{"id":742,"date":"2014-01-23T15:09:10","date_gmt":"2014-01-23T19:09:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jparnell.com\/blog\/?p=742"},"modified":"2014-01-23T15:09:10","modified_gmt":"2014-01-23T19:09:10","slug":"lifestyle-individual-choice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/?p=742","title":{"rendered":"Lifestyle & Individual Choice"},"content":{"rendered":"

With the President’s State of the Union address next week, the talk of income inequality and the so-called income gap persists. For those of you still convinced that the gap<\/em> between high and low incomes is problematic, I’d like to encourage you to think about two concepts, lifestyle and individual choice.<\/p>\n

Whenever you make such comparisons, it\u2019s important to set aside extreme cases; they\u2019ll always exist and they don\u2019t prove anything. Even so, you\u2019ll certainly find significant differences when you compare a typical family in the bottom 20% with one in the top 20%. What you won\u2019t find at the bottom, however, is starvation and a lack of access to basic housing, education and health care. A plethora of government programs and EMTALA are there to ensure this, at least in theory. You might point out that poor Americans are more likely to go to poor schools. You\u2019re right, but that\u2019s a problem with government schools, a topic for another day.<\/p>\n

When comparisons are made between the \u201crich\u201d and the \u201cpoor,\u201d government benefits such as these are rarely included. In fact, studies demonstrate that most poor American families have air conditioners, satellite or cable TV, a cell phone, and a car. I\u2019m not suggesting that being poor in desirable, but the lifestyle of typical poor Americans family is a far cry from typical families in many of the world\u2019s most populous countries. Those who claim that we have a collective responsibility to close the income gap rarely suggest sending dollars to Latin American, Africa, and Asia. Their sense of morality only includes those born in US territory.<\/p>\n

This brings me to my second point. President Obama often refers to Americans who are poor \u201cdue to no fault of their own.\u201d There might be a small group of such Americans, but statistics tell us that many in poverty choose<\/em> single parenthood, abuse drugs or alcohol, and\/or drop out of high school. These are choices, not mandates. Society is not to blame for such outcomes and not does it have any responsibility to redistribute wealth to soften the impact of poor individual decisions.<\/p>\n

This is not to say that such people are not important. They are<\/em>. However, opportunities to break out of poverty can be found in private charities and in the private sector. Studies estimate the amount spent on the so-called war on poverty exceeds $15 trillion, yet those on the left still clamor for more.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not enough to complain about an income gap as if its existence is immoral. An honest discussion on incomes in America must consider the lifestyle of poor Americans relative to those in other countries, the failure of government anti-poverty programs, our approach to government schools, and the link between individual choices and income. I don\u2019t expect the President to address these issues next Tuesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With the President’s State of the Union address next week, the talk of income inequality and the so-called income gap persists. For those of you still convinced that the gap between high and low incomes is problematic, I’d like to encourage you to think about two concepts, lifestyle and individual choice. Whenever you make such […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}