Suppose we had a crystal ball that revealed the identities of those who deliberately chose to be poor. Would progressives morally support forced wealth redistribution to help these individuals?

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There is philosophical value to this question. That a crystal ball could show you a list of names of people who decide to be poor means that free will is a total lie and all of our behavior is completely deterministic.

What does it mean to choose to be poor? Do people who choose low-paying career fields for the glory of it, such as musicians, choose to be poor? I had a roommate like this. He used to be on the fast track to music greatness, he actually used to room with John Mayer. But he told me he didn’t want it. He appears to be a person in charge of his destiny. His name would certainly go on the magic crystal ball list, that is, if he chose to be poor. He’s not, he’s not bad off. Last I heard he worked for a university.

I also know people who couldn’t hold onto money if their lives depended on it. Do these people choose to be poor? I’d say when you look at the personal moral calculus of it all, probably not. If they had the capacity to get their shit together long enough to adult properly, they would have done it, because living in the hell of financial insecurity is no way for anyone to choose to live. Their names would not go on the list.

So I’ve outlined two types of people here, those in charge of their destiny and those who aren’t. Who do we want to grant public assistance to? Any reasonable person would want to grant public assistance to those who can’t manage on their own, not those who can.

And that’s by and large how it’s supposed to work. Getting in line to apply to food stamps sucks, and it’s supposed to suck. It’s how Americans have always viewed the social contract of welfare. If you’re that hard up enough to give up your dignity, we’ll put you on the dole. Which is why the outcry over “welfare queens” was so strong.

I personally, and I think a lot of liberally-minded people would agree, that one should not have to give up their dignity in order to receive public assistance. We want the list of rights and entitlements that all Americans can enjoy to include personal dignity.

Making that happen is the talk of welfare policy circles at the moment. Go too far in that direction though, and you get San Francisco, where you have to walk by dozens of homeless people to get to work in the morning. It’s just hardwired into all people to look for an economic edge, it’s basic Darwinism. If you spread birdseed out your window every morning, you shouldn’t be too surprised when your lawn is covered in bird shit and birds are getting into fights over your freely-given resource. You need a better system for improving the aesthetics of your backyard with birds than merely throwing food out your window.

Conservatives would make the argument that personal dignity should be earned by virtue of one’s own work. Which is a good observation, but not a good argument to not at least try different things to make society better. The money’s already there, the programs are already there, the infrastructure is already there, let’s improve it rather than destroy it. We can, so we should.

It’s not an easy problem to solve.