To Persist Indicates Insanity

Lyndon Johnson's Failed War

Historians have a nasty habit of analyzing pundits and politicians in the light of the outcomes and results cascading down from their policies, bills, laws, and prognostications.  It's quite unfair, we know, but who claimed the world to be perfect?

The Heritage Foundation in the United States has had the rudeness and temerity to adjudge President Lyndon Baines Johnson as a failure because he lost the war.  It was his war.  He was the first to declare the US at war--on poverty.  Long and resolute have been the serried ranks marching off to kill poverty in the United States stone dead.  Not only does this war show no sign of ending, but the casualties along the way have been almost beyond number.

In his January 1964 State of the Union address, President Lyndon Johnson proclaimed, “This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America.” In the 50 years since that time, U.S. taxpayers have spent over $22 trillion on anti-poverty programs. Adjusted for inflation, this spending (which does not include Social Security or Medicare) is three times the cost of all U.S. military wars since the American Revolution. Yet progress against poverty, as measured by the U.S. Census Bureau, has been minimal, and in terms of President Johnson’s main goal of reducing the “causes” rather than the mere “consequences” of poverty, the War on Poverty has failed completely. In fact, a significant portion of the population is now less capable of self-sufficiency than it was when the War on Poverty began.  [The Heritage Foundation.  Emphasis, ours.]

Those nit-picky historians.   Always complaining about someone or something.

The More Things Change, The More They Stay the Same

Perversely Stupid

Kiwiblog has a telling post, courtesy of The Federalist.  The article is quoting Tom Coburn, a former US Senator from Oklahoma. 

The Federalist reports Tom Coburn:

However, they are probably less inclined to concede that the constant growth of the welfare state produces inversely diminishing returns. “In 1966 when the massive means-tested entitlements to address the poor began, the overall poverty rate in the United States was 14.7 percent,” Coburn notes. “In 2013, and more than $15 trillion later, the poverty rate was measured at 14.5 percent. That could be a statistical error, rather than even this miniscule 0.2 percent decline.”

$15 trillion for 0.2% decline!

A question immediately begged is why this might be the case?  Is it something which is a perverse oddity?  Rather than a statistical aberration, we suggest that this is the perpetual reality.

"You Considered Yourself Lucky"

Outwardly Wealthy, Desperately Impoverished

Here is a description of what it was like to live in a council house in Britain in the nineteen fifties. Remember that council houses were often found on special housing estates where houses sprung up like mushrooms after the war in an effort to house people--many of whom had lost their houses or accommodation through the Blitz.  In other words, they were relatively modern houses for their day.

The front door opened directly on to the pavement and you walked straight into the front room, which was only used on special occasions.  My mum said it was 'to be kept for best'.  You then passed into the living room, where there was a dining table and chairs and a couple of armchairs around a big black coal-fire stove.  A huge black kettle, full of hot water, would always be resting there.  The living room was also the setting for my Friday night scrub-down in an old tin bath . . . . A door opening on to the stairs took you up to two bedrooms.

There was no bathroom or indoor toilet.  If you were caught short during the night, you used a chamber pot under the bed . . . . . Downstairs, the room at the back of the house had a gas stove and a large sink where clothes were scrubbed clean by hand.  The back yard was shares with three other families and the only toilet was at the end of the yard, with a bolt on the inside of a rickety wooden door.  [Quoted in David Kynaston's Family Britain 1951-1957  (New York: Walker and Co, 2009), p. 165.]

To the superficial modern Western mindset, such living conditions today would be regarded not just as appalling,  but a breach of human rights.

Poverty and Famine Beckon

Living On Borrowed Time

Classical economics tell us that the two key contributors to the production of goods and services are labour and capital.  Without both being used and deployed, a society will remain in grinding poverty.  Nothing much will be produced.  People will live from hand to mouth, and often hand will not be able to produce enough to satisfy mouth.  Famine and starvation beckon.  

It's a long, long time since famine stalked the land in Western countries.  In other places and nations, however, famine remains a latent threat, always a risk.  What makes the difference between famine being no threat at all, and it being a latent, stalking beast is the nature of the civilisation that sits atop the land.  The wealth of a nation resides in what its citizens collectively know and in how effectively they work and apply existing capital stock to exploit the latent opportunity present in all nations and lands.

Wealth effectively depends upon, and in large measure resides in, the space between our collective two ears.  The Bible contains the only belief system which explains why this is the case.

A Quiet Revolution

Good News Day

It's not very often you see press releases like the one below.  We suggest a good dose of savouring the moment might be in order.

5,000 More People Independent of Benefits

Thursday, 21 July 2016, 10:19 am
Press Release: New Zealand Government

Hon Jo Goodhew
Acting Minister for Social Development 21 July 2016

Acting Social Development Minister Jo Goodhew says the number of people receiving a main benefit has continued to fall year on year, with the latest figures the lowest for any June quarter since 2008. “The number of people receiving a main benefit has fallen by 5,172 (or 1.8 per cent) in the last 12 months, with those on Sole Parent Support continuing to drive the strong downward trend,” Mrs Goodhew says.  [Emphasis, ours]

“This is the first quarter since the $790 million Child Hardship Package came into effect, raising benefit rates by $25 a week after tax for those with dependent children, and increasing obligations for sole parents.  [Emphasis, ours]   “Sole Parents have shown they are willing and able to move into independence, with a reduction of 965 in the last quarter, or 3,818 in the last year in the numbers receiving Sole Parent Support.

Don't Confuse Us With the Facts

Tiresome Vacuous Canards

The book of Ecclesiastes says, "Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up! Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him—a threefold cord is not quickly broken.".  [Ecclesiastes 4:9-12]

This teaching is pretty much self-evident, the lameness of committees notwithstanding.  There is safety, strength, protection, and power in numbers.  Since the truth is self-evident what madness has persuaded our culture that sole parenting is OK as a model?  What convinced the Chattering classes, the authorities, the government, the academics, the know-it-alls that one person trying to bring up children will do as well as, or in many cases, better than two adults living with their children?

The downstream effects of marriages breaking apart are legion.  Most of them are bad, or less than ideal.  Therefore, it is no surprise that a recent piece fingers sole parenting as a major cause of child poverty (one of our perennial bugbears in New Zealand).

Snake-Oilers Extraordinaire

 Deceived and Deceiving

Watching Al Jazeera news the other day, we were treated to a doomster (er . . . spokeswoman) from Oxfam telling us that more and more wealth is being concentrated into the hands of fewer and fewer plutocrats, whilst the poor are getting poorer.  The terms of description were profoundly apocalyptic. 

One is left wondering what on earth is going on the minds and hearts of these doomsters.  Surely they know better.  Surely their thinking and reasoning cannot be that purblind and stupid.  Surely they are pulling a confidence trick--and doing so self-consciously.  If that were the case it would be more understandable and (in a perverse way) more respectable than the only other option--which is, that Oxfam personnel really believe their own propaganda.  If the latter were to be the case, it makes them pitiable.

One thing is clear: there is a great confusion involved when spokespeople conflate two quite distinct and separate things together, as if they were the same.  On the one hand, there is the issue of poverty in the world--absolute poverty, no less--and on the other, there is the issue of the discrepancy in wealth between the most wealthy and the least wealthy.  A growing discrepancy or gap between the two tells us precisely nothing about the incidence of poverty in the world. 

The Oxfam spokeswoman, taken in the full flight of apocalyptic dooming, assumed that these two things are the same.  Why, it's so obvious, it need not be debated.  Another grand suppressed premise is that the world's wealth is fixed, finite, and unchangeable, such that the more wealth plutocrat A holds in his Scrooge McDuck-vault, the less wealth is available for the poor. 

Oxfam's nonsense was too much for The Telegraph editorial writers.  Their headline cut to the chase:

Barrel Bottom Scrapings

Desperate Stuff

Ad hominem argument always--always--tells you that the critics have nothing substantial to say against an opponent.  Ad hominem is an attack upon the man (who is proffering an opinion or argument) rather than upon his opinion or argument.  "The world is going to end tomorrow," says one.  The critic soundly rejects the proffered notion of a terminal earth by criticizing not the opinion, but the unfashionable hair style of the advocate.

It's the kind of thing North Korea faces all the time when its bouffant-extraordinaire baby leader speechifies to his devotees.  Nobody can give any credence to the opinions of one so sartorially challenged.

Ad hominem argument is cheap, nasty, and dumb.  It is also irrelevant.  It is only the small mind which considers it to be not only relevant, but an effective rebuttal.  Nonetheless it sure makes one feel good, even superior, and riotously clever.  But students of informal fallacies will tell you in a heart beat that ad hominem argument always fails because it has no relevance to the point at issue.

Yesterday, we posted an article Jamie Whyte authored.  It appeared in the NZ Herald, and argued the current measures of child poverty in New Zealand were absurd, even meaningless.   Within a heart beat his critics responded--with a nasty ad hominem attack.

Axe Grinders

Relative Poverty Measures Are For Propaganda Purposes, Not Truth

Jamie Whyte
NZ Herald

There is no poverty in New Zealand. Misery, depravity, hopelessness, yes; but no poverty.

The poorest in New Zealand are the unemployed. They receive free medical care, free education for their children and enough cash to pay for basic food, clothing and (subsidised) housing. Most have televisions, refrigerators and ovens. Many even own cars. That isn't poverty.

Our threshold for poverty rises with the general level of income. Photo / Jason Oxenham

Why then do we keep hearing that more than 20 per cent of New Zealand children live in poverty? Those who tell us this do not mean by "poverty" what most people do. They have a statistical definition: you live in poverty if your household's income is less than 50 per cent of the national median (after tax and housing costs, and adjusted for the number of adults and children in the household).

For example, the Herald recently published an article by Susan St John, spokeswoman for the Child Poverty Action Group, that claimed 220,000 children live in poverty because they "fall under the stringent 50 per cent after-housing-costs poverty line".  Alas, the measure is not stringent; it is ridiculous.

Scepticism Over Poverty Measures

Poverty is A Wax Nose

Every few months we in New Zealand are confronted with the "reality" of poverty in New Zealand.  The latest is a report from the Child Commissioner on the rates of child poverty--that is, children living in poverty.   It's got to the stage where few people take such confrontations seriously any more.  

We are pretty confident that actual poverty exists in New Zealand.  We are very confident that child poverty most certainly exists.  Here is a case in point:

An Auckland mother who kept her toddlers in a cockroach-infested house has pleaded guilty to failing to keep a safe and hygienic living environment for her children.  The woman appeared for sentence on Monday though she was granted a discharge without conviction after a judge found a criminal record would prevent her from seeing her children again.

The North Shore woman, who cannot be named to protect the identity of her children, earlier pleaded guilty to two charges of failing to discharge a legal duty, namely keeping a safe and hygienic living environment for her children. . . . Police arrived to find dozens of dirty nappies on the floor, hundreds of cockroaches, rancid dishes, only one working light, and little food- some which had been left to rot and was covered in maggots.  By way of explanation, the mother had told police that she knew the house was a mess but that she was too busy to clean it because she spent nights at a local hospital, where Judge Philippa Cunningham said "ironically" she worked as a cleaner.

What we are deeply sceptical about, however, is relative measures of poverty.

Slinking Out the Back Door

Rising Envy

These days the Commentariat and the chattering classes don't talk so much about poverty.  They focus upon economic inequality.  Rising inequality.  (It's always rising.)  This is a classic case of misdirection.  It is also another indication of the intellectual dishonesty of many and legerdemain that passes for truth.

We see this kind of vacuous nonsense every day:

More than 300,000 Kiwi kids now in relative poverty

 The number of Kiwi children in relative poverty has jumped over 300,000 for the first time since 2010 - but it's because of record inequality, despite falling absolute hardship.  The Ministry of Social Development's annual household incomes report shows that the numbers below a European standard measure of absolute hardship, based on measures such as not having a warm home or two pairs of shoes, fell from 165,000 in 2013 to 145,000 (8 per cent of all children) last year, the lowest number since 2007.

Children in benefit-dependent families also dwindled from a recent peak of 235,000 (22 per cent) in 2011, and 202,000 (19 per cent) in 2013, to just 180,000 (17 per cent) last year - the lowest proportion of children living on benefits since the late 1980s.  But inequality worsened because average incomes for working families increased much faster at high and middle-income levels than for lower-paid workers.

The net result was that the number of children living in households earning below 60 per cent of the median income after housing costs jumped from a five-year low of 260,000 in 2013 to 305,000 last year, the highest since a peak of 315,000 at the worst point of the global financial crisis in 2010.  [NZ Herald]

Consider a model society that consists of ten households.  One household lives in squalor: it is dirty, and unkempt.  Its occupants are usually sick.  No-body works, except one who spends his days begging the other nine households for food.  Another household lives in comparative luxury.   The earnings and net worth of this household increased by two hundred percent in the last twelve months.  The remaining eight households experienced no change over the same period.  According to the egalitarians, this society has just got worse (more evil and unjust), because inequality has increased.

Most morally clear-sighted people would think it a good development if at least one household greatly increased their net worth.  But the egalitarians regard it as an evil outcome, unless every other household increased commensurately.

There are two philosophical and religious axioms underlying the cult of economic equality.

As Cold as Self-Righteous Charity

Being Seduced by the Dark Side

Oxfam long ago became seduced by leftwing political ideology.  The trajectory is easy to understand.  A charity is formed to provide relief against famine, aka hunger and malnutrition.  The struggle soon broadens into fighting not just at the bottom of the cliff, but at the top--by which we mean the focus upon preventing or palliating conditions which cause poverty and hunger.   

In every society there are relative disparities of wealth and property.  The facile fix at the top of the cliff is for groups like Oxfam was to begin to advocate for the redistribution of wealth and property as more permanent prevention of hunger.  We call this the first degree of abstraction, representing the initial step towards adopting a left-wing political ideology.

The second degree of abstraction comes when the illuminaries in an organization like Oxfam begin to form the view that fighting hunger at the top of the cliff requires not just paying attention to the socio-economic conditions causing poverty, but focusing upon the power structures, the political regimes which exploit the lower socio-economic sectors, and which use them as tools, keeping them subjected to poverty so they are kept perpetually dependant.   This is the second degree of abstraction into left-wing political ideology--identifying the governments and regimes that are evil exploiters of the poor and vulnerable, and opposing them by the ban and the black-list. 

The third degree of abstraction occurs when organizations like Oxfam begin to exclude certain regimes and practices as inherently evil--regimes that they will ban and boycott to the best of their abilities.  At this point, Oxfam and their fellow-travellers are willing to sacrifice the poor and needy whilst they conduct their politically fashionable campaigns against the fomenters of sin.

Misleading Unhelpful Poverty Propaganda

Charity is Mandatory

The chattering classes were all agog and aghast for a couple of days earlier this month over child poverty in New Zealand.  Such a problem is worthy of attention and concern.  Unfortunately the protagonists are once again proving to be dishonest traders and so have devalued their cause in a silly attempt to shock and (in marketing speak) achieve cut through to the common mind.  They have grossly exaggerated child poverty in New Zealand. 

A few years ago, the cause d'jour was violence against women (by men).  We were painted as a terribly violent society, since research "showed" that one in four women had suffered abuse.  But common sense is a tenacious beast.  Folk (both men and women) started to think, "Well, I know lots of women--and I am very sure that one in four of them have not suffered abuse at the hands of men.  Where did that figure come from?  Well, in a specious, dishonest attempt to gain attention and traction, the cause-protagonists decided to define abuse so broadly that abuse itself became an inflated, devalued concept.  The end result: people dismissed it and stopped listening.  Those who continued to quote the mantra ("one in four women in this country has suffered abuse") were increasingly seen as coming from the lunatic fringe. 

Now similar folly is being perpetrated by the child abuse industry.  Sadly, the cause is worthy; the issues are genuine.  The propagandists, however, are dishonest brokers.

The Humanist Millennium

Dashed Hopes and Bitterness

God does not exist.  Evil is not intrinsic to the soul of man.  The cosmos is evolving.  Man can take control of his own evolution and perfect himself.  These were the doctrinal foundations upon which the West built its Tower of Babel at the end of the nineteenth century and on into the twentieth.  These same doctrines remain regnant in the West to this day. 

Back in the day combating evil had two main fronts of engagement.  The first focused upon human conditions.  Improve the external conditions and mankind would be made more perfect.  The second front was an overt attempt to alter human beings themselves by means of psychology, eugenics and education.

The campaign to improve the external living conditions in order to perfect mankind had two main lines of attack.

Sluggards, Politicians and the Poor

Nothing a Special Grant from WINZ Won't Fix

We are about to have another talk-fest on child poverty and income inequality in New Zealand.  This will be a politically inspired confabulation. 

Deputy Prime Minister Bill English and Maori Party co-leader Tariana Turia are setting up a ministerial committee on poverty under the Maori Party's post-election agreement with the National Party.  (NZ Herald)

Some social researchers have discovered that children born to parents living in "poverty" are likely to be significantly poorer than others in their demographic cohort for the rest of their lives.  In other words, if they are born into poverty, it, more often than not becomes a trap, a deep slippery pit from which they never climb out.

More to Come?

The British Riots Risk Being the New Normal

Theodore Dalrymple has an excellent piece on the recent riots in Great Britain. Disaffected youth suddenly took the to the streets and took control.  The (liberal) British establishment shook its head and said, "We warned you.  This is what happens when inequality takes hold."  Dalrymple shreds the idea. It is timely given the Left's preoccupation in this country with the alleged national sin of the rich getting richer and the poor, poorer.

The Scourge of Socio-Economic Inequality

A Modest Proposal to Reduce Poverty

It has become the new normal--particularly in these heady election days--to shriek and moan about income inequality in New Zealand.  OK, so it's not helped by parties on the Left loudly alleging that the current government has committed the unpardonable sin of causing wider wealth disparity than when it took office.

But, the government buys into the assumptions and the allegations as well, since its defence is to talk about what new programmes it is going to roll out to combat economic inequality.

"Christian" Social Justice, Part II

Demanding God's Mercy as a Right

The concept of "social justice" has its origins in socialism.  Fairness or equity in society is believed to require a fundamental equality of outcome: from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.  The achievement of this more just outcome requires the compulsion of the state to redistribute forcibly, through a progressive taxation system, taking from some to bestow upon others.  In doing so the state necessarily claims the right to suspend the eighth and the tenth commandments. 

When Christians buy-in to this non-Christian worldly ideology they often do so because they think it is a means of complying with the biblical injunction to take care of the poor and the needy.  They could not be more mistaken.

The Right to be Dissolute

Unbelief Always Increases Poverty

Poverty is back in the news again.  Maori and Polynesian poverty to be exact.  It would appear that it is finally dawning on some that poverty--persistent intergenerational poverty--will not be overcome by throwing gummint money at the problem.  It turns out that the problems are far "thicker" than those which can be solved by throwing (not-a-few) taxpayer dollars around.  Poverty has now become institutionalised; it has become a culture all of its own--self-affirming and self-perpetuating and relentlessly powerful.   The Borg is assimilating the ship.

Our Depraved Poor

Our Depraved Poor

Posted on August 22, 2011 by David French

[Editorial note: This article is has generated some controversy,  most of it positive.  Whilst the author is addressing the situation in the United States, the truths and principles are equally applicable, relevant, and true to New Zealand.] 

It is past time to admit a very hard truth: America’s poverty problem is also a depravity problem.

It is simply a fact that people who work hard, finish their education, get married, and stay married are rarely — very rarely — poor.  There is no other proven formula for lifting Americans out of poverty.  None.  Food stamps don’t do it.  Medicaid doesn’t do it.  Soup kitchens don’t do it.  Good intentions don’t do it.