Mindless Poverty

Feed the babies
Who don't have enough to eat
Shoe the children
With no shoes on their feet
--Steve Miller

Prof Williams challenges the assertion often made by liberals that 'society creates poverty.' Poverty is the world's default condition, because the natural state of the world is one of scarcity. Scarcity can only be alleviated through production, the combination of labor with raw materials that generates goods that reduce want.

Except in its most rudimentary configurations, production requires voluntary cooperation and exchange among people in order to achieve high levels of productivity. High levels of productivity create more output per unit of input, thereby alleviating conditions of scarcity and poverty.

To the extent that it enables voluntary cooperation and exchange among people, society clearly facilitates the creation of abundance, not poverty.

As Williams observes, statements that society creates poverty are 'breathtakingly ignorant.' Empirical evidence along demonstrates that poverty defined in traditional terms of destitution (i.e., starvation, homelessness) has been driven to tiny levels in the US compared to conditions that existed at the time of the country's founding. The median poor American enjoys economic resources that few people had 100 years ago and that most people in the world still lack today.

An extension of the 'society creates poverty' claim is that people who are poor get that way not because of the decisions that they make, but because of exogenous factors in the environment. In the context of the poverty of black Americans, Williams notes that the empirical evidence suggests otherwise. The poverty rate among blacks is about 36 percent, mostly in female-headed households. The poverty rate among black married households has remained in single digits for years. Approximately 72% of black babies are born out of wedlock, nearly 5 times the rate of 1940. Less than 50% of black students graduate from high school, and black men make up about 40% of the US prison population.

Williams poses these questions:

Is having babies without the benefit of marriage a bad decision, and is doing so likely to affect income?
Are dropping out of school and participating in criminal activity bad decisions, and are they likely to have an effect on income?
Do people have free will and the capacity to make decisions, or is their behavior a result of instincts over which they have no control?

Based on the 'society creates poverty' mantra, it is likely that many people would rationalize an answer of 'no' to the last question. Many people believe that they are not responsible for their own actions.