Why Liberal Robin Hood Plans Do Not Work

Many of us have been faced with Robin Hood plans. Robin Hood plans take money from the wealthy and redistribute them to the poor. On paper it sounds great, but they do not work. We have seen this attempted in education, where legislators try to take money from wealthy districts and redistribute to poorer school districts. Let’s evaluate this example. Once again the government thinks throwing money at the problem can actually resolve the educational issues on hand. The other ridiculous side of this proposal is that it risks the educational standards of good school districts with only the hope that poor school districts will improve. This policy only promotes the theory of mediocrity where kids from a higher social economic status get a worse education therefore lowering their overall intellect. At the same time, extra money in lower social economic schools fails to raise their overall intellect enough to offset the lower education for wealthy school districts. Why? Simply because providing extra money into a poor performing school district will not erase a student’s poor home environment and it will not necessarily bring in better teachers to improve the curriculum. If the same teachers are used, the curriculum may not improve despite more money. This is how our government and legislators fail us because they always assume the issue is money and everything else is equal. Everything else is not equal and how would our legislators realize this without having gone through the experience of being poor.

The easiest solution to this problem is to close poor performing schools in lower economic areas and allow these students access to better performing schools. Transferring tax funds from poor school districts to better schools can be used to expand better performing schools to accommodate more students. This will give children from poorer school districts access to the same education, teachers and activities to succeed. This concept is actually being carried out in many areas across the United States. The problem with this proposal is that it eventually becomes a burden on the better school districts because the kids from the sub-standard schools are behind the other kids. Teachers are forced to spend a lot of time tutoring and mentoring the under performing kids in order to catch them up. This is a continual cycle because once the under performing kids learn a new concept they are still behind because the better performing kids have already learned new concepts that the poor performing kids still need to learn. The bottom line is that low achieving kids never catch up when placed in the better performing schools immediately at the kindergarten level. The emphasis of getting kids from lower economic backgrounds caught up unfortunately neglects the better performing kids. This once again, is an example of the “theory of mediocrity” at work. This problem can be resolved by getting children from lower social economic backgrounds into the school system before kindergarten. The sooner they are in the system, the better their chances. Their lack of means and educational opportunities during their first five years of life is already crippling their development. Their environment is holding them back and the sooner they can obtain new experiences, the better their chances are of developing at an equal rate to those from higher economic backgrounds. Statistics indicate children from lower socio-economic backgrounds adopted by parents from higher socio-economic backgrounds have an Intelligent Quotient (IQ) that is thirteen points higher than children raised by parents or guardians from lower socio-economic status. This reinforces that children are capable of overcoming their educational deficiencies if they are given the same means and opportunities as children from a higher socio-economic status.

Well, what is different about the Democrat’s policy of taxing the wealthy and corporations? Nothing, they think throwing money at poverty will solve it. Welfare and other entitlement programs do not work. Throwing money to poor individuals who live in slums is not going to help them get a job. It does not train them to do a job. It does not improve their education. It just does not work. Social programs should not be permanent, they should be temporary until the issue is resolved. Throwing money to the poor are band-aide fixes that taxpayers will endure forever. Throwing money at a problem does not necessarily resolve the issue unless the root cause of the problem is resolved. Worse yet you have taken money from people that can keep the economy growing. Taxing businesses more will only have them cut jobs or benefits to the working class. It does not work and will not work. FDR’s socialized plans of the 1930’s never got us out of the Great Depression. WWII got us out of the Depression. FDR’s policies failed for 10 years.

Hence, the answer of taxing the wealthy and corporations more will not necessarily help this country unless the root cause of the problems of poverty and education are resolved. What Robin Hood Policies promote is mediocrity. Why? Say for example, I have a small business. Why should I bust my butt and grow my business into a larger tax bracket? There is no incentive to do so. If I make 250K to 300K it will be the same as making 200K. Is it worth all that effort? Probably not. Also, if I have a small business struggling to get by, where is my incentive to actually do better and make a profit is the government is going to give me free money and assistance. The bottom line is that Robin Hood plans promote laziness. Hence, productivity and economic growth is slowed. It is such a demoralizing concept. Joe Biden says it is patriotic to pay taxes. What he means it is patriotic for the wealthy to pay taxes to support poor.

Another thing that Robin Hood plans would hurt is charitable contributions given to many valuable charities that help the poor and people without medical insurance. Obviously the wealthy give the highest percentage of dollars to charities. Taking their wealth will only have them stop or reduce their contributions. Thus, the policy would hurt the poor and middle class people in need of help.