We ask children questions to remember a simpler time: What do you want to do when you grow up? Who inspires you? What have you learned from your parents? Simple questions that have large potential implications. However, taking their ideas and naively comparing them to reality is somewhat… juvenile. The Washington Post's Petula Dvorak has done just that.
Dvorak asked DC fifth grade students for their solutions to poverty. Suggestions ranged from growing food in a garden to donating food. But the Post reporter sought a specific solution that she felt helped many, just look at Russia, China, and Venezuela: "If the government has all this money, why don't they just give some of it to poor people so that we don't have poverty anymore?" Innocent enough, the student's limited context points to giving out, especially without paying in. Yet Dvorak stands the idea on stilted greatness.
The kids idealistically think sharing solves societal problems and they are right when people willingly do so in their own self-interest. But big spenders legislate involuntary redistribution of wealth to balance incomes in a collective-interest. Both are incorrect, only one ought to know better. The liberal DC Fiscal Policy Institute campaigns for raising taxes on District businesses and citizens as a means to fight poverty yet DC continues to rank high in incomes below the poverty level.
Already a high tax environment, DC is considering multiple tax increases to plug its $550 million deficit, complementing a relatively unchanged high spending trend. (NTU's John Stephenson highlights the new costs of living and doing business in the District. Which certainly won't help the 6% increase in unemployed residents.) Whats more, freeing private dollars allows taxpayers to choose where their money goes, be it investment in business expansion, charities ($308 billion in 2008), or saving for the future – all of which help the less fortunate.
What children don't realize is their summer jobs and chores are models for fighting poverty. By mowing lawns and doing the dishes, they show how individual choice – instead of handouts - brings not only personal experience but rewards and benefits. Entrepreneurship fights poverty, handouts proliferate it. Perhaps Dvorak should ask fifth graders how they'd like their allowance taxed. I bet the answer wouldn't surprise me as her logic certainly does.