On the MOVE to Las Vegas

Some time back, Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman proposed an innovative solution to the gaggles of homeless who flock to and light on the parks and sidewalks from downtown Vegas across the Northtown line:

Buy each bum a one-way bus ticket to Salt Lake City.

The mayor, who was about half serious, received his standard dose of simulated outrage. But now the welfare state to our West is doing him one better.

As detailed by Review-Journal columnist John L. Smith on May 25, authorities in California's Tulare County are using their "More Opportunities for Viable Employment" program (MOVE), as a way to hand their own welfare families some traveling money and a fistful of job leads, telling them to hit the road for points east (including Las Vegas) in order to "become self-sufficient and MOVE up the ladder of success."

In one case, MOVE coordinator Karen Davidson told Mr. Smith a Tulare County family was handed $2,200 -- intended to cover travel expenses, first month's rent, utility deposits and a food stipend -- to get out of town.

Destination? Vegas.

Despite a pleasant climate and fertile soil, Tulare County has one of the highest unemployment rates -- and reportedly one of the highest rates of poverty -- in the country. Since Tulare County is in the agricultural zone of California's central valley, this constitutes a weird reversal of the Dust Bowl migration of the Great Depression, memorialized in John Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath," when the "Okies" abandoned their windblown midwestern farmsteads and migrated to California in search of work.

(If you wonder why the flow now moves the other way, do a little research on the tax and regulatory climate of today's state of California for anyone attempting to create new jobs. Ask specifically how many hundreds of acres have been pulled out of productive use in Tulare County to "preserve" the San Joaquin kit fox, and how many road and development projects have been stalled by the presence of elderberry bushes -- yes, elderberry bushes -- or, as we're now supposed to refer to them, "the habitat of the endangered elderberry beetle.")

It's tempting to welcome these struggling transplants less than graciously. But -- while poverty is hardly a sin -- those who advise us to "hate the sin and not the sinner" may be onto something.

The problem is not people looking for work to support themselves. The problem is a regulatory state that makes it progressively harder for would-be-employers to set up shop and create entry-level jobs, thus creating the "need" for what author Star Parker insightfully brands "Uncle Sam's New Plantation" -- the tax-subsidized welfare state.

Though it sounds harsh, the real solution is to remove the disabling crutch of the welfare state, while slashing away licensing, regulatory and tax impediments to Americans creating new jobs.

If new arrivals couldn't become leeches on the productive because there were no tax-subsidized "commons" or debilitating welfare programs on which they could squat, they would be welcome to prosper or fail based on their own initiative.

Just the way it ought to be.