From: mvij@ocf.berkeley.edu (Manish Vij)
Newsgroups: alt.culture.us.asian-indian,alt.individualism
Subject: Re: = Opportunity etc.
Date: 6 Jan 1993 03:00:14 GMT
Organization: U.C. Berkeley Open Computing Facility
NNTP-Posting-Host: earthquake.berkeley.edu

In article <1993Jan2.194030.10590@athena.mit.edu> tyadav@athena.mit.edu (T.Y.) w
rites:
> Doesn't the cycle of poverty argument go something like this:
> Poor nghbrhd => Poor schools => Poor education => Poor jobs => Poor nghbrhd
> drugs/crime etc. ?

The cycle I mean is poverty -> poor education -> poor jobs -> poverty,
usually used to justify affirmative action with respect to education.

> Today he is senior plant manager for the site. Another guy is working at
> Merck (MPMD, Philly) - started as janitor!! Educated himself on the job.
> Today he is in the top management ranks - with many MIT trained grads working
> for him, as he put it to me in the summer of 1991. And he is not a political
> manipulator king of guy. He is one of the finest scientific minds I have met.
> He deserves his success.

Exceptional individuals, all of them.  Remarkable.  What about the rest?
Not all the unsuccessful poor are sitting on their collective rump.

> Something very similar happens in these socioeconomic policies. The govt
> or the altruists define their own sense of freedom. And in the name of
> extending freedom they, mistakenly, cripple the "hoped to be beneficiary."

I am not arguing about specific implementations.  Yes, means tests are faulty.
Yes, welfare currently provides the wrong incentives.  But to reject the war
on poverty because of faulty methodology is akin to banning the Salvation
Army because it has excess overhead.

Do you or do you not support the PRINCIPLE of helping the poor?  With cash,
with job training, with food and blankets?

> Because, I think freedom means - freedom to experience joy AND pain of life.
> Frustrations, failures, suffering, struggle is as much a part of
> healthy/happy life for an individual as is tranquility, success,
> excellence, exaltation.

So do you really believe in leaving Somalis to their starvation because
it subtly accentuates the small successes they do achieve?  Come now.
There is a difference between taking the training wheels off and abandoning
the child altogether.

> Furthermore, all these so called anti-poverty measures have an expense.
> It is unfair to tax an individual's income to fund an arbitrary definition
> of anti-poverty measure. If some think their definition to be right - they
> have the freedom to practice charity, don't they????
> The govt protection of rights can be funded with sales/consumption tax.

In nations with no social leveling, social justice, socialist-type programs --
and Social Security, progressive income taxes, and Medicare are just a few --
there are huge disparities in wealth concentration between the rich and
the poor.  In Nicaragua before the revolution, the richest 1% owned over
80% of the land -- and this in an agricultural nation.  What happens then?
A stable, just society?  I think not.

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer without some sort of management
or intervention.  Why have a product safety commission which reviews children's
toys?  Why does Japan have a powerful ministry of international trade?  Why
isn't Adam Smith's "invisible hand" as benevolent as it is enrichening?

We can strike a balance between suffocating overregulation and the cruelty of
the free market.

Manish
-- 
She paints herself that bird, a thrush
with crimson stain across her mouth
Nor raspberry, a hot-sweet flush
denies the fever frocking south.         - S.K.S.