The latest alarming report about the state of the economy is making its way through the various web circuits: “One in Five Children Live in Poverty.” That’s bad, of course. The question is how we should think about—and what we can do about—that alarming number.
What came to my mind immediately was the report a few weeks ago, discussed in the New York Times and elsewhere, indicating that one in five men between the ages of 25 and 54 do not go to work each morning: “the missing fifth,” David Brooks called them. So there must be some connection between one in five children being in poverty and one in five men not working. Solution? It’s hard not to recall the quip of Ronald Reagan: “the best welfare program is a job.” And we all know how President Reagan promoted job growth.
That is obviously not how the Left thinks about these things. It is instructive to see what goes into the making of bad social policy. The headline itself alerting us to child poverty comes from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, www.aecf.org (not cited in most of the reports on the web). It begins with some sad tales about people living in poverty who have lost jobs and how the hard times have affected their children. In other words, our sympathies are stoked. (And maybe they should be.) That is important. The Left has a story to tell.
What follows is the recommendation of a number of social policies that absolutely have to be implemented because while adults can get through tough times, children’s lives and opportunities can be compromised forever. All the “latest research” shows that we have to “invest” in foreclosure prevention; health, child, and prenatal care; pre-K programs staffed by experts in child development (parents, you see, cannot be experts); “evidence-based” programs to prevent teen pregnancy (which do not seem to be working; otherwise not so many children would be in poverty); and a whole system of “home visits,” presumably conducted by social workers going door to door telling people how to live. Once again, all of this is packaged not as welfare or transfer payments or even the old “poor relief,” but as badly needed investment in children—the children who are going to be well-trained and allow us to compete in a global economy, provided, of course, we invest in education!
One cannot help marveling at the finesse with which a further plea for feeding the welfare state is put forward under the guise of the latest “research.” The poverty of the children captures the headlines. We are supposed to feel sorry for the children (and we do). And that feeling sorry then translates into more “investment” in the system that made the poverty in the first place. The reason we must marvel at it is because, though the whole effort is horribly misguided, I am at a loss as to what alternative the Right has to offer: what stories, what headlines, what “research”? If an ordinary fellow loses his job (because of the economy), cobbles together a couple of jobs to support his family, becomes to his children a model of self-reliance, and weathers the storm, without getting on the dole: that story does not make headlines. If a small business owner keeps the family business intact—despite over-regulation and stagnant consumer spending—he remains unknown to the public. Nor do we see much about how churches and local volunteer organizations are helping out and doing a better job than the government. Nor do we find, at least not in the press, “evidence-based research” touting the old-fashioned virtues of modesty in girls and gentlemanliness in boys that prevent teens from having illegitimate children.
These are the stories that need to get told during the bad times, made bad by bad social policies. And we should also probably tell stories about the good times—and what made the good times good: hard work, self-reliance, trust in people, the things Ronald Reagan spoke of when he toured the country, albeit not in a giant bus. At this juncture I would shamelessly plug my attempt at such a story, The Perfect Game—about real boys, baseball, families, and faith, set during the Reagan years (that begins with a sermon on the Good Samaritan)—were it not so self-interested and unseemly a thing to do at a time when so many children are starving.
- Comment (7)
- · Quote
- · UnfollowFollow (0)
Comments :
May '11
Re: You've Got To Hand It To Them: The Stories Liberals Tell During Hard Times
Forty-five years of leftist anti-poverty programs, trillions spent, and it hasn't made the least dent in poverty. So obviously we need more of the same. Definition of insanity?
The way lefties think is -- they have good intentions, so the programs they support must be good. If those programs don't work, then we obviously have to pump more money into them. We HAVE to do this, because the programs are good. Fortunately, lefties know that there is an endless supply of money available simply by taxing the "rich."
Anyone who disagrees with the lefties obviously doesn't share their good intentions. Such people are malicious. Hence, the endless stream of comments saying that "teabagger" want to watch people starve in the streets so that hedge fund managers can have bigger yachts. The “teabaggers” want this because their corporate overlords tell them to. I'm sure that somewhere, deep down, there is a part of their brain that knows how ridiculous this is – a part of their brain that knows that nobody wants to see people starve in the streets. But it is the only explanation they can conceive, so they stick to it.
Edited on Aug 18, 2011 at 7:31amFeb '11
Re: You've Got To Hand It To Them: The Stories Liberals Tell During Hard Times
Terrence O. Moore, Guest Contributor:
These are the stories that need to get told during the bad times, made bad by bad social policies. And we should also probably tell stories about the good times—and what made the good times good: hard work, self-reliance, trust in people, the things Ronald Reagan spoke of when he toured the country, albeit not in a giant bus.
Who's going to tell them? The media functions as though it is the marketing and advertising departments of the Democratic Party. Fox News is bending over backwards to prove that it isn't a tool of the Republicans or the Tea Party. That doesn't leave much.
Jun '10
Re: You've Got To Hand It To Them: The Stories Liberals Tell During Hard Times
I can only suppose that the Times does not keep statistics on how many children are living in moral poverty.
May '11
Re: You've Got To Hand It To Them: The Stories Liberals Tell During Hard Times
During the Great Depression only 1 in 5 children DID NOT live in poverty. How'd that turn out?
Oct '10
Re: You've Got To Hand It To Them: The Stories Liberals Tell During Hard Times
Oh come on. We have plenty of ideas on this front: School choice, school vouchers, destroy the teacher unions, work-based welfare programs, the earned income tax credit, end the marriage penalty in welfare programs, destroy the teacher unions, school governance reform, teacher performance pay, end tenure and, again, destroy the teacher unions.
A lot of Democrats actually agree with the necessity of destroying the teacher unions. But as that government official from Luxembourg once put it: "We all know what we have to do, we just don't know how to get reelected afterwards."
It's hard to take anything the left says seriously until they grow the political will to take the teacher unions on. Until then, we just can't trust them to spend the money on, you know, the children.
Jul '11
Re: You've Got To Hand It To Them: The Stories Liberals Tell During Hard Times
The moral of all the leftist stories has to do with the presence or lack of an intervening government saving the day. Federal sponsored solutions are just comical yet when the Feds play the role of Robin Hood then someone always feels great for the little guy without thinking deeply at all about who was robbed. Any government that robs Peter to pay Paul will always get the vote of Paul.
Family values, pride, dignity, responsibility and moral character are dwindling and acting locally to reverse this trend is the answer. Voting away robbers and looters is pretty satisfying too.
Oct '10
Re: You've Got To Hand It To Them: The Stories Liberals Tell During Hard Times
DocJay, the left is perfectly aware of all the downsides. But as studies have shown, liberals care abnormally about equality, over and above other priorities. They simply find the tradeoff of everyone being miserable preferable to some people being less miserable than others.
Of course, you cannot improve the human condition without a lot of people trying a lot of new ideas, and that naturally leads to inequality. The left's mistake is assuming the losers won't learn from the winners, and win too. The first cell-phone users were wealthy buisiness executives--and the lefty impulse, undoubtedly, would have been to ban cell phones so no one could have them. Yet today, poor people with nothing else in third-world nations have cell phones.