I like the fact that Paul Ryan continues to talk about smart and effective ways to tackle poverty and the diminished opportunities for upward mobility. These are issues which havent animated conservatives for fear of them being exploited as justification for larger government but, as he illustrates in this opinion piece, there are ways to re-imagine the role of government to reduce costs, eliminate inefficiency, and put local communities rather than the federal government at the helm. Its apparent that the tens of trillions of dollars spent over half a century have not significantly budged the needle on poverty. The political solution is to spend more money. Systems thinking, however, tells us the current system needs to be redesigned with different processes and metrics for success to achieve a different result. One of my favorite sayings is “Every system is perfectly designed to achieve exactly the results it gets”.The Bible puts it another way: A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit (Matthew 7:18). The War on Poverty isnt working, and we must not be so afraid of criticism or blinded by our own pride that we cannot admit it. If something isnt working, lets be secure enough to admit it isnt working, and unafraid of different ideas on how to fix it. Moreover, our goal must be to move people from poverty to independence, not to leave them in a state of minimal subsistence for the rest of their lives. Our goal should be human flourishing, not stagnation. Are these ideas the best ones? I dont know. But lets have the debate and discussion on how to do it better than we are today. People are depending on it.
Posted on: Thu, 24 Jul 2014 12:06:29 +0000
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