Dan

Calabrese

Read Dan's bio and previous columns here

September 24, 2008

Mortgage Mess Proves It: Only the Poor Can Help the Poor

For the purposes of explaining the mess that is the mortgage market today, we might view America as two groups of people – neither of which understands the other. And this dichotomy may well lead us to even bigger problems of the same kind, especially if Democrats find themselves controlling both the White House and Congress come January.

The first group is essentially a permanent underclass. These are people who have grown up in generational poverty. Many of them have never known anyone who was gainfully employed and economically self-sufficient. No one has ever modeled for them how to behave responsibly and successfully in society. They are poor, not because America lacks opportunity, but because they don’t know how to access the opportunity that is, in fact, plentiful.

The second group consists of most of the rest of us. We have jobs, pay our bills and make our way through life largely through our own efforts. It bothers us that so many people live in poverty, but we don’t really know what to do about it. Since we feel compelled to try something, we get behind efforts of the federal government to provide low-interest home loans, free or discounted health care and lots of other things. We get behind training programs, encourage private companies to hire poor people and give money to nonprofit organizations that work toward these goals.

But every effort to bridge the chasm between the two groups makes the problem worse. Providing the poor with home loans they haven’t earned only gets the banks in trouble. Providing free health care only drives up the cost of health care for everyone. Labor unions win the loyalty of workers and muscle major companies into paying more generous wages and benefits than they can afford, thereby locking the companies into unsustainable cost structures and sending them careening toward collapse.

Every attempt to transfer wealth from one group to the other fails. People who don’t learn to access opportunity can never hang onto what they’re given. People whose lifestyle is characterized by bad habits can never become self-sufficient.

Government can’t solve this problem because it can’t change human nature. But politicians, especially Democrats, won’t accept one crucial truth: Some people will be poor from the day they are born until the day they die, because of the choices they make and the actions they take. Many of these people never had a chance, because no one ever set a good example for them, and that is a tragedy. But you can’t change your economic condition unless you change. And most people don’t change.

The fact that some people live in nice houses and others rent cramped apartments or live in trailers is not necessarily a good thing. It is simply how life is. It is possible to rise out of poverty, learn better habits and improve your lot in life. People do it all the time. But the majority of people who grow up in any situation remain in that situation because they live by the examples others set for them. That’s human nature.

I believe poor people who want to learn to improve their lives should be afforded ample opportunities to learn, and I’m all for government paying for it. If they want to learn to get up in the morning, show up for work, knock off the cigarettes, drugs and booze and prepare themselves for many years of hard work to earn their way up the ladder, society should stop at nothing to provide them the training they need.

And if they succeed at learning to change, and practice what they learn, no one will need to give them sweet mortgage deals or anything else. They’ll be able to pay their own way just like most people do.

But poor people who don’t make the effort to change are just going to stay poor. That is a shame, but that’s how it is. Every time government tries to change this unchangeable fact, it creates disaster. If you think the mortgage fiasco is bad, just wait until the likes of Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid try giving everyone “free” health care. Just wait until they emulate the actions of big city mayors who have enacted “living wage” mandates.

If you are poor, the only way out is to change your behavior and learn to access opportunity. You might still have rough times and setbacks, but if you stick with it, you will do OK. If you don’t do this, there is no amount of money that can change your life.

Until the federal government accepts that some people are just going to be poor, we will never get federal spending under control and we will have more disasters like the one that just happened on Wall Street. And in the process, we will usurp the wealth of those who have earned it, and might be able to give some of those poor people jobs once they learn how to handle one.

Democrats often decry what they portray as a Republican message to the poor that says, “You’re on your own.” If only the Republicans really had the nerve to say that. You are on your own. The sooner you figure that out, the sooner you can start changing your life and stop tempting politicians to bankrupt the rest of the country by giving you “help” that doesn’t help.

© 2008 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

This is Column # DC209. Request permission to publish here.