Ask An Anarchist: What About “The Poor”
Posted on January 9, 2009
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Part of the Ask An Anarchist Series - Previous in series
Welcome back to Ask An Anarchist. The ongoing series where I respond to questions about anarchist philosophy. This is an easy edition for me to write as Michael Wiebe of Libertarian Anarchy has done all of the heavy lifting.
Q) Do you not care about poor people? Without government assistance and programs they wouldn’t be able to survive!
A) Of course I (and other anarchists) care about the poor. I, for one, am one of the poor. But one of the reasons I’m an anarchist is because I know that, however well intentioned, government intervention does far more to hurt those in poverty than to help them.
Check out Micahel’s Government Against the Poor, for a better worded explanation of the above statement than I’m likely to write any time soon. BTW, I discovered that post through the monthly Market Anarchist Blog Carnival which is well worth reading each month if you’re interested in attaining more personal freedom and better understanding the true problems of government.
Part of the Ask An Anarchist Series - Previous in series
The Complete Ask An Anarchist Series-
- Ask An Anarchist: Cheat Out Of A Ticket
- Ask An Anarchist: What About “The Poor”
Related Posts: » Filed Under: Ask An Anarchist, Living Free
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“Government Against The Poor” was a great article.
Thanks for commenting on my blog, btw. I’m glad that someone is reading it.
Andrew Qs last blog post..Aiming At The Wrong Targets
It is true that the government does not care about poor people, this has been even more so with Bush in the White House, but sometimes the government does help, example: senate just passed a good credit card reform Bill, it will limit a lot of credit card expenses such as late payment fees and interest rates, it will be enforce in 2011, also minimum wage increases that happened in the past year or so.
Welcome, “John”!
While you start off on the right foot, you clearly didn’t bother to read the linked article. The fallacy of the minimum wage is the first thing he covers. An increase to the minimum wage (or even its existence) artificially increases labor costs. These higher costs are, of course, passed on to the consumer. And who can afford higher prices the least? Minimum wage workers, of course.
It also results in fewer job opportunities for low-skill and/or part time workers since the employers are now paying more money for the same amount of work to be accomplished, thus diluting their “labor buying power”. The only folx who benefit from minimum wage increases are union members whose wage is tied to the minimum wage. They end up with significant wage increases, though even thees gains are short-term as their costs will start increasing as well, though not as quickly as the truly poor.
One of the reasons the Big Three automakers “need” a bailout is that things like minimum wage increases have raised their average labor cost to over $70.00 per hour! Are those really the poor you’re trying to help when you raise the minimum wage? Because those of us earning it are tired of getting screwed by the government.