The point is that a major barrier to a more charitable mindset is the association between low income and low morals. The usually-unspoken sentiment goes: “I’m not giving them anything, it will only be wasted on drugs and crime.”
As the article points out, there is a huge and literal gap in the market for low-cost housing that adequately protects low-income households from drugs and crime, and from the association with drugs and crime. Those things aren’t a necessary consequence of poverty, and yet if your income is low, you have no choice but to live amongst them. The article uses the phrase “the murder-iest part of town”. Why do there have to be such places? Low income becomes associated with low morals, and the hearts of the rich harden: “I don’t want to give money to people in the murder-iest part of town”.
The #1 thing we could do to address the hardship of poverty is to break the forced association between low income and low morals.
And yes of course low morals exist in all strata of society, but their effect is particularly pernicious amongst the poor because the poor can’t afford to disassociate themselves from them.
As the article points out, there is a huge and literal gap in the market for low-cost housing that adequately protects low-income households from drugs and crime, and from the association with drugs and crime. Those things aren’t a necessary consequence of poverty, and yet if your income is low, you have no choice but to live amongst them. The article uses the phrase “the murder-iest part of town”. Why do there have to be such places? Low income becomes associated with low morals, and the hearts of the rich harden: “I don’t want to give money to people in the murder-iest part of town”.
The #1 thing we could do to address the hardship of poverty is to break the forced association between low income and low morals.
And yes of course low morals exist in all strata of society, but their effect is particularly pernicious amongst the poor because the poor can’t afford to disassociate themselves from them.