Proclamation: Progressives need to stop helping people.

Forget everything I’ve ever said about hard-working American’s who are just trying to get by. Forget what I said about healthcare being a human right or about structural economic discrimination. Forget all those times I’ve said that great nations have an obligation to keep children off the streets or treat humans equally. I’m done with compassion and empathy. From now on I’m talking selfishness. I’m talking me and you, looking out for number one.

Because the sad fact is that personal stories aren’t moving anyone anymore. I could tell you about the 48 year-old man with whom I spoke last week, who just moved in with his parents because he can’t afford his $600 a month health insurance bill. I could tell you about the girl I worked with who had a baby at 15, the first time she had sex, because she never understood that the two things were related. How she used to come to work with black eyes because her boyfriend beat her but she couldn’t afford to leave him. We could talk about kids who turn to gangs because it seems like the only protection available; about the people who can’t afford annual exams and don’t realized they have cancer until it’s too late; about families missing that one payment that snowballs into bankruptcy, into homelessness; about boys, like my step brother, who miss a probation meeting at 18 and end up in prison, end up addicted to and selling heroin. We could tell those stories, but at the end of the day we can all go home to our beds and our families and console ourselves that it’s not us, it’s them: those stupid sluts, those lazy poor people, those subhuman criminals who have problems that you and I would never be dumb enough to have. Why should our tax dollars help those people? You can’t force me to be charitable. No one is entitled to help. I don’t owe you anything.

So from now on I’m going to speak in terms that everyone can understand: cold, hard cash. Maybe we don’t owe them anything, but investing $1 in pregnancy prevention saves the state $4 in the cost of unintended pregnancies, which costs $7 billion in the U.S. annually.

When your neighbor is foreclosed on, it costs your local government an average of $20,000 per home.

85%, or around $35 billion, of uncompensated health care (a result of the uninsured ending up in emergencies rooms) is paid for by you the taxpayer, and the rest are costs covered by the hospitals themselves, which is in turn passed on to you the patient or to your insurer, which is again, passed on to you the insured.

Head Start programs can generate up to $9 to $17 for every $1 invested, in increased earnings, employment, family stability, decreased welfare dependency, crime costs, grade repetition, and special education. Teaching a kid to read is a hell of a lot cheaper than the cost of incarcerating that kid ten years later.

Drug treatment programs are ten times more cost-effective than the War on Drugs, which has not only not worked and created a system that blatantly discriminates against the black community, it has also empowered organized crime and made drugs cheaper and more easily available.

Investing in people is cheaper and more effective than cleaning up the mess that’s left behind when we let them fail. A rising tide lifts all boats.

It’s not about helping poor or disadvantaged people, it’s about helping yourself. Because when the bottom income bracket of our country falls out, they’re taking you with them. Forget morality, forget compassion and charity, it’s fiscally responsible to invest in those people. It’s an investment in a stronger America, and a stronger America is good for you.