In Response
I'm giving up facebook for Lent. I waste way too much time on it. Time that could be better spent elsewhere. Lent is like New Year's though. Unless you are giving things up for the right reasons, then it is a rather meaningless gesture. But, I try to give things up at Lent that are a regular, but unnecessary, part of my life so that when I want to
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A few words about welfare generally…
There are two principles I think we can both agree on: (1) we should provide assistance to the truly needy, and (2) we should do so in a way that empowers the recipient, instead of fostering dependence.
Furthermore, I would hope we can agree that these principles may need to be held in tension with one another, in certain circumstances. As you rightly pointed out, if you do not give someone enough aid they will not be empowered to respond to the incentive to work. Likewise, if you give someone too much aid, they will no longer see the need to earn their own living. If we go too far in either direction, we will actually hurt the people we are intending to help. The best thing to do, as you pointed out, is to take care of people’s basic needs AND teach them how to do so on their own. In my experience, local organizations (such as churches) are good at that; government agencies are not.
As for the minimum wage specifically…
I can agree that $5 an hour doesn’t provide an adequate standard of living. (I disagree with the statement that it isn’t enough to live on…there are people all over the world who live on much less…but, of course, mere existence isn’t really the standard either of us are aiming for.) However, I must say I find the point somewhat irrelevant. If I were arguing for a system with no minimum wage and no welfare whatsoever that point would be persuasive, however that’s not what I am saying at all. I think we should replace the minimum wage with a better form of aid, not remove all aid entirely.
Also, I’m not entirely sure what you mean when you say I should “start looking at things like this from the point of view of the people being most affected by these policies, instead of the point of view of a politician or Republican or intellectual or scholar or somebody comfortably in the middle class.” Yes, I am interested in politics, I do generally side with the Republican Party, I am fairly intellectual in my approach to the world, and I am comfortably in the middle class at this point in my life (although my family very well may not have been in the middle class when I was born). If you wish to point all of that out as a way of saying I am predisposed to thinking the minimum wage hurts the poor, well fair enough. We can agree to disagree about how much of my belief is based on reason and how much is based on personal factors. But even if I am biased, no one is completely objective. Pointing out that someone might be biased is not sufficient to prove that the minimum wage doesn’t hurt the poor. That contention must be proved on other grounds.
(I am going to assume you did not mean to imply that I am being disingenuous about my reasons for opposing the minimum wage. In the political world, it is fairly common for supporters of the minimum wage to accuse those who oppose it of hating the poor, wanting to see people starve, etc. In my case, at the very least, nothing could be further from the truth, as I feel very passionate about helping the poor. I just don’t think the minimum wage contributes in any meaningful way to that goal.)
With all that said, I think the evidence that the minimum wage hurts the poor is extremely compelling. I don’t want to get into the details too much here (this comment is already too long), so if you are interested you can read my post on the subject here: http://ryan-and-anna.blogspot.com/2009/02/minimum-wage-part-1.html. I also provide some thoughts on how we could better serve the poor.
- Ryan S
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If you go back to my original post and reread it, you will see that the whole point behind my post was that I wish people would actually SEE other people.
Whether it's true or not, when you speak or write about certain things, this included, you come across as being so well studied in it that you have gotten lost in the academic or political aspects and have forgotten or neglected the human aspect. I was simply expressing my frustrations with that, because in reality we are arguing on different planes.
So, I'm sorry if I offended you. I didn't mean to.
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Don't worry, you didn't offend me. I was pretty sure what you meant to say, but it's always good to clarify.
And I appreciate the feedback...I would really like to be able to present my ideas in such a way that people don't have to question whether I really care about the poor or not. After all, I really do think there are better ways to help them, and that's what I'm trying to figure out how to explain.
- Ryan
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