The Poor: Deserving and Undeserving

     Noah Smith over at Noahpinion mentioned this delightful debate between Bryan Caplan-the Liquidationist-and Karl Smith about whether the poor are deserving of help or not.

      You'll have to excuse me. To me the very question is proof of the moral degenerateness of libertarianism. Everyone who is suffering should stand before us so we can evaluate their every twist and turn in life to decide whether they "deserve" help or deserve to be poor.

      "Die on the street because you made bad choices in life." To me that this is even considered as debate worthy tells you something of what is missing morally not from the poor but to those in the debate. I don't know that I would even dignify such nonsense even in Karl Smith's role.

      To get an idea of the kind of self-righteous claptrap Bryan Caplan is capable of listen to this:

      "You are poor by your own fault if there are reasonable steps you could take - or could have taken - to avoid poverty."

         http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2012/01/caplan-smith_gm.html

        Well it depends what you mean by "reasonable." What might seem reasonable for a stuffed shirt like Capaln who knows nothing about what millions of Americans face today may not strike others as reasonable. And what does it matter if there are reasons in the past? Essentially it's his own need to moralize driving this. So we should somehow be judge, jury, and executioner and demand that each person "could have avoided" poverty in our opinion.

        It goes without saying that Noah Smith is right that it really makes no difference whether or not someone is "deserving"-talk about a subjective standard. Note too the assumption that income distribution is largely moral-the idea that it is based on the idea that those with plenty are being rewarded for "upright" behaviour-it's the Aesop fables again.

       "The question of "How deserving are the poor" is a matter of opinion. There is no right answer, because to say someone "deserves" something is a prescriptive statement, and you can't prove those with facts. Also, it is a somewhat pointless question, because no matter what answer you decide you like, it doesn't really imply any particular policy prescription. In practice, people who say "The poor deserve to be poor" are usually just trying to push the idea that we shouldn't try to do anything about poverty other than scolding the poor for their own mistakes."

      http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/

       In reality Caplan is trying to give libertarians a good conscience for having the ability to be able to help others but coldly preferring not to do so. Sounds like the Mitt Romney campaign. Let the people eat tax cuts.

       As Noah puts it:

      

      As I see it, there are two important questions about poverty from a policy perspective: 

       1. Do we want to make poor people less poor?

      2. If we do want to do that, how do we accomplish it?

      He points out that the question of being deserving or undeserving does nothing to help us answer these two questions. Another point is that it may be in society's interest to help the poor period-not scruple about dividing them up in the very unscientific categories of "deserving" and "undeserving."

      What gets me about a Bryan Caplan is he is so transparent. He's supposed to be an economist not a moralist but clearly so much of his economics is the result of his personal moral prejudices-of a particularly niggardly kind. He feels that the poor must be "punished" as if they haven't been punished enough aren't daily "punished." Again there is more than one type of morality. One says don't help people as it's what they deserve. Another says you are a pretty shoddy person if you have the ability to help someone but instead stand there looking at them with your hands in your pockets.