Monday, December 30, 2002

It takes a checkbook to raise a child?

Somewhere out there a baby cries. The govt knows just what to do. Cut a check.

Jane Galt posts about poverty and govt intervention here. As usual, she's right on.

IMO most of the real poverty we have is social poverty - people with bad or no mentors and connections for even the most fundamental life skills and attitudes. Or those whose mentors and connections teach them the wrong things.

What do you do for such people - hire them new friends and acquaintances? It doesn't appear that something as coarse and heavy-handed as a govt and its bureaucrats can ever have anything to offer in such situations. The closest it might come would be in the armed forces, and such a solution is anathema to most social do-gooders.

If "society" is at fault as some do-gooders claim, then it seems that the right thing to do is to take them out of their "society". That is, relocate them and teach them the stuff their community didn't.

You can't do that with cash or with govt programs. It takes people in the trenches, not lobbyists for new social programs in Washington. The liberals will have to get their hands dirty if they really want to solve this problem.

But who says they want to solve it?....

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