Sunday, March 23, 2014

George Will: The Left is In Denial About Poverty

Work is not just work.

It's called an "occupation" for a reason. 

George Will spells it out.

"The broken correlation of improvements in employment and decreased welfare dependency was not just bewildering, it was frightening. Policymakers had long held a serene faith in social salvation through better economic incentives and fewer barriers to individual initiative. The possibility that the decisive factors are not economic but cultural — habits, mores, customs — was dismaying because it is easier for government to alter incentives and remove barriers than to alter culture. The assumption that the condition of the poor must improve as macroeconomic conditions — which government thinks it can manipulate — improve is refuted by the importance of family structure."

Many "poor" people (with cell phones, large screen TVs, central air conditioning, fake nails and cars) make consistently bad choices. If there is always money for alcohol, drugs, cigarettes and fast food and no time for self-improvement, how can the "cycle" of poverty be broken. 

Welfare breaks the human spirit. Self-reliance restores it.

There is no will to change the way.