Haiti and the American Welfare State

I just read an article by David Brooks titled The Underlying Tragedy in the New York Times.  Here’s is what I believe is the key statement in his article.

The first of those truths is that we don’t know how to use aid to reduce poverty. Over the past few decades, the world has spent trillions of dollars to generate growth in the developing world. The countries that have not received much aid, like China, have seen tremendous growth and tremendous poverty reductions. The countries that have received aid, like Haiti, have not.

The prevailing wisdom on the left is that if throwing money at the problems is not working it’s because you haven’t thrown enough at it.  Giving handouts simply treats the symptoms while contributing to the growth of the disease.

He goes on to point out that some private charities have taken a different route to solving the disorder of poverty by forcing small changes in the culture and requiring the beneficiaries to be productive to receive the aid of the organization.

These programs, like the Harlem Children’s Zone and the No Excuses schools, are led by people who figure they don’t understand all the factors that have contributed to poverty, but they don’t care. They are going to replace parts of the local culture with a highly demanding, highly intensive culture of achievement — involving everything from new child-rearing practices to stricter schools to better job performance.

We’ve given billions to the people of Haiti in previous years and it has done nothing to alleviate the culture of poverty in that country. Giving billions while not demanding results won’t change anything. It will only compound the problem. Haiti is a case study in the effects of the American Welfare State in our own “War on Poverty”.

We have dumped trillions into the American Welfare State and the poverty level hasn’t changed. Why is that?

Poverty in the U. S. is not the result of lack of opportunity. Poverty is a social mindset that is trained into segments of our culture. Giving handouts to certain segments of the population while telling them that the system is designed to oppress them is teaching selected groups to give up and accept what is given to them. We are teaching that particular segment of the population that failure and success is not the responsibility of the individual but the result of external forces.

The welfare state has become a psychological bludgeon to keep certain interest groups in poverty and is used to train that group to rely on the benevolence of their masters. It is one of the most insidious practices in the United States when combined with an educational system that teaches a separation of cultures in lieu of welcoming all cultures into the majority.

By handing free money to a country as corrupt and destitute as Haiti we are creating a culture that has no responsibility for its own success. Without the responsibility of individual achievement the population stagnates and becomes apathetic. We are guaranteeing a continuance of the status quo and a permanent reliance on the confiscation of the labor of the American Taxpayer to sustain it.

Brooks speaks about the cultural influences in Haiti creating barriers to progress. Maybe some thought should be given to the contribution of our aid programs to that culture. Everybody knows that you shouldn’t give money to a drug addict. Maybe the same logic should be applied to the aid programs we provide to those who suffer from the disease of poverty.