June Socrates Cafe

I've been a fairly regular attendee to the monthly Socrates Cafe meetings for about the past year.  The basic format of the meeting is that we meet at 6:00 pm the first Tuesday of each month in a private room of a local restaurant, order dinner, and decide what we want to discuss.  The floor is opened to anyone to suggest a topic in the form of a question.  After a list of questions are taken, there is a round of voting in which you can vote for as many of the questions as you might be interested in.  Then the  two or three  questions receiving the most votes are voted on again,  though this time, you can only vote for one question. the winning question becomes the topic of discussion.

The questions tend to be more philosophical than issue related, although there is no set rule.  The attendees tend to be fairly liberal, although we do have a few very conservative members that while being conservative, are not dogmatic in there views.  I suppose if they were dogmatic, they wouldn't be there.  We have one person who serves as a moderator, and he generally does a good job of keeping us on topic, and maintaining   order.

Tonight's question was "When does assisting someone become enabling someone"  This question was posed by the wife of the most conservative  member of our group, but it was one of several questions her husband had written down as potential topics.  I immediately felt my hackles rise, because I thought I knew where this question was leading,  that is, why should "big government" be involved in social welfare programs.  It turned out that I was partially right, there was much discussion about social welfare, but, the lady who posed the question opened the discussion with an anecdote of personal aid and the consequent enabling of the recipient.  A good part of the discussion centered around family matters where one member of a family is allowed to continue to exhibit bad behavior because he is aided by the other family members. The general consensus of the group on these  micro issues was that  a good dose of tough love should be administered.

On the Macro level, however, the issue was not as clear.  The conservative view seems to be that generally everyone receiving government assistance is simply gaming the system, and a good dose of tough love should  be administered (do away with government assistance), along with shifting the responsibility of caring for the needy to the churches and families of the needy, regardless of the actual existence and where with all of these benevolent factions.

This brings me to my own view of the problem, which I certainly attempted to express at tonight's meeting. Actually, I may have over expressed my opinion, which, unfortunately, I tend to do.  Here, is the great thing about writing, now I have an opportunity to put my thoughts into some order, and more clearly express my views.

Of course people game the system, be it welfare, food stamps, or unemployment insurance.  I think that it is basic human nature to try to gain advantage in any situation, especially if there is no perceived harm in doing so.  The fact that some people take unfair advantage does not take away from the fact that most people who receive assistance from the government need that assistance, and would rather be in a position where they do not need assistance.  The answers to reducing government assistance are twofold.

First of all, the government, state federal or local, should do a better job of policing these programs.  It is penny wise and pound foolish to save money by reducing the budgets of agencies that monitor these programs, and then cry that the programs are corrupt and should be eliminated.

Secondly, and more importantly, most assistance programs could be greatly reduced by requiring that a living  wage be paid to anyone willing to work.  As a bit of social engineering, the minimum wage should be drastically increased, and companies should be given disincentives for hiring part time workers.

By the way, here is my theory on "trickle up economics".  So, we constantly hear that raising the minimum wage would cause inflation, and result in fewer workers being hired.  Raising the minimum wage is somewhat inflationary, but employers, be they retailers or manufacturers, have to be competitive, so they would not automatically pass on all of the increased wage costs to their consumers.  In "trickle up economics", when the minimum wage is increased, suddenly a percentage of wage earners above the previous minimum wage would be reduced to the same level as the new minimum wage earners.  Because these people generally have more experience (thus more value to the employer), some of them would receive an additional increase in wages to differentiate them from the bottom tier worker.  By the same token, some of each higher tier of workers would see an increase in wages for the same reason.  This works right on up to the managers and executive members of the organization, and ultimately forces the owner or corporation to accept lower profit margins.  Now, because each tier of worker has more disposable income, that money is spent, more goods and services are purchased, more taxes are collected, and more jobs are created.  Don't be fooled by the continual Republican rhetoric about job growth being stymied by government regulation or uncertainty,  The only real way to increase job growth is to increase demand for products and services.   

As I have written before,  I am an institutionalist,  I see nothing wrong with big government, I just want to see better government.  I don't think the churches, families or other charitable institutions have the reach or the finances to provide all the help needed in this country , only good government and good leadership can provide adequate assistance to the needy.