How do we, as Catholics, give to others in a way that is not subsidizing the very poor lifestyle we are trying to get people out of?
While helping the poor may reduce the incentive to get richer by a small margin, the reduction in incentive is not as significant as the increase in opportunity that comes from their getting the help that they need. People still want to get rich if they can. So I dispute the conclusion that says that the help leaves them worse off than if they didn’t get that help.
First, ensure that it is not structured in such a way as to discourage people from moving up or doing the right things
How do you know this? There is a very large underclass that in my experience are very much incentivized. People do still want to get rich but plenty of poor people seek that out by hoping to play professional sports, dealing drugs, or playing the lottery. And some folks just want to work a simple job and be able to go home at night to drink and watch TV. I think this is true of not just poor people but many middle class.
I think man in naturally ambitious.
But if you give him things he could not have gotten even by trying hard, no harm is done.
We should be trying to accomplish the will of God the best we can.
That is Hoppe’s claim - a claim that has not been substantiated, and one that I dispute.
Close. I would say that it is not so much a matter of a negative consequence being of less importance as it is a matter of the negative consequence being not so consequential as the positive consequence, even when the two consequences are of equal importance.
I don’t claim any special insight. I know this or don’t know it to the same extent that Hoppe knows or doesn’t know his claim of the opposite.
What exactly do you mean by “in your experience”? Have you worked as a social worker, or otherwise come into frequent and intimate contact with members of this large underclass enough to understand their deepest personal motivations?
Perhaps they don’t see a viable alternative. What if you identified a young child in this underclass you speak of and promised to that child and his mother that you would ensure that child had school supplies, transportation to an excellent school, and a guaranteed paid tuition, room and board for a four-year degree in the best of American colleges? What is likelihood such a child would eschew those opportunities and seek instead to deal drugs or play the lottery? I’m not saying such charity is practical. I’m just pointing out that people’s choices often depend on what they see as their choices.
I would argue it does for many cases.
Also, many entrepreneurs take excessive risks because bankruptcy shields them excessive downside risk. I would argue that we ought to have some form of debtor’s prision which probably would have reduced the excessive risk taking from bankers before the financial crisis.
I think Hoppe is claiming that it is a basic law of economics that you get more of what you subsidize. I agree. And I think there is plenty of evidence in other areas that this is true. So it would be natural to conclude it applies here.
No, I’m not a social worker. But social workers are a biased source of info. Their very job depends on the continued existence of an underclass.
Interesting that you mention a child’s mother but not the father. This is a huge problem of course. Giving money to single mothers no doubt further contributes to it. We can dispute causality but the growth of the welfare state has coincided with a growth in fatherless homes.
But he is applying that law to situations that are not the marketplace, and he is assuming that chasing subsidies is the only motivation of human nature. I disagree. People do want to better themselves. Giving someone something they could not get on their own just by trying harder does not affect their motivation. It just expands their opportunities.
This is not an experience which would lead you to be able to make an authoritative statement about the degree to which poor people are incentivized, which is the knowledge you claimed to have “in your experience”. Hearing about a man who bought food stamps at fifty cents on the dollar is the not the same as getting to know poor people personally so that you might actually understand their personal incentives. So your claim remains unjustified.
But more poor kids deal drugs than rich kids because rich kids know they have lots of better opportunities.
You certainly do see an increase in people taking advantage of increased opportunities. More people go to college now than 100 years ago.
I think Ben Franklin said it best…
I’m sure there are many secular philosophers, authors, politicians, etc. who hold this view. But since the original question was posed in the context of Catholic Social Justice, shouldn’t we be looking to authoritative Catholic sources for guidance on that question?
I don’t understand how this goes with what you said above. If you believe Ben Franklin, you are actually doing a bad thing by being benevolent toward the poor. (And as far as the fish analogy goes, it is fine if the guy you teach to fish actually has legal access to a fishing site.)
I know we live in an age of authorities. Basic common sense and observation are of little value. But I don’t hold that view.
I’ve not done a thorough study of poor vs rich kid drug dealers. I know there are a lot more poor kids. So numbers alone will not tell you much.
Did you personally see the man selling food stamps? Or did you just hear about it? If you just heard about it, that does not justify your use of the phrase “in my experience”, because so far you have not related one single experience of yours that would lead to you believe that poor people are negatively incentivized. It would be more honest if you just said “in my opinion” instead of “in my experience”.
I don’t mean any official authority, such as the author of a book, or a college professor. I mean the kind of authority that anyone, including you and I, can become by having first-hand personal contact and knowledge of a significant number of the people whose motives you are claiming to know. I don’t consider myself such an authority, but then I am not the one claiming to know anything “in my experience” about the motives of poor people. Like you, I am just offering my opinion.
I was obviously referring to percentages of their respective population, since that is the only interpretation that addresses your claim that is just as easy for a poor kid to avoid dealing drugs as it is for a rich kid to avoid dealing drugs.
That depends on what level of opportunity you mean. If you set lower standards for the poor than for the rich, then sure, there would be many fewer poor kids without opportunities. But if you set the standards of what you consider a “good” opportunity the same as what a rich family would consider a “good” opportunity, then no, poor kids do not have that much opportunity.
The government subsidizes less than half of college tuition. And it does not subsidize high school in poor areas to the same extent that it does in rich areas.
This is a big problem, to be sure. And it is not the kids’ fault. All the more reason to consider what we can do to correct that problem.
No, not automatically. But it does give them the opportunity to do better by their kids.
Then we should take away what little they have and they will become saints, or at least somewhat better people.
I am an authoritative Catholic source. I use Ben’s quote because his observations are correct in both religious and secular context.
Benevolence takes many forms. Remember Ben suggest that leading the poor out of poverty is “the best way of doing good to the poor,” "Leading: in this case is benevolent.
rolleyes: oh brother) You are getting very contemporary here…Perhaps we should put a modern spin on a 1000 year old quote.
Well, so am I then. Can you site any Catholic source (other than yourself) to back up Ben’s view of charity?
If you are using yourself as the Catholic authority, there would be no need to quote anybody else. You could just quote yourself.
Benevolence can indeed take many forms. But since you were responding to my use of the word, you should at least continue to use the meaning that you intended when you first used the word in post #11. It was my understanding that you were referring to material aid there, and not just some wise words of advice. Because otherwise your use of “benevolence” in that sentence doesn’t make sense. Why would anyone doubt that it is "not immoral for the “non-producers” to accept our words of advice"?
As for the legal access to fishing sites…
But your modern spin has lost an important aspect of the original saying. It was assumed that anyone can fish, once he learns how. But it is not at all clear how anyone who is denied assistance can automatically go out and work for that same assistance on his own. Thus it sidesteps the objection I raised, with actually addressing it. That objection was that in some cases the aide being given is not something the recipient was capable to getting through his own powers, no matter how hard he tried. Until you address that objection, you cannot apply the fish saying. That’s what I was getting at by my reference to “a legal fishing site”. The point is, knowing how to fish does you no good unless someone lets you near the water. You see the analogy?
Of course you are…I have always considered you to be a reliable, Catholic authority.
Of course. Although I don’t agree with much of his economic philosophy, Charles Clark, a professor of economics and senior fellow at the Vincentian Center for Church and Society at St. John’s University in New York says:
Yes, I could, but Ben has a better use of words than I do. Anyway if I did use one of my quotes you would be searching all over the internet trying to prove me a plagiarist.
Ah…I see the misunderstanding. Benevolence can consist of material things as well as time and effort. One can be charitable (benevolent) and give alms to the poor. One can also be benevolent with time and effort…and actually do better by helping or assisting the poor to find work.
No one should doubt that…
You are complicating a simple concept.
This is a softer statement than Ben’s statement. Ben was contrasting his suggestion of “leading or driving them out of poverty” as opposed to “public provisions for the poor”. Ben might look at today’s public works programs that provided jobs for the poor in building infrastructure projects as more “public provisions for the poor” than “leading them out of poverty”. It seems Ben’s suggestion is to “not make them easy in poverty” more than it is to actively provide opportunities for the poor to get out of poverty. I think what Ben was really suggesting (with reference to his own time and place of course) is to lead the poor out of poverty by simply stopping public assisting and telling them there will be no more and they will just have to do for themselves. That might have made more sense in Ben’s day when land could be claimed by anyone willing to work it. But today all the land is spoken for. Unless you have big $ you are not simply grabbing a piece of it.
Right, and I think Ben might have been against both of them, if the “helping or assisting” amounted to inventing a job that did not exist just so they could have a job.
In Ben’s day, the nearest thing to that would have been taking someone on as an apprentice. Would Ben have suggested that all tradesmen take on an apprentice whether they needed one or not? I don’t think so.
The only reason I am complicating the saying is to point out the reason it does not apply to today. I will state it now without any analogies or sayings: Teaching or advising someone who is needy is only useful to them if they have the means to apply that teaching or advice. In today’s world, what advice are the poor being given that they have the means to actually use to lift themselves out of poverty?
None!
Let me re-phrase that question: In today’s world, what advice **could **the poor be given, and that they have the means to actually use to lift themselves out of poverty?