Name: Debate: What To Do About Poverty | Learn Liberty
Uploaded: 2016-09-29T23:50:02.000Z
Duration: 16 min 29 s
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[Movie clip, The Pursuit of Happyness, 2006, Columbia Pictures]

Transition words & phrases

WILL SMITH: I remember that day, because that’s the day that I found out there was only $21.33

BRANDON TURNER: So a fairly moving depiction of what poverty looks like in that clip. And

so I’ll start off with Professor Horwitz. Do we have an obligation to alleviate poverty,

STEVEN HORWITZ: Yeah, and I want to make one quick point about that clip, two related points.

One, we don’t know, from that clip, why Will Smith's character’s in that situation,

which I think is an interesting question. I’d also note that, sort of, as we think

about getting libertarian messages across, we need more clips with that kind of emotional

power, right? That sort of depict the ways in which people can be wronged by forces outside

So I think one of things that we want to say about that—I want to say about that is,

look, if the question is how do we alleviate, how do we fix inequality—and really I think

what we’re really talking is how to alleviate poverty—is the question how do we bring

people up? I think one of things that we can do is to focus on the ways in which governments

sets barriers in front of the opportunities for poor people to make themselves wealthier.

So if I could wave my magic wand, I think I’d do four things, four changes I would

want to see that would, I think, help address this.

One, we need to end the war on drugs, which is destroying poor neighborhoods, particularly

urban neighborhoods as well as rural ones, as well as all the other terrible things that

the war on drugs does. But certainly it has decimated neighborhoods and made them uninhabitable

and discouraged businesses from operating there and providing work. Second, we need

to get rid of the minimum wage, which has knocked off the lowest rungs of the economic

ladder for millions of Americans, again, particularly the lowest-skilled and those who need entry

into the job market the most. Relatedly, third, occupational licensure laws that make it more

difficult—often at the behest of incumbent, wealthier producers of products—to set up

barriers to entry to poor people who want to open, whether it’s anything from a hair

braiding shop to whatever, up to driving a cab, to whatever else it might be, that those

opportunities are being closed off to them. And finally, something I mentioned earlier,

I think one of the most important things we can do is we have to get more competition

into the schooling system. Urban and rural—I live in the rural area, and I can tell you

many of the public schools there are just as bad as the same ones we see in urban areas.

Government has failed at providing effective schooling for poor people. We need alternatives.

We need competition. We need choice to find ways to help poor folks get the human capital

they need to try to avoid the kind of the situations we see in that clip.

JEFFREY REIMAN: I agree with most of that. I certainly think that the war on drugs is

a disaster. I certainly think that it’s good to get more competition into schooling.

I think so far the results of that are mixed. I don’t think it’s an obvious panacea

that’s going to solve all these problems. There may yet be other things that have to

be taken. About the licensure laws, I’m actually kind of libertarian. I don’t even

like the fact that I have to get a prescription from a doctor to get a medication. I’m a

grown-up with a PhD. I know the difference between poison and—.

REIMAN: That’s right. I’m already a doctor. You would think, you know, I can marry people,

you would think I can—as a philosopher. Anyway, so I’m opposed to that. The minimum

wage, I think, is a more complicated question. The economic studies that I have looked at

or heard of suggest that the reduction in unemployment because of that is very small

and eventually made up for by the fact that there is more money in the economy and therefore

more demand. I don’t think it’s obvious that this is a negative thing, but maybe it

is; I’m open on the empirical question. The thing I just want to insist on is, when

you look at this picture, don’t think about Will Smith; think about that kid, okay? Why

Will Smith got poor is maybe his problem. Maybe he deserves it. Maybe he’s a crook.

Maybe he’s stupid. Maybe he was lazy. The kid doesn’t deserve it. That’s where our

TURNER: So let me put a question to you, Professor Horwitz. Is there a role for government to

play in the alleviation of poverty, ideally? So, in other words, sort of, for writing up

a treatise on political philosophy, what role does government play in alleviating the plight

of the least well off? And then, attached to that, is there a role for the government

to play in 2012 America? So this particular government—is there a role that it can play—a

HORWITZ: A couple of things. I mean, I think that we can imagine a world, perhaps, where

the role of government is minimal. And this is a point that of course libertarians have

disagreed on. We have from more anarchist ones at one end who think that all of those

services can be provided through the market or through civil society organizations—synagogues,

and churches, and mutual aid societies, and all that—to classical liberal types who

would argue that government perhaps has a role to provide something like a minimum income

floor or the like. I think those are all within bounds as a kind of libertarian position on

So, again, if we’re going to write up that treatise on political economy, I think it

depends upon—differences among libertarians will play themselves out in how they see that.

We can have Rothbard kind of on one end and Hayek on another, and those are all in play.

So, do we need government to solve those problems? I’d like to think we can do with the least

government possible to solve those problems. For me, the most interesting question is,

let's see what happens when we get government out of the way, and see how well people do,

and see what we’re left with as a real problem of poverty. And then think about what kind

In the world we exist in today, I think we are in a more complicated situation. We can

see the ways in which opportunities for poor people are restricted by the kinds of things

that I talked about before. And at some level one could argue, if government’s going to

restrict those opportunities, then perhaps it has an obligation to sort of fix what it’s

destroying on the other half. I certainly think it’s really important when we think

about these questions from a libertarian perspective to not take away the safety nets before we

create the additional opportunities. The right way to go about this is: create the additional

opportunities by getting government out of the way in the ways I talked about. Then,

once we give folks the opportunity to pull themselves up, then let's start to talk about

how much of that so-called safety net or—whether it’s a safety net or straight jacket’s

not clear—how much of that that we can live without. And I think that’s the right way

to go at it from a libertarian perspective. That might not be a direct answer to your

question, but as libertarians think about these issues of inequality and poverty, that’s

TURNER: So let me twist the screws a bit with you Professor Reiman. So, on the one hand,

right, we’ve got some very large, sort of government-led, causes of poverty, right?

The rich have a tendency once they have climbed the ladder to pull the ladder up behind them,

right? It’s this image that we have. And so we have got government programs like the

war on drugs, like the—we have a series of wars that we’re engaged in, right, all

of which tend to disproportionately affect the least well off. So in other words, libertarians

have done a lot of work in terms of trying to describe the ways in which the rich to