Down With the Poor
Styring, William
calm as ~'npioym~t soared above what e o ~ i v i s t s termed a "tolerable limit" of 3flO,~lO. There developed widespread "'nnm~eptuble" checks on immigration, massive support...
...Any semi-serious student of limited government will find Milton Friedman (the only American writer in Down with the Poor and a "yesterday" in the Triple Entente...Friedman should be used to being called a man of yesterday since Time does it to him all the time) on "'Special Interests and the Law" to be old fedora, but vintage Friedman nevertheless...
...He is always worth reading...
...And if there aren't enough poor to fill i t . . . w e l l , it would indeed be wasteful to leave the new housing idle, so we'll just recruit a couple thousand 5000-quid-a-year families...
...Both conservatives and libertarians will, however, want to avoid the book on an empty stomach...
...Our Brittanic Cousins have had no more luck with their frontal assault on poverty than has the OEO...
...As with market resean~ conducted by ~t~wy, customcr can make a sik~i~eant choice only by compar~ the product or service will] a priced altcrnative...
...No one lives there for a reason: They ain't got no sunny season...
...are state or local affairs, generally well-funded, often badly managed or managed for political gain, and frequently dominated by the local NEA affiliate...
...However, the reader searching for trenchant factual brickbats equally suitable for slinging around at cocktail parties and in scholarly papers should content himself with the two best selections, Robin Page ("Strikers of the Queen") and Alfred Sherman ("Council Houses' Crttmbling Foundations...
...British teacher pensions are funded from present teacher assessments on a national basis a /a OASI, and Boyson (properly).allots space to Fred Hill for a condemnation of this practice...
...After a careful weighing of Page's evidence, I conclude that British trade union practices might -- just conceivably -- have made even the late Mrs...
...In Britain clearly the of change were blowng for a freer society...
...This is the only "A" we can reasonably postulate...
...For Americans the deja vu is overpowering...
...If ever a populace were to judge its fondtionnaires and politicians by result instead of the lofty morality of their verbiage, public housing must be among the first casualties on both sides of the Atlantic...
...And with educatinn ana ~ care more persons than in earlier surveys would now pay for the opportundty of a ehoice: over forty per cent with children of school age expressed interest in taking a voucher valued at two-thirds of school fees and adding the third out of pocket, and over thirty per cent favored a two4hird value voucher for health insurance...
...Striking workers are depicted as 10 The A l t e r n a t i v e ; March, 1972 men guided by principle, not politics, willing to face considerable financial embarrassment...to obtain their just desserts...
...Alfred Sherman is Martin Anderson in a tweed suit...
...Down with the Poor leaves one wondering how the poverty warriors can all be so mesmerized by their own mea culpas...
...university subsidies) as a fat buy-off for tolerance of "poverty-aimed" programs (Buekley once aptly described this general phenomenon as "'the economy of the criss-crossing dollar...
...The reader should spend an evening with nothing but Sherman's essay and a sharp pencil...
...Page claims that "'industrial anarchy" in Britain is quite as sacred and institutionalized as the crown, idolized by the government near-monopoly of the electronic media, and sustained by taxes extracted from its victims...
...Uncle Sugar take note...
...Boyson, he can be fairly criticized for being too jolly well determined to cram everything into one of these pre-set temporal categories...
...In fact, the strike weapon is more often an "'offensive bludgeon" to create "'unrest" toward the ends of "'political power and prestige...
...There developed widespread "'nnm~eptuble" checks on immigration, massive support for -~nthinkable'" cm'bs ~m the power of trade ,minus, lmpularity of the reintroduction of-'hmdmi.~sible" medical clmrges, etc...
...I listened for grave-ruml~ling while penning that statement...
...It is hardly ~ t h ~ to ask tim ~ of Imbhc programs whether they wish to go on eujoying them willmut asllv~g ff they realiTe the price of these progran...
...A little arithmetic demonstrates that even Sherman is off by 100 per cent on every estimate making up his empirical case, the free market still wins and Housing Councils lose...
...State action becomes a shot in the dark...
...It is this needless constraint, belatedly recognized by politicians, that has held back the expansion of medical care, pensions and education...
...ff people at Christnm-q lime were asked whether they enjoyed reeeivin_g presents, few woukl reply "'No- = Such attempts to measare preferences without prices have misled policymakers...
...From a limited program to house the woefully impoverished, the program has grown like Jack's beanstalk...
...The vast number of absurdly close parallels between British action and result and our own suggests similar forces are defeating the schemes of the planners...
...Teacher retirement pension funds in the U.S...
...The remarkable featm'e of the third survey, ~ by England-Grosse, is that it vividly demonstrates the extent of prevailing preferences for w~Ifmre policies quite different from what Conservative or Labour politicia~L~ are yet willing to concede...
...Such unexpected findings are bound to provoke continued argument on detail and interpretation, but two concinsions seem difficult to resist...
...Yes, On a SALT-free diet...
...No one lives in Minnesota, Boise, Butte or North Dakota...
...It can successfully compel inaction (thus and so an act" is a crime) and hurt no one but a pathological minority...
...First, opposition to radical reform in Britain's What a Day May Bring state welfare seems to be changing into support...
...A smaller survey among women (to meet earlier objections about our male sample) indicated even stronger support for choice than among men...
...Roosevelt blanch...
...Ceteris paribus and mutatis mutandis, the train rolls into its final station, notwithstanding hell, high water and the good intentions of reformers who envisioned a different destination entirely...
...Best advice is to forget what time it's supposed to be...
...Leonard g~s (_tlh~n of M~rvafion) supervised a national survey among 2,000 family dec/sion-makers (taken as male heads of hoaselmlds aged 21 to ~ ) . "me elaborate questionaire informed ~ of e~ts and alternatives before inviting an expresof "nmero-eemomic" l i ~ f ~ betwe~ bread alternative l~l#i~ of ~ymg Ira" weffare b.v taxes or by mm~et p r i c ~ andof ~ ~ mie" personal preferenc~ between state or private education and medical care...
...How can so much buy so little...
...Even stuck in New York City, Sioux Falls doesn't look so pretty...
...After i u t ~ i v e pilot interviews, Mr...
...Yesterdays" talk about tomorrow, and "'Tomorrows" talk about today and yesterday, until the reader is infected with time zone dysentery somewhere around page 80...
...The l i n d . s were s~fici~utly at odds with the presum~ o~sensus to provoke critics, not least Mr...
...Without great prejudice to Dr...
...Welfarism inevitably means compelling positive action in favor of a well-placed and presumably non-pathological minority, with little or no reference to the distilled selfinterests of the victims...
...That this station is named "'The Disastrous Possible" and not _9 "Idyllic Impossible" is due to that wellspring of human action known as self-interest -- the motivator of Adam Smiths butcher, baker and candlestick maker...
...Rhodes Boyson's collection of critiques should swell those ranks...
...Choice in Welfare 1970, Ralph Harris and Arthur Seldon, published in 1971 at Institute of Economic Affairs, 2, Lord North Street, London SW1 r~OWN WITH THE POOR 1 , J is an exquisite little compendium of case histories administering a long overdue drubbing to Britain's welfare state...
...The few men who habitually violate this creed are usually canonized, and perhaps not all of them are violators...
...should meditate carefully on the similar statistics available here...
...Far from increasing a flow of housing resources to the poor, Sherman argues a persuasive case that Council housing clearly diminishes that flow below what otherwise would be available with zero government "'aid...
...Government cannot make laws reflecting everyone's self-interest and does not, in fact, even try to do so...
...But Hill's portrait of "'The Great Betrayal" of British teachers is at least good therapy...
...That his wildcat has been adopted as the mascot of British labor is, to Page, not half so gut-wrenching as the state's penchant for feeding him porterhouse...
...It is too easy to imagine one's ethereal self writing identical prose about the good ole USA ten years down the road...
...Every housing bureaucrat must have his own Djakarta Sports Palace to show what a fine job he and his chaps are doing...
...Waste not, want not...
...The reader will find other good things in this little gem (education vouchers, private health insurance and suchlike), but also one theoretical curiosum of little use...
...Certainly enthusiams for state welfare could not be deduced from the ninety-five per cent reliance on state schools or the ~ Parents nmst be very well-off or self-sacrificing to Im-n from "'free" services and pay privately for services after their incomes are left ravaged by nmdern taxatimL The only other guides to public opntinn were the surveys which ~k~ people whether they "'lled," "'supported," or "'favored" the NHS, for example...
...The dtizens did not seem to be so ,m~mor~ with Socialist regulations as the politicians...
...For release reading a good Heinlein scifi novel is vastly better and a Jehovah's Witness pep rally a danm sight more cheerful...
...Perhaps it is that the true achievement of Western economics -the economics of Wicksteed and Jevons and, indeed, Samuelson -- has been overlooked in the vapid mouthings of its critics...
...The boondoggle in the Kansas fund mounted to such proportions that their legislature braved the wrath of the teacher lobby to vote it out of existence...
...This work is the second product of the Constitutional Book Club, one of the organs of the British "'New Right...
...Not surprisingly such surveys produced large majorilies answering "'Yes...
...Despite the superb quality of analysis displayed in most of the essays, the book suffers from a minor blemish, and the fault is the editor's...
...Over-population's brewing 'Til we stop this mindless s****ing...
...But if the editor deserves a kick in the bleep for his organization, he deserves a kiss on the forehead for the intellectual guns he has brought together for us under one small cover...
...William Styring illli THE REDISTRIBUTION FALLACY People who, with indignation, Pooh-pooh over-population, Fume at me for making faces When they tout the open spaces...
...The Queen's poor are still poor despite "'social spending" to the tune of 45 per cent of her GNP...
...W. H. yon Dreele | II The A l t e r n a t i v e ; March, 1972 11...
...That achievement is a social science with neo-praxeological rigor which tells us that if A is true, C must follow B as inexorably as saliva flows in Joe Rauh's mouth at the drop of a "McCarthy...
...Boyson divides his selections into three categories: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow...
...Virginia, it can come to pass that the teacher and not the taxpayer takes the screwing...
...British conservatives (note absence of cap "'C") are still scarce enough to hold their national convention on a street corner without a police permit, but one should be encouraged that there are a few Limeys who prefer to remember Fabian as an American rock singer...
...First feed stamps, then the world...
...Second, direct payment facilitated by insurance would release welfare services from the limit imposed by popular objections to paying more through taxes...
...Indeed, these are unknowable except to the individual...
...Supporters of public slums in the U.S...
...Millions may "'like" or "'approve of" mal~arine, but whothex they buy it depends on the relative price of Imtter...
...Boyson's stable of writers lists some familiar reasons: destruction of individual initiative, bureaucratic proclivities for more of the currently fashionable programs without regard for result, interest group logrolling which channels much government effort and resources to the well4o~lo (e.g...
...In 1.q~, when the survey was repeated with variatiaos to meet criticisms, the ~ Vote in favor of private welfare iook~ all the more impressive...
...The munificent benefits paid .',.o strikers -- income tax refunds ant, exemptions, family allowances and "'supplementary benefits" under Britain's social security act -- often and perhaps usually add up to the striker's normal take-home pay...
...Down unth the Poor is an important demonstration that AngloSaxon statesmen are still missing the target...
...Self-flagellation is sometimes pleasant...
...Crossman, to question the sample and the technique...
...xt was to appty ~re4agged t e s t ~ of p r d ~ that the Institute tentat~eay ~ with ~s rust Choice m Wellure sorvey in 1963...
...Hearing none, I continued, but so great is my lightoingphobia that my golf game now suffers from an uncasual interest in any dark clouds gathering in the firmament...
...Instead of the federal bulldozer and the low income high rise, the English ballgame is the :'borough bulldozer" and the "Council House" of the local housing council...
...Indiana's is under probe because of serious irregularities...
Vol. 5 • March 1972 • No. 6
