Calling a handout an ‘investment’ doesn’t make it one.
At CNN, New York’s mayor, Eric Adams, serves up a lovely little illustration of the parlous state of American political discourse. Adams writes:
Let’s start by exploding a few myths about what Black and working-class folks want and need.
First, in my experience, they don’t want “help.” They want what they have earned. They work hard, and, at a minimum, they should not have to worry about crime, schools, child care, health care or housing. This is not some socialist dream. Those are the basics that they paid for by doing the jobs that keep our country running.
Let’s leave aside whether this sweeping generalization “about what Black and working-class folks want and need” is, in fact, correct, and focus on what he’s saying. “In my experience,” Adams insists, “they don’t want ‘help.’ They want what they have earned.” And that, inter alia, is “schools, child care, health care or housing,” which represent “the basics that they paid for by doing the jobs that keep our country running.”
None of this is true. It’s not even an argument. It’s a declaration, followed by a bunch of euphemisms, redefinitions, and falsehoods. By definition, the people about whom Adams is talking have not “earned” those things, because, if they had, the government would not need to provide them in the way that Adams is insisting it should. Likewise, these people did not “pay for” those things “by doing the jobs that keep our country running,” because, if they had, they’d have them already. If Adams so wishes, he can reasonably argue that the government ought to take some of the citizenry’s money by force, and use it to provide certain services to people who cannot afford them on their own. Such an argument may even be popular. But he cannot have it both ways: If there are people in America who want or need things that they cannot afford for themselves, they are, as a matter of fact, being “helped,” and they did not, as a matter of fact, “earn” or “pay for” those things themselves.
Adams continues:
Other measures that put extra money in the pockets of working people – such as a more robust earned income tax credit and child care credit – help to stabilize their finances, protecting them from debt and reliance on social services.
These are not handouts. These are prudent investments.
No, they’re “handouts.” They might be good handouts. They might be popular handouts. If, as claimed, they help people “stabilize their finances” and have the effect of “protecting them from debt and reliance on social services,” they might, ceteris paribus, even be good public policy. But they are handouts nevertheless. In its current form, the federal tax code is absolutely chock full of handouts — most of which are for the middle-class — and the EITC and the child care credit are two examples among them. Pretending that these particular handouts are “prudent investments” helps nobody and changes nothing. Depending on your perspective, it may be a defensible policy to take money from one American and give it to another American, but doing so does not represent an “investment,” because it doesn’t grow anything. Adams knows this. The interesting question is: Why doesn’t he want you to?