Personal Responsibility

This is sort of a political / ideological post...so brace yourself.

Welfare is a highly disputed topic in America. Most middle class people resent the fact that people in poverty can't make money, and they do not want to 'fund their laziness'. Adding fuel to the fire, people in poverty have a high probability of using drugs, drinking, and having unplanned pregnancy.

My roommate read me a post where someone wanted to add urine testing to qualify for welfare money. His logic was that he had to pass a urine test to make the money for them, so they should have to pass a urine test to get welfare money. Sounds good, right? So his argument is that people should exercise some personal responsibility, and an abrupt discontinuation in funds is an acceptable solution to reducing how much welfare money is handed out.

There are some really interesting connotations throughout the whole problem of welfare: middle class people emphasizing personal responsibility seem to believe that their success is the product of their actions, and that people in poverty have failed and made bad decisions to get them where they are. I don't believe that we should 'personalize' it like that. I think that by doing so is self-serving, and really misses the point. Certainly there are hereditary traits that can prove useful in the workforce, but in high school, college, etc. the environment in which one grows up is probably the most important indicator of success. Thus, if we were to swap 'Middle Class Joe' with 'Poor Urban Anthony' early in their life, would they end up in different places? Is there something intrinsically 'better' in Joe that allows him to make 'good choices'...? I think not. With regards to socio-economic status, I think we are overwhelmingly the product of the environment we grew up in. So when Joe looks down with resentment at people in poverty, he is confusing 'personal responsibility' with cultural disadvantages.

It seems a bit naive to try to fix welfare by just discontinuing funds to drug users. I don't think anyone would be surprised to find 60-70% drug use among people in poverty (again a product of that subculture). So when this poster suggested this, I would like to respond with: "ok, but what about the rest?". You see, if you just discontinue funds, you have made an abrupt change to the economics of the situation. I wonder what 60-70% of people will do now that they have no income. Obviously, the optimistic (read as naive) answer would be that they get jobs. This seems unlikely to me, since their culture has not encouraged that in the past. I think we would see crime increase, and then the middle class would incredulously complain about crime growing...jeez just more bad choices, eh?

The point is that such a suggestion, as tempting as it is to say, is incomplete. Instead you could say: "Only give out money after a drug test, and shoot everyone that fails." Now that would be a solution. However, I don't think 'killing' off millions of Americans would really fly. We have to be a little smarter than just allowing our base human emotions suggest silly 'solutions'. The same is true of abortion in my opinion. Regardless of religious beliefs, it is naive to suggest that we can just 'stop' aborting millions of babies a year. You cannot expect people to suddenly 'have' personal responsibility--it has to be organically cultivated.

Instead we have to introduce social change subtly. The situation IS changeable, but we have to remember that people are involved...not robots. And people don't respond well to aggressive, overbearing, repressive regulation. We must be more intelligent. The real problem is NOT personal responsibility, and to suggest that is naive. The real problem is changing the CULTURE to encourage 'better choices'. The 'poverty culture' that is found in many urban areas (especially in memphis), doesn't encourage education and hard work. We have to address that problem-- NOT just tell people to make better choices.

It wasn't hard for me to make good choices growing up. My parents both had college educations, we had plenty of money, and all of my friends were from similar circumstances. However, had I grown up from parents that may or may not have finished high school with friends in the same situation, I may not have made the decision to go to college. If I were an arrogant person, it would be easy for me to draw the conclusion that I am just 'better' than them, because I made good choices to go to college. However, this is wrong, and serves no purpose other than my own 'emotional masturbation'.

(crickets...) Yea I don't blame you; I barely wanted to read it again. But I feel better, and I guess that's part of the point of a blog...so much success!

Love Much,
Steve