Reducing Poverty

Robert L. Woodson, Sr. writes at The Daily Signal about four discrete types or causes of poverty and proposes a way to meaningfully help one of them, those in poverty "because of the choices they make, the chances they take." I'm willing to grant his approach has merit for that category.

You'd think he views the other three types as essentially insoluble, requiring our simply living with them. I grant that temporary poverty caused by "unexpected setbacks" is worth extending help to, and the truly disabled we have to help.

There is, however, a third category he identifies, toward the reduction of which we can definitely take action.

Those who have remained dependent on the system because the disincentives to marry and work embedded in its regulations make it a rational choice to avoid those stepping stones to self-sufficiency. They have “done the math” and calculated that it is not worth the loss of benefits to take the first steps toward upward mobility.

About this group something can certainly be done. We can change the incentives structure so their choice to stay on benefits indefinitely no longer remains "rational" or possible.

Centrist Democrat Bill Clinton took a major step in this direction by signing welfare reform. In the intervening decades there has been considerable retrograde slippage, slippage a conservative Congress and president could eradicate. Welfare, in all forms, should be temporary for everyone save those permantly and severely disabled.