Hand Out vs. Hand Up

From a November 2013 National Review piece by Oren Cass:

"But simply transferring enough resources to someone so that he is no longer 'poor' treats only the symptom; it does not move him toward self-sufficiency or a foothold at the bottom of an economic ladder that could lead to better opportunities. To the contrary, it hinders that process. Therein lies the paradox at the heart of anti-poverty policy. Every dollar spent to reduce the suffering of an impoverished person reduces the incentive for that person to improve his own condition by earning an income — not only because the need has become less pressing, but also because the system will in fact punish him for any success by taking the dollar away once he earns one of his own. The 'handout is locked in perpetual battle with the 'hand up.'"

Unless one takes the view that the symptoms themselves become causes and treating them can help break the vicious cycle.  In that case, even if "every dollar spent to reduce the suffering of an impoverished person reduces the incentive for that person to improve his own condition by earning an income," every dollar withheld reduces the ability of that person to do so.

The rest of the article is problematic in its comparisons of a welfare package to a median earned income, primarily in that many of the benefits counted expire and so the gap between welfare and work is not static but rather expands over time (the article also implies the problem with the gap is that welfare is too high, not that pay for entry-level work is too low).

However, this passage speaks to the previous post about the war on the poor:

"Society’s definition of a minimum standard of living is expanding to include higher education, health coverage for everything from birth control to the most advanced therapies, and even cell phones and broadband Internet access. Ensuring that every American has access to these things is an admirable goal, but if every American is entitled to them, then those who work hard to earn a middle-class living will find themselves doing little better than those who do not work at all."

I believe this is a legitimate problem that Progressives must find a better way to address than treating it as some other lobby's problem to get the economy to produce more gains for the middle class and provide more pathways upwards toward the well-to-do.

Finally, despite some of the flawed support for his premise, Cass does get around to some good ideas for reform at the end of the article.  He ultimately acknowledges that:

"There are several paths one might take to increase the value of an entry-level job relative to the value of welfare benefits. One could simply refuse to give benefits to those who do not work, but that approach ignores both the political realities of what American society is committed to providing and the everyday realities of millions of Americans who struggle to find or keep a job. Proposals to impose work requirements on food stamps sound like easy fixes but imply that America could or should strip a significant number of people of their access to food. One might also question the wisdom of striving for a system in which people with jobs not only need food stamps but are indeed the program’s only constituency."