The difference over provision for the poor

Men of the political Left make it their slogan: “we need to provide for the poor”. They claim to be the party of compassion and of charity towards one’s neighbour, and label men of the Right cold-hearted, selfish, etc. A lot of this is simply dishonest—Leftist ‘concern for the poor’ is very often simply a cover for destruction, especially destruction of freedom and of the family. But for the sake of argument let’s take their words at face value.

If we are Christians then we cannot avoid that we have an obligation towards the poor, because God said so. And so the Left can very easily appeal to the Christian conscience by claiming that they take seriously “we need to provide for the poor”. And if it is true that men of the Right don’t care about the poor then this is a serious problem.

Jay Richards, an economist, explained how as an undergraduate he came to think that all Christians should be Marxists:

Premise 1. God cares about the poor.

Premise 2. God expects us to care about the poor.

Premise 3. Marx cares about the poor.

Conclusion: Christians should be Marxists.

(The Dalai Lama illustrates this syllogism. He has said that he considers himself a Marxist because Marx evaluates the economy morally and cares about the poor.)

Is the claim of the Left to have a monopoly on care for the poor of any force?

Well the Left certainly talk about caring for the poor. And the Right, perhaps, say less about it. But I think most men of the Right, especially Christians, would agree that “we need to provide for the poor”. (Among secular conservatives and libertarians there are some who express no moral obligation to the poor.)

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Christians on the Left and on the Right would both agree with the statement “we need to provide for the poor”.

The difference comes from the definition of PROVIDE FOR and POOR.

Start with POOR. The Left characteristically define ‘poor’ in relative terms—based on inequality. E.g. those whose income falls below the average. This does not define ‘poor’ based on an objective measure of living standard, but against a set of expectations for a given society. Being ‘poor’ is compatible with having ample food, a television, air conditioning, etc. Using this relative method, the amount of poverty in any time or place is arbitrary—it depends entirely on how broadly you want to apply it.

The Right are willing to define ‘poor’ in objective terms. There are objective measures of poverty which are obvious, unmistakeable, and were part of common sense until recently. E.g. infant mortality, danger of starvation. By this definition most people through most of human history have been poor—they were in immediate danger of starvation and few of their children would survive to reproduce.

The great thing (politically) about the Leftist definition is that you can use it no matter what the circumstances. In the West there is practically no poverty, in absolute terms. In fact the relative poor are so amply fed and so fertile out-reproducing all other income classes. Their biggest killer is not starvation but addiction—diabetes, heart disease, alcoholism, drug abuse, these are the bane of the ‘poor’ in the West. And they are not problems of material poverty! Quite the opposite.

But the Left can still use relief of the ‘poor’ as a justification because there is inequality of income in the West. Really it is an appeal to envy. As long as there are people who cannot have what the richest few have, they can claim to be ‘poor’ and therefore to have the moral high ground when they use the force of law to steal income, etc.

One wonders then, if a society of high infant mortality and starvation but where everyone had the same income, would pass the Leftist test and be a society that had eliminated poverty.

But this difference over definition makes it obvious why men of the Right talk less about the poor. Poverty is simply not a problem in the West, not on any significant scale. Where people in the West are actually in danger of starvation or their children are dying, it is because of extraordinary circumstances which are not amenable to a general solution.

Now on to PROVIDE FOR. The Left accomplish their purposes by defining this ambiguous term in a specific way: ‘provide for’ means to redistribute income by force from the rich to the poor. There are other ways to state this, but that is what it always comes down to.

On the Right I would say ‘provide for’ is left more potentially open to interpretation. The point is that Christians are obliged to provide for the poor but how best to do that will depend on the circumstances involved, and cannot necessarily be defined in advance. Families, friends, churches, businesses, self-help associations, these are all actors who have a more primary responsibility for helping the poor than the government, because they are closer to the person and more likely to know their situation and how to help. And those things cannot be predicted or reduced to a formula. Men of the Right will sometimes say that the government should take from the rich and give to the poor, but that is not the go-to answer to everything.

Consider how useful the Christian conscience of “providing for the poor” becomes when you define the terms in the Leftist way! You can use it to justify any amount of government expansion and of redistribution from rich to poor. As long as there are income differences you can claim poverty relief. And you can expand the government without limit to do it. It feeds on everyone’s envy and short-term self-interest.

And the Right’s definition is bound to have less political appeal, because it does not offer a one-size-fits-all consistent to solution to every problem. The Leftist formula is to name a problem—say, unemployment—and then propose a solution based on redistributing income. The problem for the Right is that once the problem is named, you are stuck doing negative tasks—either denying there is a problem (which is not much fun) or criticizing the Leftist ‘solution’—and then you are caught by the fallacy which the Left capitalizes on: “something must be done; this is something; therefore we must do it”.

Nor does the Right’s definition have the appeal to envy.

Thus far I have confined the discussion to material poverty. This leaves out the other significant dimensions to providing for the poor. If one was interested one could define the Christian Right as “men who are motivated primarily to relieve non-material poverty”. This is perfectly illustrated by the plight of the ‘poor’ today, dying of diabetes and addiction: their problem is not material poverty, it is moral poverty, poverty of character, poverty of family. The breakup of families and unchecked bad habits are their bane. Those problems simply cannot be solved by the government—but the government can make them worse! In fact one wonders whether the welfare state is a kind of circular self-justifying institution: the welfare state creates poverty and then justifies its expansion to relieve poverty. And its expansion just creates more. Certainly the last century has seen the government working hard to create poverty in the best way possible, by destroying families. 

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Trying to put this in a more concise way:

The Left defines poverty in relative terms. As long as there is income difference, there is poverty.
The Right defines poverty in absolute terms. As long as basic needs are met, there is no (material) poverty. 

The Left defines provision in permanent, institutional terms. The government has to set things up so that nobody becomes, or remains, poor. 
The Right defines provision in personal, circumstantial terms. People are poor in diverse ways and for diverse reasons; consequently providing for a poor man depends on knowing his need and meeting it, which requires intimacy on the personal level.

The Leftist definition works so well politically because it appeals to men's envy and impatience.