THE LEGITIMACY of altering social institutions to achieve greater equality of material condition is, though often assumed, rarely argued for,” Robert Nozick observes, and so it has been in debate on social policy.1 Why pay for welfare? Why pay for Food Stamps? Why pay for scholarships for poor students? Most answers are not so much reasons as affirmations of faith. By and large, we have not for some years asked primitive questions about social policy. The debate over the size of the Food Stamps budget is vigorous. The debate over whether it is right that there be a Food Stamps budget has been limited to a few libertarians who are adequately answered, it is assumed, by the self-evident goodness of providing food to needy people.
I do not propose to argue the “why” questions in all their philosophical ramifications. Nor is this the place to try to construct a theory through which all competing answers may be reconciled. Rather, let us establish only that the answers to the “why” questions are not usually so abstract as “because it is the humane thing to do” or “because I am my brother’s keeper.” We are occasionally forced to fall back on these final and not very enlightening justifications, but usually we have something quite different in mind.
If social policy may be construed, as I suggested at the beginning of the book, as transfers from the haves to the have-nots, the proper first question is, “What is the justification for any transfers at all?” Why should one person give anything to a stranger whose only claim to his help is a common citizenship?
Suppose that I am not opposed to the notion of government transfers, but neither do I think that equality of outcome is always a good in itself. I attach considerable value to the principle that people get what they deserve. In other words, “I” am a fairly typical citizen with a middle-of-the-road, pragmatic political philosophy.
I am asked to consider the case of a man who has worked steadily for many years and, in his fifties, is thrown out of his job because the factory closes. Why should I transfer money to him—provide him with unemployment checks and, perhaps, permanent welfare support? The answer is not difficult. I may rationalize it any number of ways, but at bottom I consent to transfer money to him because I want to. The worker has plugged along as best he could, contributed his bit to the community, and now faces personal disaster. He is one of my fellows in a very meaningful way— “There but for the grace of God. . . .”—and I am happy to see a portion of my income used to help him out. (I would not be happy to see so much of my income transferred that I am unable to meet my obligations to myself and my family, however.)
A second man, healthy and in the prime of life, refuses to work. I offer him a job, and he still refuses to work. I am called upon to answer the question again: Why should I transfer money to him? Why should I not let him starve, considering it a form of suicide?
It is a question to ponder without escape hatches. I may not assume that the man can be made to change his ways with the right therapeutic intervention. I may not assume that he has some mental or environmental handicap that relieves him of responsibility. He is a man of ordinary capacities who wishes to live off my work rather than work for himself. Why should I consent?
Suppose that I decide not to let him starve in the streets, for reasons having to do with the sanctity of life (I would prevent a suicide as well). The decision does not take me very far in setting up an ideal policy. At once, I run into choices when I compare his situation (we will call him the drone) with that of the laid-off worker.
Suppose that I have only enough resources either (a) to keep both alive at a bare subsistence level or (b) to support the laid-off worker at a decent standard of living and the drone at a near-starvation level. What would be the just policy? Would it be right, would it be fair, to make the worker live more miserably so that I might be more generous to the drone?
We may put the question more provocatively: Suppose that scarce resources were not a problem—that we could afford to support both at a decent standard of living. Should we do so? Is it morally appropriate to give the same level of support to the two men? Would it be right to offer the same respect to the two men? The same discretionary choice in how to use the help that was provided?
These are not rhetorical questions nor are they questions about expedient policy. They ask about the justice and humanity of the alternatives. I submit that it is not humane to the laid-off worker to treat him the same as the drone. It is not just to accord the drone the respect that the laid-off worker has earned.
The point is that, in principle, most of us provide some kinds of assistance gladly, for intuitively obvious reasons. We provide other kinds of assistance for reasons that, when it comes down to it, are extremely hard to defend on either moral or practical grounds. An ethically ideal social policy—an intuitively satisfying one—would discriminate among recipients. It would attach a pat on the back to some transfers and give others begrudgingly.
We have yet to tackle the question of whether the point has anything to do with recipients in the workaday world. Who is to say that the drone has no justification for refusing to work (he was trained as a cook and we offer him a job sweeping floors)? Who is to say whether the laid-off worker is blameless for the loss of his job (his sloppy workmanship contributed to the factory’s loss of business to the Japanese)? Who is to say that the income of the taxpaying donor is commensurate with his value to society —that he “deserves” his income any more than the drone deserves the gift of a part of it? But such questions define the operational barriers to establishing a social policy that discriminates among recipients according to their deserts. They do not touch on the legitimacy of the principle.
When we think of transfers, we usually think in terms of economic transfers from richer to poorer. In reality, social policy can obligate one citizen to turn over a variety of “goods” as a donation on behalf of some other person; access to parking spaces reserved for the handicapped is a simple example.
Sometimes these noneconomic transfers, like the economic ones, are arranged so that the better-off give up something to the worse-off, and the argument about whether the transfer is appropriate follows the lines of the issues I have just raised. But in a surprising number of instances the transfers are mandated by the better-off, while the price must be paid by donors who are just as poor as the recipient.
Now suppose that the same hypothetical “I” considers the case of two students in an inner-city high school. Both come from poor families. Both have suffered equal deprivations and social injustices. They have the same intelligence and human potential. For whatever reasons—let us assume pure accident—the two students behave differently in school. One student (the good student) studies hard and pays attention in class. The other student (the mischievous student) does not study and instead creates disturbances, albeit good-natured disturbances, in the classroom.
I observe a situation in which the teacher expels the mischievous student from the classroom more or less at will. The result is that he becomes further alienated from school, drops out, and eventually ends up on welfare or worse. I know that the cause of this sequence of events (his behavior in class) was no worse than the behavior of millions of middle-class students who suffer nothing like the same penalty. They too are kicked out of class when they act up, but for a variety of reasons they stay in school and eventually do well. Further yet, I know that the behavior of the teacher toward the student is biased and unfairly harsh because the student is an inner-city black and the teacher is a suburban white who neither understands nor sympathizes with such students.
On all counts, then, I observe that the mischievous student expelled from the classroom is a victim who deserves a system that does not unfairly penalize him. I therefore protect him against the bias and arbitrariness of the teacher. The teacher cannot expel the student from class unless the student’s behavior meets certain criteria far beyond the ordinary talking and laughing out of turn that used to get him in trouble.
The result, let us say, is that the student continues to act as before, but remains in the classroom. Other students also respond to the reality of the greater latitude they now have. The amount of teaching is reduced, and so is the ability of students to concentrate on their work even if they want to.
I know, however, that some benefits are obtained. The mischievous student who formerly dropped out of school does not. He obtains his diploma, and with it some advantages in the form of greater education (he learned something, although not much, while he stayed in school) and a credential to use when applying for a job.
This benefit has been obtained at a price. The price is not money—let us say it costs no more to run the school under the new policy than under the old. No transfers have been exacted from the white middle class. The transfer instead is wholly from the good student to the mischievous one. For I find that the quality of education obtained by the good student deteriorated badly, both because the teacher had less time and energy for teaching and because the classroom environment was no longer suitable for studying. One poor and disadvantaged student has been compelled (he had no choice in the matter) to give up part of his education so that the other student could stay in the classroom.
What is my rationale for enforcing this transfer? In what sense did the good student have an excess of educational opportunity that he could legitimately be asked to sacrifice?
The example has deliberately been constructed so that neither student was intrinsically more deserving than the other. The only difference between the two was behavioral, with one student behaving in a more desirable way than the other student. Even under these unrealistically neutral conditions, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the transfer was unjustifiable. Now, let us make the example more realistic.
A student who reaches adolescence in an inner-city school with high motivation to study and learn does not do so by accident. The motivation is likely to reflect merit—on the student’s part, on the parents’ part, or on a combination of the two. In the good student’s behavior I am observing not just a “desirable” response but a praiseworthy one.
Further, if we make the example realistic, the good student does not transfer simply an abstract deterioration in the quality of education, from a potentially fine education to a merely adequate one. The more likely loss is a much greater one, from an adequate education that might have prepared the good student to take advantage of opportunities for higher education to an inadequate education that leaves the good student, no matter how well motivated, without essential tools to pursue basic routes to advancement.
Once again, let me consider my rationale without giving myself an easy out. I may not assume that classroom instruction is not really affected by disruption; it is. I may not assume that counselors will be able shortly to change the behavior of the mischievous student. I may not assume that the school will provide separate tracks for the attentive student; the same philosophy that led to greater student rights also led to restrictions and even prohibitions on separate tracks for the better students. Most of all, I may not assume that the good student is superhuman. He may be admirable, but he is not necessarily able to get himself a good education no matter what obstacles I put in his way.
Such transfers from poor to poor are at the heart of the inequities of social policy. Saying that we meant well does not quite cover our transgressions. Even during the period of the most active reform we could not help being aware, if only at the back of our minds, of certain moral problems. When poor delinquents arrested for felonies were left on probation, as the elite wisdom prescribed they should be, the persons put most at risk were poor people who lived in their neighborhoods. They, not the elite, gave up the greater part of the good called ‘’safety” so that the disadvantaged delinquent youth should not experience the injustice of punishment. When job-training programs were set up to function at the level of the least competent, it was the most competent trainees who had to sacrifice their opportunities to reach their potentials. When social policy reinforced the ethic that certain jobs are too demeaning to ask people to do, it was those who preferred such jobs to welfare whose basis for self-respect was stripped from them.
More generally, social policy after the mid-1960s demanded an extraordinary range of transfers from the most capable poor to the least capable, from the most law-abiding to the least law-abiding, and from the most responsible to the least responsible. In return, we gave little to these most deserving persons except easier access to welfare for themselves—the one thing they found hardest to put to “good use,”
We blinked at these realities at the time. The homogenizing process which was discussed in chapter 14 helped us to blink; the poor were all poor, all more or less in the same situation, we said. All would be deserving, we preferred to assume, if they had not been so exploited by society, by the system. But at bottom it is difficult to imagine under what logic we thought these transfers appropriate.
The peculiarity of a transfer, as opposed to the other uses of tax monies, is that the direct benefit goes only to the recipient. If I pay for garbage collection, I, the payer, get a benefit. My garbage disappears. I may argue about whether the garbage collection service is efficiently operated and whether I am getting value for money, but I do not argue about whether, somehow, my garbage must be made to disappear, and so must my neighbor’s garbage. If I pay for Food Stamps with my tax dollars, the government is making quite a different request of me and undertaking a much different responsibility. The government judges that my income is large enough that a portion of it should be given to someone whose income, the government has decided, is too small. And when, for example, the Food Stamps are buying milk for a malnourished child, I am pleased that they should do so. But I may legitimately ask two things of the government that exercises such authority. First, I may ask that the government be right— right in deciding that, in some cosmic scheme of things, my resources are “large enough” and the recipient’s are “too small.” Second, I may ask that the transfer be successful, and therein lies a problem.
If the transfer is successful, I, the donor, can be satisfied on either of two grounds: general humanitarianism (“I am doing good”) or more self-interested calculations that make transfers not so very different from police service or garbage collection. For the sake of my own quality of life, I do not want to live in a Calcutta with people sleeping in the streets in front of my house. If it is true that putting delinquents in jail only makes them into worse criminals later on, then putting the neighbors at just a little more risk by leaving delinquents at large is worth it to them, because eventually it will reduce their risk. The short-term injustices are rescued by a long-term greater good for everyone.
Whether I choose humanitarianism or long-term self-interest as the basis for approving the transfer, I must confront the “net happiness” challenge. If the first questions of social policy ask why we approve of transfers at all, the next questions ask how we know whether our expectations are being justified. How, in an ideal world, would we measure “success” in assessing a transfer?
The social scientists who measure the effects of transfers look for success at two levels and of necessity ignore a third. The first level is, “Did the transfer reach the people it was intended to reach in the intended form?” (Do Food Stamps reach people who need extra food money?) The second level is, “Did the transfer have the intended direct effect on the behavior or condition of the recipients?” (Do Food Stamps improve nutrition?) The third, unattainable level is, “Did the transfer, in the long run, add to net happiness in the world?”
We may presume that better housing, nutrition, and medical care contribute to less misery and more happiness; so also do good parents, a loving spouse, safe streets, personal freedom, and the respect of one’s neighbors. We know how to measure some of these aspects of the quality of life; others we cannot measure at all; and, most certainly, we are unable to compare their relative worth or to add up a net total. We have no “misery” or “happiness” indexes worthy of the name. But the concept of reducing misery and increasing happiness is indispensable to deciding whether a social policy is working or failing.
With that in mind, let us consider yet another hypothetical example. In this case, I am deciding upon my stance in support or opposition of a policy that automatically provides an adequate living allowance for all single women with children. I am informed that one consequence of this policy is that large numbers of the children get better nutrition and medical care than they would otherwise obtain. Using this known fact and no others, I support the program.
Now, let us assume two more known facts, that the program induces births by women who otherwise would have had fewer children (or had them under different circumstances), and that child abuse and neglect among these children runs at twice the national average. Does this alter my judgment about whether the allowance is a net good—that it is better to have it than not have it? I must now balance the better health of some children against the pain suffered by others who would not have suffered the pain if the program had not existed. I decide—although I wish I could avoid the question altogether—that, all in all, I still support the program.
What if the incidence of abuse and neglect is three times as high? Five times? Ten times? A hundred times?
The crossover point will be different for different people. But a crossover will occur. At some point, I will say that the benefits of better nutrition and medical care are outweighed by the suffering of the abused and neglected children. What then is the humane policy? Once more I must avoid false escape hatches. I may continue to search for a strategy that does not have the overbalancing side-effects. But what is my position toward the existing program in the meantime?
All of these examples—the worker versus the drone, the good student versus the bad student, the children helped versus the children hurt—are intended to emphasize a reality we tend to skirt. Devising a system of transfers that is just, fair, and compassionate involves extraordinarily difficult moral choices in which the issue is not how much good we can afford to do (as the choice is usually put), but how to do good at all. In the debate over social policy, the angels are not arrayed against the accountants.
The examples do not force one set of principles over all others. A socialist may use them in support of an internally consistent rationale for sweeping redistributive measures. At the other end of the spectrum, a libertarian may use them to support the eradication of transfers altogether. For those who fall somewhere in the middle, two more modest conclusions about what constitutes a just and humane social policy are warranted.
The first conclusion is that transfers are inherently treacherous. They can be useful; they can be needed; they can be justified. But we should approach them as a good physician uses a dangerous drug—not at all if possible, and no more than absolutely necessary otherwise.
The second conclusion is that, as a general rule, compulsory transfers from one poor person to another are uncomfortably like robbery. When we require money transfers from the obviously rich to the obviously poor, we at least have some room for error. Mistaken policies may offend our sense of right and wrong, but no great harm has been done to the donor. The same is not true of the noneconomic transfers from poor to poor. We have no margin for error at all. If we are even a little bit wrong about the consequences of the transfer, we are likely to do great injustices to people who least deserve to bear the burden.
And that, finally, is what makes the question of social policy not one of polite philosophical dispute but one of urgent importance. For the examples in this chapter are not really hypothetical. They are drawn directly from the data we reviewed. It is impossible to examine the statistics on a topic such as single teenaged mothers without admitting that we are witnessing a tragedy. If it had been inevitable, if there had been nothing we could have done to avoid it, then we could retain the same policies, trying to do more of the same and hoping for improvement. But once we must entertain the possibility that we are bringing it on ourselves, as I am arguing that both logic and evidence compel us to do, then it is time to reconsider a social policy that salves our consciences (“Look how compassionate I am”) at the expense of those whom we wished to help.