I don’t often quote letters to the editor written by others, but today, I want to, because this person’s remarks require a response. She wrote the following to the San Francisco Chronicle last week, concerning the rash of crime in the Bay Area (I’m not reproducing the entire email, just the end):
“What I do not understand is why The Chronicle doesn’t consistently mention the root cause of this retail theft trend: poverty. Come down hard on criminals? Why can’t we explore other options in our beautiful and beloved city? Yes, it will be very expensive to address education, community services and poverty. But what is the cost to San Francisco of not addressing it?”
We hear this sentiment often in Oakland. For instance, people commonly say “Oakland should build enough housing for all the homeless people”—all 4,500, or 8,000 of them, or whatever the number is. We’ve been told that we should take $150 million from the police department and invest it in “the community.” With the kindest intentions, people say we need to significantly raise teacher salaries, provide all kinds of counseling (psychological, career, healthcare) if not wraparound healthcare itself, build community centers, and invest in our poorer communities in every conceivable way. They say that government must do whatever it takes to muster the funds to end poverty once and for all.
These are noble goals. No one would be against them. But when it comes to governing, we have to be practical. As the 19th century German Chancellor, Bismarck, noted, “Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable--the art of the next best.” Our former Senator, Barbara Boxer, once pointed out on the floor of the U.S. Senate during a budget debate, “Nobody gets everything they want in a compromise.” And what we need now is compromise, not unrealistic rhetoric of ending poverty and housing everyone. With all due respect, those things are never going to happen. As long as we’re obsessed with the perfect, the good will evade us.
This isn’t to say that expressing idealistic goals is useless. We need to hear them, and we need to be coaxed by proponents to get as close to ideals as possible. But the super-proponents of “Oakland has to end poverty” must understand the sheer impossibility of that aspiration.
Some people may find this hard to accept, but there’s only so much money in Oakland, or anywhere else for that matter. Money to pay for services to the poor doesn’t grow on trees; it can only come from workers and businesses. You can’t raise taxes every time you come up with a program you like. Excessive taxation isn’t fair, it’s not right, the people won’t stand for it; all it will do is to drive businesses and residents out of town, leaving Oakland poorer than ever. Most Oaklanders are feeling the financial pinch these days; to expect them to pony up more money (through parcel taxes, sales taxes, corporate and business taxes, payroll taxes and other levies) is killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. You could triple the taxes on every adult and business in Oakland and still have nowhere close to enough money to “end poverty.”
And even if you did tax, would it really help in the long run? Ultimately, people are responsible for themselves and their families. If someone refuses to accept that responsibility, it’s pointless for government to assume it for them. What we should be doing (and, thankfully, a lot of people are) is educating our young people to the realities of life. Let them know that the best path to avoiding poverty is to stay in school, learn a trade or occupation, work hard, obey the law, be a good neighbor in the community, don’t abuse alcohol or drugs, and walk humbly with whatever god they choose. If we can practice those noble ends for a generation, we might be able to end poverty. If we can’t, well, what Saints Matthew and Mark, quoting Jesus, wrote long ago will remain true.
Steve Heimoff