

"Where can you go at a minimum-wage job?" roared the Reverend Al when I confronted him about that. "You can barely survive. So that is why a lot of people don't even try that, because it doesn't pay their bills."

Give me a break. My father was penniless when he came to America from Germany. He spoke no English, and the only job he could get was cleaning toilets, and later, fixing them. But 20 years later, he was part owner of a business and a member of the "middle class."

Of course, he was white. But "if the door of opportunity in America is closed to blacks" because of racism, it's hard to explain the success of black immigrants. For "The Blame Game" we visited a Caribbean community in Brooklyn. The prosperity was obvious. The streets and stores were bustling with busy people coming home from work. Here were people who had more to complain about than the workfare workers. Their skin is just as dark, and their ancestors were just as cruelly enslaved, but they had an extra disadvantage: Many could hardly speak English. Yet the Census Bureau says in 2000, 66 percent of New York's Caribbean immigrants over the age of 16 held jobs, while only 53 per-cent of American blacks did. Six percent of Caribbean immigrants received welfare, and 5.7 percent got Supplemental Security Income, but about twice as many American blacks did. Why? Because Caribbean blacks aren't eligible for governmental assistance until they've been in the United States for two years, says Vera Weekes of the Caribbean Research Center at Medgar Evers College. "So they definitely go out and look for jobs."

I interviewed Marco, a Caribbean immigrant, who told us welfare creates dependency. "It makes some people lazy," he said. He should know. He works for the welfare department.

Welfare and government set-asides continue to "make us dependent," said Errol Smith. "It [welfare] doesn't foster self-reliance. As opposed to individuals and communities recognizing what they can do, it leaves us thinking that we're poor and powerless.... Can't accept that. My parents taught me to believe that the American dream is real. . . . That belief empowered me. . . . We appreciate the training wheels, but you can take them off now."

GOVERNMENT HELP HURTS THE POOR

Often, the more the state helps, the worse things get. Look at what government "help" did to American Indians. Rightfully ashamed by what early settlers had done to the Indians, the politicians tried to make amends by "protecting" the remaining tribes. This "protection" wrecked their lives.

For the show "Mr. Stossel Goes to Washington" we visited Shannon County, South Dakota, home of the Lakota Sioux. The Sioux have been herded and controlled by the government for over a hundred years. The result? No county in America is poorer. "Every month they receive some type of handout from the federal government," a Lakota Sioux member named Dale Looks Twice told us. "So our people become lazy and they don't want to work." Unemployment within the tribe is about 80 percent.

With no culture of work, the tribe's members turned to getting drunk.

Indian activist Russell Means points out that today American Indians "have the least life expectancy. Less than Guatemala. Less than Bolivia, Brazil. Hardly anyone reaches 65 anymore." This happened, he says, because the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the government agency that was supposed to make the Indians' life better, instead made it worse.

"There's no Bureau of Jewish Affairs," Means points out. "There's no Bureau of Irish Affairs. There's no Bureau of Black or African Affairs.... We cannot make a plan or a decision without the express consent of the secretary of interior," says Means. "We submit anywhere from two- to five-year economic plans. Does that sound like the Soviet Union? The old Soviet Union in their failed economic plans?!"

"They sit up there in Washington, D.C.," says Dale Looks Twice, "and they legislate laws that affect us when in fact they don't know what the heck's going on here."

Is there something about the American Indians that makes it hard for them to prosper in the United States? Of course not. Look what happens when a tribe manages to get free of government control. In 1944, the BIA put the Choctaw on a reservation in Mississippi. For two decades, they continued to live in poverty, much like the Sioux.

But then the Choctaw persuaded Congress to exempt them from some BIA rules. Members of the tribe were allowed to manage their own lives. In 1969 the tribe opened its first company, Chahta Development, to build housing. Twenty years later, the Choctaw were wealthy. The tribe now has factories that generate hundreds of millions of dollars in sales. Every Indian who wants a job has one, and they even hire non-Indians from off the reservation. They've built their own school and hospital, and a thousand new homes. They are prosperous—because government left them alone.

THE PRIVATE SECTOR DOES IT BETTER

But government keeps trying anyway. The planners always have such good intentions. But again and again, their plans make life worse. In the name of giving the poor better places to live, the Department of Housing and Urban Development spent billions on public housing. Some people have homes now, but the overall result is not pretty. In housing projects all across America, elevators don't work, repairs aren't made, and crime is rampant. Sometimes the failure is so stunning, the government just gives up and blows up the project. Between 1996 and 2001, HUD demolished 44,089 units in 90 housing authorities in Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and other cities.

Yet government keeps promising to "house the needy." An honest press release would say: "HUD will spend a vast amount of your tax money to build a monstrous apartment complex that will quickly deteriorate into a crime-ridden slum and make life worse for the people who live there." Don't think I'll see that release soon.

During the Clinton administration, HUD secretary Andrew Cuomo took the pandering to new lows: He sent out press releases that said, "Andrew Cuomo makes the American dream achievable" and "Cuomo awards $10 million." Cuomo made it sound as if he were giving his money away. Cuomo's press releases also promised public housing residents "a safe, clean, decent place to live." Did he deliver? Has any administration? No.

Some housing officials say it's the tenants who are the problem. Many won't pay their rent. They vandalize their own buildings. But if the tenants are the reason public housing is in sorry shape, how do you explain what can happen when government gets out of the way?

We videotaped at an apartment complex in the middle of one of the poorest sections of New York City. It was clean and well maintained. Playgrounds were filled with happy children. It wasn't always this way.

"When this was a public housing project," says resident Dave Burrell, "living here was hell. There were some 4,000 broken windows. The elevators wouldn't work for months at a time. This place was a shambles."

Residents told us the government let the building run down. They said half the place had no heat, and more than a hundred apartments were controlled by drug dealers. "Management just let it happen," said one resident. "People are civil servants. They get paid at the end of the week whether they do their work or not."

But then a private developer took over and did odd things. He brought in musicians to work with the kids, gave karate lessons, built a new playground. "For the first time in a lot of years, they had children running around in that park," says Burrell.

The housing project's new private managers decided little things like karate lessons would send the message that management cared. That attracted new tenants, and encouraged existing ones to treat the project with respect. Under private management, everything changed. The profit motive worked better than government handouts.

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When baby birds hatch from the eggs the parents will devote a tremendous amount of time and energy finding food and bringing it to the nest for their babies. You can watch them and every few minutes an adult will bring more food. This will go on for days and weeks until the babies have reached a certain point of adolescence. Then the young will suddenly climb out of the nest and walk out on a limb and fly away. A similar thing happens with black bears. The mother bear will take care of the young until they have reached a certain stage of adolescence, teaching them how to find food, etc., and then she will suddenly abandon them and leave them to survive on their own. This is nature. This is the natural order of things. In nature life is hard. Finding food is hard. Surviving is hard. Learning is hard. In general, the process of growing up involves a lot of learning, a lot of trial and error, a lot of lessons.

For most creatures in nature there is the danger of being killed and eaten by some other creature. For most life is filled with danger. In general creatures have to be smart and on their guard.

Parents who continue to take care of their child after he has reached adulthood are not doing him any favor. They may think they are but they are not. They are doing him a great disfavor. Young adults need to learn how to survive in a hard world. They need to learn how to live on their own. It may be hard but it is necessary.

Thousands of years ago man learned how to make a friend of an animal (such as a dog or a cat). You feed him. If you feed him you relieve him of the hard task of finding food for himself. If you feed him you relieve him of the burden of one of the basic problems of life — surviving on your own. And he becomes your friend. He becomes dependent on you.

Anyone with any sense would know what would happen if a government offers a single woman free board, room and living expenses if she has a baby. There will be lots and lots of single women having babies. Only some intellectual egghead who has totally lost contact with reality would not know that.

If you allow some people to ride in the cart while others pull, everyone will want to ride in the cart and no one will want to pull. Why should I have to pull? Why should another ride in the cart and you have to pull?

It should be no surprise at all why Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty program didn’t work. The basic assumptions were liberal assumptions and the liberals have no comprehension at all of how things work.

What parents can and should do for their children is try to instill in them proper spiritual and moral values, the right outlooks, attitudes, and values for living life — and place a strong emphasis on self-discipline and good schooling as the oriental races do.

27 June 2024