On Wednesday, Nov. 3rd, 2010, the Yale Political Union debated "Resolved: Government should not provide for the poor" with Cato Institute's senior fellow, Michael Tanner. This post contains speeches made by members of the YPU.
Speeches on the Negative:
1st Negative Speech, by Gabriel Zucker, student leader of Yale Hunger and Homelessness Action Project
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thank you, Mr. Tanner, for joining us.
In his State of the Union address almost a half century ago, President Johnson announced the War on Poverty, arguing that "many Americans live on the outskirts of hope" and that "our task is to replace their despair with opportunity."
I think this quote is a good place to start because it alludes to something on which Mr. Tanner and I agree, I think--that many people in this country have nowhere to turn. And that someone, in some capacity, should provide for them. In our economic system, some poverty is unavoidable--to no fault of those people who suffer it. Workers are unexpectedly laid off; tenants are suddenly evicted when landlords are foreclosed on; and medical emergencies cause bankruptcies. In those situations, the right assistance helps people regain their normal lives. For those who have been marginalized in our society, especially those who have lived on the street or spent time in prison, it is not always clear how to start getting your life on track. I think many or all of you in this room, including Mr. Tanner, accept that there is a place for assistance that helps people find that path--that the poor should sometimes be helped.
Where we disagree is that some of you don't think government should do that helping. You might advocate instead that the right agents of change are non-profits, organizations that can provide better, more efficient, more personal services. Honestly, as a co-director one of the largest non-profit groups on campus, and someone who expects to keep working in this field--that is an incredibly flattering argument. But I don't know anyone in the non-profit field who agrees with it, and there are a couple of reasons why.
First of all, government social programs already know this. Not all government social spending is direct--a huge portion of it comes in contracts and grants for non-profit organizations. In terms of the homelessness programs that YHHAP focuses on, essentially 100% of money spent by the New Haven government is donated to the non-profits that provide direct services. So governments complement community organizations.
Second, just as in economics, there are some goods that the private sector--that is, the non-profits--won't provide. These are projects that require huge infrastructure and long-term funding, projects that cannot afford to take cuts whenever donations dry up. Permanent supportive housing, a type of subsidized housing that includes live-in counselors, is the only proven method to get chronically homeless individuals off the streets for good--but the scope of its infrastructure and its need for constant, steady funding make it nearly impossible for private non-profits to take on entirely alone. Huge programs like food stamps or Section 8 vouchers furthermore experience economies of scale at a federal level. And the public-private dichotomy is all the more relevant in today's economy, as private non-profits are downsizing operations while ever more citizens need their help. A privately run food stamps program that drastically cut its recession budget would be catastrophic--and would be exactly the opposite of what we need.
Governments provide certain benefits better than non-profits. At the same time, I expect that some of these government-provided benefits are exactly those that many of you on the right oppose. Mr. Tanner has written extensively on this issue. He writes, and I quote, "The whole theory underlying our welfare programs is wrong-headed. We focus far too much on making poverty more comfortable, and not enough on creating the prosperity that will get people out of poverty." Better, he says, to invest in education and create jobs--the real avenues out of poverty.
Mr. Tanner--we agree on this point. Education and jobs are the long-term solutions, and no one in their right mind would advocate neglecting these solutions in favor of patchy emergency relief. We disagree, however, on what to do to the social safety net as we implement long-term reforms. To my mind, and to the millions of people who receive these benefits around the country, the two types of services are complementary, and without the safety net, any other efforts would be meaningless. What good is an entry-level job if, in the absence of rent assistance, the young woman with that job cannot afford decent housing and must live on the street, where she is liable to become sick and lose her job? What good is an employment re-training program if a man enrolled in the program has no time to study because he works two or three jobs to support his mother in the absence of Social Security? What good would a stellar education do if a child had no access to health care and developed a chronic condition that kept her from successfully completing her studies?
One thing I have not addressed tonight is why I believe this issue is so important. And I haven't addressed it because I know we all agree on this point. I think everyone in this room believes in an America that provides opportunity for all of its citizens, where everyone has at least a shot at becoming as successful as anyone else. And given the choice, we would rather see a country without abject poverty, a country where everyone can afford decent housing, everyone is adequately fed, and everyone can be employed in a job that fits his or her talents and desires. Tragically, America does not live up to these common hopes. But it is my firm belief that government can and should fight against the failures of our present reality. Government's scale and consistency allow it to provide the types of programs we could never expect from our non-profit sector. And without these basic programs--at a bare minimum--we can never expect to make America fulfill our dreams.
Thank you very much, and I yield to questions.
2nd Negative Speech, by Marian Homans-Turnbull, a Junior in the Liberal Party
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
So, I'm really glad it turns out I don't need to stand here this evening and defend the basic idea of providing for the poor. When I first saw this resolution, I was concerned there might be a significant number of people in this Union actually opposed to helping people - I'm glad we can agree that no one should lack access to basic commodities if anything can be done about it. As Mr. Zucker, Mr. Tanner, and Mr. Sarteau have all said or implied, given the amount of money, the technology, and the infrastructure of the US today, letting anyone fall below a certain baseline standard of living is unacceptable. We owe our neighbors - whether they live next door or on the other side of the continent - some level of bodily security and some form of opportunity.
So the question before us tonight is really one of methods. What's the most effective, the most just, the most moral, the most fair - however you define "good," what's the best way to provide for the poor?
To answer this question, we need to take into account not only what Mr. Sarteau thinks is moral, but what poverty is, what communities are, what the government is, and what provision should do.
Poverty, for starters, is bigger than Mr. Tanner and Mr. Sarteau want you to think it is. It's bigger than your street. It's bigger than your town. It's bigger than your city, especially when you push all the low-income families off into a segregated neighborhood where you can't see them. It's bigger than your state. (It's also bigger than this country, but that's a topic for another debate.) Poverty is systemic. It's part of national and international capitalism. The economy in which those who start with money tend to make more and those who start without money tend to end up with even less extends across the country, across the world. To address national problems, we can't look to neighborhood associations in which every noble philanthropist is personally acquainted with the recipients of his or her lofty generosity.
I like small communities - there are things that they do very well, like providing short-term help for neighbors going through temporary rough patches. Sure, jump-starting a car. Bringing over meals when someone is sick. And yes, they can help address symptoms of actual poverty, through shelters and soup kitchens - I don't want to devalue at all the real worth of local charity. But there are things communities and community organizations don't do well, and systemically addressing inequality and inequality of opportunity is one of them.
Having a national government at all is a way of acknowledging this fact - that the scale on which inequality exists and operates is bigger than any scale acquaintance and meaningful personal interaction can comprehend. Maybe later tonight we'll hear proposals for a revision of this system - for a return to economies the size of farming communities and city blocks. But in the meantime, we've got the system we've got, and if we can just acknowledge what it is, we've already got some of the tools to make it better.
So I'd like to return to something I said a moment ago, about inequality of opportunity. That, to me - more than what Mr. Sarteau called "fortune," and probably more than human selfishness or greed - is at the root of this systemic, this really big problem of poverty. The opportunity to improve one's standard of living, the opportunity to carve out a decent and independent life, is something every child, and every motivated adult who wants to try to turn over a new leaf, should have access to. And when I say every, I mean every - "equality of opportunity," and all the catch-phrase-y but sincere things it ought to imply, isn't just something for poor people. It should be something for everyone. Not just abjectly grateful smiling children, not just stable nuclear families, not just the visible. It shouldn't be coercive, in that it shouldn't only apply to the people a church or some other organization approves of. Everyone. Practically, that takes massive oversight and organization; morally or on whatever level Mr. Sarteau was trying to talk about it, it's much healthier to think about support systems in terms of redistribution and equity and solidarity than in terms of generosity and personal obligation. It takes people living in poverty out of the "them" category - as in "we should help them," or Mr. Tanner's "reaching down" - and into the "us" category. Of course we should help us.
So this "government aid or private charity" thing is both a false dichotomy and answering the wrong question. If what we want to do by way of providing for the poor is make food and shelter available to people with low or nonexistent incomes, okay, great. That's important work, and it's a place where a nationally-overseen safety net and some government funding can work hand in hand really well with local organizations. Staff shelters, work in soup kitchens as the Liberal party did this evening - these are good things to do, not because they build character, but because they give people food. Government funding, as Mr. Zucker so eloquently told us, makes them easier to do, makes them more about human interaction and skill-sharing and neighborly support and time and energy and less about fundraising. The important personal element of social assistance isn't about where the money comes from but about the dedicated people who oversee its local and immediate use - who staff the offices, serve the food, work on the houses, give the job training, teach in the schools. If all we want to do is give people money to make up for not having a job, okay, that's again something the government can do pretty well - taxation and redistribution remain the most efficient, if not the most warm and fuzzy, ways to give money to those without much of it. But I agree with Mr. Tanner, actually, that cash handouts aren't the right solution. If we truly want to provide for the poor, in the broadest and most overarching and best sense of trying to combat the systems that produce poverty in the first place, we need to look to the government to provide and to keep track of the kind of basic, systemic, large-scale opportunities and safety nets - food, shelter, education, healthcare, assistance finding jobs, and so on - that a national and official structure is in by far the best position to provide.
I yield to questions.