‘Does Welfare Create Poverty?’
Columnist James Kilpatrick’s attempt (Editorial Pages, March 10) to show that increases in spending for welfare cause an increase in the poverty rate reflects the same fallacious thinking that influenced President Reagan’s $750-billion supply-side tax cut for the rich--mistaking the cause for the effect.
Kilpatrick’s source, a study made by two economists for the “National Center for Policy Analysis in Dallas,” states that “each additional $1 billion in welfare spending increases the poverty population by 250,000.”
Quoting Kilpatrick again: “I suspect that there is more to the story than meets the eye.” However, this brief moment of skepticism fails to budge him, as he has a point to make and no room to include irrelevancies that would be beside the point. Therefore, he continues: “Even so, the evidence is startling . . . the more benefits we provide, the worse the picture gets.”
He could more rationally have said, “The worse the picture gets, the more benefits we provide.” That is as it should be if we are to keep welfare families from starving.
DON L. HEAD
Los Angeles
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