Time to Quit Subsidizing Poverty

That's the message from California Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, though his message is not being received well by the usual folks on the California left. Capitol Weekly takes a shot at him in this article, but in so doing help make his case:

Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, R-Irvine, wants everyone to know that he is not channeling Ebenezer Scrooge – his remark in The Sacramento Bee notwithstanding.

Asked for his view of the state’s fiscal grease fire, DeVore told The Bee’s Kevin Yamamura: “When you have an unemployment rate as high as it is in this state, it should be a signal to people to look for jobs in other states with more jobs and a lower cost of living. We have had policies subsidizing poverty in this state for years, and we can’t keep doing that.”

Boiled to the bones, the Irvine lawmaker seems to urge California’s poor to get out and non-California poor to stay out – a less-flavorful version of Scrooge’s take on the poor’s mortality (it decreases the surplus population).

But even Ebenezer Scrooge was willing to “subsidize poverty,” grumping that his taxes helped support prisons and workhouses and recommending that “those who are badly off must go there.” He didn’t advocate setting them adrift in the English Channel.

Ironically, DeVore’s only example of “subsidizing poverty” is a program designed to shift people from welfare to the workforce: CalWorks. He doesn’t quibble with the program per see, but with California’s failure to tighten eligibility requirements.

“We’re not moving people off welfare fast enough,” he argued. He cited as evidence stats from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that show welfare caseloads up in California over the past five years while shrinking 30 percent in the rest of the nation.

Otherwise, he defines a subsidy as “any payment to an individual that makes it easier to live in this state” and contributes to a person becoming dependent on government.

“I’m not calling for an end to … assistance for the truly needy,” DeVore told me. “But every economist in the world – even Marxist economists – say that when you tax something, you get less of it. And when you subsidize something, you get more of it. California has the most generous welfare benefits and eligibility in the country.”

That generosity, he said, has made California a magnet for the nation’s poor. “People respond to economic incentives,” he said. “These are net consumers of benefits.”

Chuck is the guy who released the information about the 31 new taxes the California government unions want imposed on the state's taxpayers. Needless to say, he's not the Dems' favorite guy.


But he's right.