Helping the poor

One of the saddest trends in our culture has been the increasing level of selfishness. We now seem unsympathetic to the poor, believing them to be scroungers who decide not to work to support themselves and their families. Even though this means poverty, we stereotype them as preferring to live on state benefits and handouts. Although there will undoubtedly be some people who game the system, it's incredible a Christian nation like ours should turn on the poor. Why would the ordinary person refuse work when it's offered? Why would anyone chose to live in rundown tenements if a living wage could pay for something better? The practical reality is that people find themselves in a poverty trap. They are an army of people competing for the few jobs that mostly don't pay a living wage.

When it comes to insurance, we find the levels of uninsured drivers creeping up to 20% in many states. As a result, this forces the law-abiding drivers to pay more. If you have collision cover and an uninsured driver crashes into you, it's unlikely this driver has the cash to pay your medical expenses and for the repair of your vehicle. Even though the accident is not your fault, your own premium rate is likely to rise. Indeed, everyone's rate will rise to fill in the gap with if at-fault drivers are not paying for a mandatory liability policy.

Premium rates only fall when the number of people buying insurance rise significantly. For vehicle insurance, this means actively enforcing the mandatory rule for liability cover. If all the one-in-five uninsured drivers paid their way, everyone would pay less. But we now run into a problem. Nationally, the rate of unemployment still shows more than 9% of the adult population without work. In fact, this figure is a joke. In many states, the real rates of people without work can be more than 20% with the young and old particularly badly hit. If people are not working or only earn a few dollars a month, they cannot afford the current premium rates. You can't get blood out of a stone. That's what makes the proposed law in Nevada so interesting.

Kelvin Atkinson has been promoting a bill to provide a low-cost program for drivers earning less than $20,000 per year. It's estimated such a law would save local drivers more than $180 on current premiums. Suddenly the Republicans are saying the poor should take a bus or ride bicycles, and leave the car at home. They also point to California where a similar program is already in effect and less than 50,000 uninsured drivers signed up. The argument seems to be you should not even make the offer to help the poor because so few will respond.

Well, we wish Kelvin Atkinson every success in steering the bill into law. Even if only a few uninsured drivers take up this offer of cheap auto insurance, it establishes an important principle best captured in Deut. 15:7. If there's a poor man, don't harden your heart, but freely open your hand and give him enough to meet his needs. It's Christian to offer cheap auto insurance to the poor and needy.