A Guide to Debating Ben Shapiro on Poverty in America

Shapiro's Stance:

1. Class and income mobility exists in our society
2. Anyone can succeed in America by simply: a) finishing high school, b) waiting until married to have kids, c) getting a job
3. Poor people are poor because they "suck at managing their money"
4. We don’t need to worry about poverty in America because being poor here is better than being poor in most places in the world

Opening Question:

Student: There’s a popular Youtube video of you speaking at a public school, with many low-income students in the audience and you say something along the lines of: “if you are permanently poor in the United States it’s because you suck with money” (video, DailyWire article).

Shapiro: Yes, and then the principal of the school interrupted me and said I "went too far" and told the kids they were all free to leave.

Student: Right. What does it mean to "suck with money"? What is this skill that all poor people lack? 

Shapiro: It means you make poor financial decisions, you don't save money, you buy unnecessary crap and you don't apply yourself toward finding and keeping a job. If you walk down the streets of Manhattan you will see homeless people with expensive iPhones and expensive shoes...

Student: There are many books that document/describe the experience of being poor in America. These books follow some poor people, trace every dollar they earn and spend and the image you get is very different from the one you describe (“Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City” is a recent example). When you read about the experiences of real poor people you realize that the working poor need to be absurdly careful with their money just to survive. Poverty is a crippling source of stress and anxiety. Anyone with young kids on a salary around the minimum wage is constantly rationing food stamps, trying to supplement their income with odd-jobs, skipping meals, just barely making rent, skipping heat in the winter, and cannot waste a single penny. Surviving with kids on a low-income is a perilous and frightening balancing act that boggles the mind and I think is worthy of our respect and admiration. 

If anything happens to go wrong – someone gets sick, a car breaks down, a crime is committed on your property, etc. you can instantly lose your job, your home and your kids.

That’s not to say you can’t find examples of poor people who are not careful with money, but when you appreciate how difficult is it for the hardest working families to survive in miserable health-code violation conditions with barely enough food for the family, it’s easy to see why some people fall into despair and escapism.

Potential Exchanges:

Shapiro: There’s no one who care enough about you in this country to try to hold you back.

Obviously not, but regressive laws and a regressive tax system make it needlessly expensive to be poor - that’s the problem. Poverty in America is extremely expensive. Poor people pay a higher percentage of their income in state and local taxes than wealthy people, poor people rely on old cars that are constantly breaking down and cost more to fix, insurance is more expensive in poor neighborhoods, poor people pay more in rent as a fraction of the value of their apartment than wealthy people, food is more expensive in poor neighborhoods and poor people can’t afford to buy in bulk, poor people can’t afford to use a bank because of low-balance and overdraft fees so poor people cash their checks at places that take a cut, there are also debt traps, etc.

Shapiro: The reality you’re describing is simply free-market capitalism. Any attempt to do price-fixing or redistribute money to people that didn’t earn that money will undermine the incentives that drive our economy and cause a Venezuela-style economic collapse.

Addressing the heavy costs of being poor does not mean abandoning a free-market economy. The American tax payer pays tens of millions of dollars to finance roads to benefit people with cars, but does not give a fraction of that to fund public transportation for the people who can’t afford cars. Trump's plan to give a tax deduction for childcare is a great tax-break for rich people but does nothing to help low income people who are spending a much larger percentage of their income for child care. Adjusting welfare benefits for inflation will not lead to economic collapse.

Shapiro: That’s why we have entitlement programs and welfare

The United States ranks second to last in the developed world when it comes to child poverty. Our social safety net is better than the social safety net in Sudan, but compared to any other wealthy nation it’s grotesque. Millions of families are forced to survive on a few dollars a day and can’t even afford diapers for their kids. It’s shameful and totally unnecessary.

Shapiro: If a poor person wins the lottery they invariably end up poor again soon.

That’s because the financial habits that a person develops in poverty are not transferable to the habits that a person develops when they are making a comfortable income. The skill of scraping together ten dollars a month in savings doesn’t prepare you for picking out the best Roth IRA. The adjustment from spending 100% of your disposable income to saving money takes some time but that is just a side-effect of being poor, not the other way around.

Shapiro: That’s just wrong. If you work hard in this country, you will succeed. Period.

If you think that's true then tell your audience to go to the library, take-out a book on poverty in America, see the experience for themselves so they can make their own determination. People who have read about poverty in America or have seen it firsthand see you as trafficking in cruel and self-serving stereotypes - not facts.

See also: A Guide for Debating Ben Shapiro on Institutional Racism

If you have any criticisms, additions, or suggestions, please leave a comment and I will update this document with any thoughts that I think are useful.