This Has To Do With Ideology, Not Need
Politics thrives on hope and fear, and when people feel chipper about the future - as most of us do today - enterprising lawmakers can draw attention to themselves only by scaring us out of our wits.
It was in this spirit that the National Conference of Mayors, accompanied by HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo, announced last month that anonymous Grinches have hoarded the fruits of our national prosperity. The organization reported that emergency food requests rose 16 percent last year - the largest jump since 1992 - and that homeless shelters were bulging with lost souls.
This pronouncement tracked nicely with factoids released by various hunger groups - assertions that between 2 million and 5 million children go to bed hungry each night and that we waste 53 million tons of good food annually.
It also provided a convenient launching pad for Vice President Al Gore’s declaration, barely a week later, that the administration would hand out $865 million in grants to America’ homeless.
The mayors and the veep want more tax money for their causes, but their numbers and analyses are highly suspect. The best clue lies in the language: Advocates talk about “requests” for food and shelter as opposed to absolute need. Of course, when benefits are free, as they often are for these necessities, demand is unlimited - and so is the possibility of waste.
Consider nutritional aid. Food stamp expenditures will rise to $26 billion in 2002 (from $24 billion today), even though the number of people receiving them has plunged in just three years from 27.5 million to 21 million.
There’s no obvious reason for the hike other than ideology. Robert Lerner and Althea Nagai report in a recent edition of “Alternatives in Philanthropy” that “food is more affordable than ever. USDA data show that the average family in 1996 spent 10.9 percent of its disposable income on food, compared to 17.4 percent in 1960 and 24.7 percent in 1930.”
Food stamps offer a perfect example of too much money chasing too few needs. The program has an unparalleled record of fraud. As recently as 1994, the Department of Agriculture couldn’t account for nearly 35 percent of all program expenditures.
That’s because the stamps serve as currency in the nation’s street economy. Hamil Harris of The Washington Post recently described a typical scene: Within yards of the local food stamp office, drug dealers swap drugs for stamps (for which they paid only half value), while other men of business unload stolen coats, cigarettes, videos, watches - you name it.
People swap the scrip because they don’t need it. Michael Fumento of the American Enterprise Institute points out that the problem among today’s poor is not starvation but obesity. Rich and poor Americans receive similar amounts of basic nutrition, but low-income families often make a mess of their diets. As a result, our poorest citizens often are the fattest.
Economist Julian Simon has proved decisively that we have no food crisis, despite periodic predictions of cataclysm from the likes of Paul Ehrlich and Lester Brown (both of whom have received MacArthur “genius” grants for their long and unblemished records of error). Hydroponic farms today are - get this - 25 million times more efficient than Native American cultures just a few centuries ago. Despite the technology-killing efforts of enviro-Luddites, the Green Revolution is proceeding at an astonishing pace.
The housing picture isn’t quite as dramatic, but close. Most major cities have too much housing stock, not too little - and the housing industry has begun churning out new homes at levels approaching the good old days of the late 1980s. Often, the “homeless” problem merely masks other dysfunction. David Murray of the Statistical Assessment Service notes that government figures estimate that 23 percent of the homeless are mentally ill and 43 percent are substance abusers. William Tucker meanwhile has shown that rent control has as much to do with homeless as any economic factor: It creates false scarcity of housing supply along with very real rent inflation.
Still, America’s welfare establishment has developed a theory that is immune to fact. This explains why the mayors have identified housing and food crises for each of the last 13 years and continue to do so despite drops in poverty, inflation and unemployment, and increases in family income and charitable giving.
A quick walk through a nearby city will show that things also have improved dramatically in recent years. Yes, some people struggle to find shelter and food. But while we have privation, we don’t have a crisis - and certainly not an approaching catastrophe - unless, of course, you’re a politician looking for a way to hang on to other people’s money.
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