Looking anew at social ills

A piece in Sunday's Globe called "The Sting of Poverty" draws an analogy between the sometimes illogical choices of poor people and the decision of a person attacked by several bees to not bother treating any one of the stings because there will still be pain from the others. According to a book called The Persistence of Poverty, by the philosopher Charles Karelis, the issue can be looked at like this:

One doesn't have enough money to pay rent or car insurance or credit card bills or day care or sometimes even food. Even if one works hard enough to pay off half of those costs, some fairly imposing ones still remain, which creates a large disincentive to bestir oneself to work at all.

The analogy in the article that I like better is this: If I have a number of dents on my car and I don't have the money to get them all fixed, I am less likely to fix any one individual dent with the money that I do have. It makes sense to me and, in fact, I do have several dents in my car and have not had them fixed for that very reason. As Globe staff writer Drake Bennett points out,

Compared with the middle class or the wealthy, the poor are disproportionately likely to drop out of school, to have children while in their teens, to abuse drugs, to commit crimes, to not save when extra money comes their way, to not work.

Such behavior does seem irrational, the story says, but Karelis believes that the way most have viewed poverty is preventing us from fully understanding how it affects people.

A piece in The New York Times called "Race and the Social Contract" draws on various studies to conclude that an obstacle toward our country spending on public resources and social programs is America's diversity. People seem to be more willing to part with cash if they believe it's going to others of the same race, religion and/or ethnic background. The story goes on to say that,

Americans are not less generous than Europeans. When private charities are included, they probably spend more money for social purposes than Europeans do. But philanthropy allows them to target spending on those they personally believe are deserving, instead of allowing the government to choose.

I'm sure that some who consider themselves right-of-center will look at these two articles and dismiss them as excuses or whining or academic thumb-twiddling. Those of us on the left of the political spectrum who claim to have all the answers are incorrect, but both groups should be willing to examine the ills of our society with open eyes and to think in terms we might not have considered before.