San Francisco Mayor London Breed (D) appears to be so disinterested in handling the homeless problem, the feces-littered public streets, and the skyrocketing business closures due to government-imposed lockdowns, she decided Columbus Day would be a good time to pander to SJWs – using other people’s money, of course.
Her brilliant idea? As Gabriel Keane reports for NationalFile, based on a press release from the mayor's office:
On Monday, the San Francisco mayor’s office announced the launch of a government program called the ‘Abundant Birth Project,’ which will give $1,000 per month cash payouts to black ‘and Pacific Islander women’ for becoming pregnant and having children.
Which is curious for numerous reasons, not the least of which is the fact that Mayor Breed (an almost ironic name) made a big deal of accepting the endorsement of the Planned Parenthood Northern California Action Fund, and that organization isn’t exactly aligned with increasing birth rates among minorities.
Then there’s the ethics of not only transferring private wealth from those who earned it to others whom the government deems “in need” of it, there’s the actual ante factum promise of a payment only if particular actions – pregnancy and childbirth – are undertaken.
And, given Breed’s embrace of Planned Parenthood, it’s important to note that the monthly payments begin when the racially-selected woman becomes pregnant, and end seven months after birth, so women can still make cash off the taxpayers until they get government-subsidized abortions.
The mayor’s office stated in a press release that ‘the pilot will provide an unconditional monthly income supplement of $1,000 to approximately 150 Black and Pacific Islander women in San Francisco for the duration of their pregnancy and for the first six months of their baby’s life, with a goal of eventually providing a supplement for up to two years post-pregnancy.’
There’s a term in economics called “moral hazard,” and it occurs when some outside power – usually the government – subsidizes, or promises to cover the liabilities of, a person or organization if they engage in a particular kind of behavior. As a rule, the recipient is incentivized to engage in riskier, less attentive behavior, increasing the likelihood that resources such as human labor, time, ingenuity, and hope, will be misdirected, and increasing the chance that the third party (the taxpayer, when government is involved) will be on the hook to “bail-out” even more when the risky behavior causes a breakdown.
Government subsidies of college education, home purchases, businesses, rail systems, the U.S. Postal Service, solar corporations, and myriad other aspects of life, as well as government-imposed barriers to foreign competition – barriers that allow U.S. companies to become slothful, unresponsive to consumers, and inefficient – have caused terrible moral hazard losses to society.
And this is another catalyst for reckless behavior that is not only predicated on government tax theft, it will create more prospective welfare expenses for the already immoral government monster wreaking havoc in San Fran.
Oh, yeah, then there’s the selective, racist, targeting of the recipients. That’s kinda obvious. But it’s still incredible and galling.
Writes Keane:
The press release went on to mention various critical race theory talking points such as ‘structural racism’ and ‘racial justice,’ ‘racial equity,’ and a ‘racial wealth gap.’
But, as decades of race-based quotas at colleges have shown, and as decades of welfarism have sown, taking from some in order to “lift others” doesn’t help the recipients of the aid – it sows discord, sows increased rates of failure, and sows dependency.
Thomas Sowell has shown that, in colleges, racially-biased favoritism for admissions see many minority students enter schools for which their skills are not sufficient. They fare poorly, and end up dropping out. When California ended its race-based preferences in state schools, he noted:
When racial preferences were ended in California, there was much hysteria in the media, with dire predictions that blacks would be kept out of higher education. Just recently, with much less publicity, the fact has come out that there are now more black students in the University of California system than there were when racial preferences and quotas were in effect. The same is true in the University of Texas system.
And Sowell notes:
What has happened is that black students have redistributed themselves within both these state university systems. There are no longer as many blacks attending the respective flagship universities in these systems, but they are attending other institutions whose normal standards they meet, instead of being overmatched and flunking out of more prestigious institutions.
On the issue of government redistribution of money wealth and housing, rather than college admission slots, Sowell is equally incisive.
If we wanted to be serious about evidence, we might compare where blacks stood a hundred years after the end of slavery with where they stood after 30 years of the liberal welfare state. In other words, we could compare hard evidence on ‘the legacy of slavery’ with hard evidence on the legacy of liberals.
The results of subsidizing unemployment and unplanned pregnancy out of wedlock that began in earnest with President Johnson’s “Great Society”?
The black family, which had survived centuries of slavery and discrimination, began rapidly disintegrating in the liberal welfare state that subsidized unwed pregnancy and changed welfare from an emergency rescue to a way of life.
And, as TheBurningPlatform noted in 2019:
To provide some historical context, the out-of-wedlock birth rate in the black community was already rising before the Great Society. In 1938, that rate stood at 11 percent. Still, it’s worth noting the difference between the slow and steady increase of 1938 to 1965, and the explosive growth from 1965 until the present day. In any event, black women were more likely to be married than white women as late as 1950. It’s also worth looking at single parenthood over time: In the 1950s, 52 percent of all black children lived with both parents until the age of 17. By the 1980s, that number had plummeted to 6 percent.
And it’s important to note the strong correlation between fatherless minority households and poverty.
In addition to outcomes, there is also a wide divide between the percentage of black families in poverty when there is a father present. Among married black families, the poverty rate is 8 percent. Among black households headed by a single mother, that rate jumps to 37 percent.
But none of this is on Breed’s radar. None of this appeared in her Columbus Day SJW posturing.
It was all collectivist racism and fake, mother-hen “caring” with other people’s money.
For generations, that has been a recipe for trouble. And in a city where Breed and her gang can’t even keep people from soiling the streets, where businesses are shutting because of her draconian COVID19 lockdowns, it’s not pandering with other people’s dwindling cash that’s needed.
It’s freedom.