COLUMBUS, Ga. — Mayor Berry “Skip” Henderson was sworn-in for his second term as the executive head of the Columbus Consolidated Government during the Jan. 3 city council meeting.

As the cornerstone of his ambition for his second term, Henderson said he intends to tackle the city’s dreadfully-high and ever-increasing poverty rate — but his cited approach to doing so leaves many Columbusites scratching their heads. 

HENDERSON’S CURRENT APPROACH

According to a commentary Henderson provided to WRBL following his swearing-in on January 3, Henderson does seem to understand the severity of the poverty issue in Columbus:

“We did find out through Covid that you have to work with people for people,” Henderson said. “And that’s what we are going to do moving forward. We are going to be focusing on jobs. We are going to be focusing on poverty. A lot of big items that you are going to have to take bites out of and try to improve. But if we don’t address generation poverty in Columbus, Ga., we are not going to have the kind of community we want to have. And we intend to address it.”

However, Henderson’s plan for how he intends to address the city’s poverty crisis does not appear to be as sound. While his plan claims to cite poverty’s “contributors” as his target, the “contributors” he mentioned aren’t contributors at all; they are symptoms of poverty rather than the causes thereof:

“What you have got to start doing is taking shots at some of the things that are contributors,” Henderson said. “Poverty is like the big bucket, right? You have all of these other little buckets that draw from it and pour into it. We have got to increase opportunities for jobs. We have to start providing people with adequate job-skill training. We have to get rid of blight. We have to make sure that there is affordable housing that is available. And we have begun work on all of these initiatives. And we are going to be able to roll out a little more detail and a plan as we go forward.”

Let’s dive into the details by examining the four main points of Henderson’s current approach. 

Point 1: Jobs 

First, Henderson says he plans to “increase the opportunity for jobs.” Given the extreme worker shortage and “quiet quitting” that has occurred in the labor market nation-wide, it is extremely difficult to see how a lack of available jobs is a contributing factor to the city’s decade-long rise in poverty. There is a seemingly-endless availability of positions open and waiting for anyone with the required qualifications to fill.

Perhaps job availability isn’t a contributor after all. Perhaps there are self-limiting factors driving the underutilization of those opportunities instead.

Point 2: Training

Secondly,  Henderson mentions how he plans to “start providing people with adequate job-skill training.” Has this not already been offered through the city’s four surrounding colleges and universities? Has that training not already been available through the last decade of the city’s increasing poverty? 

Perhaps a lack of training availability isn’t a contributor after all. Perhaps there are self-limiting factors driving the underutilization of those opportunities instead.

Point 3: Blight

Third, Henderson says “we have to get rid of blight,” implying he wrongfully sees the city’s decrepit state of development as a causal factor of poverty instead of as the derivative result it actually is.

How does Henderson plan to uphold the financial and structural longevity of the ‘development’ he is implying to remove this blight? We are left to assume that somehow mentioning the buzzword of “blight” is enough to have the needle move on its own. It doesn’t work that way. 

Blight is removed through economically sustainable development that results from a strong and self-sustaining local economy; we can’t just build new buildings and expect the city to somehow all-of-a-sudden become capable of supporting them financially. If that were the case, poverty wouldn’t exist anywhere in the first place and everything would just miraculously be free. In reality, we have to make and sustain everything we have. Nothing is free. 

Perhaps blight isn’t a contributor after all. Perhaps there are self-limiting factors driving the underutilization of the opportunities to improve it instead.

Point 4: Affordability

Fourth, Henderson says “we have to make sure that there is affordable housing that is available” for our city to decrease its poverty rate. Again, while this may sound buzzworthy, it treats the ability of people to obtain housing as a cause of poverty instead of as the symptom that it is. If we want housing that our city’s residents can afford, then we need to increase the economic capability of the people who live and work in our city.

Not being able to afford something is a symptom of poverty. It is not the cause. 

Perhaps a lack of people being able to afford housing isn’t a contributor after all. Perhaps there are self-limiting factors driving the underutilization of available housing at its rightful free-market rate. 

CAUSE VS. SYMPTOM

The approach Henderson mentioned is the very same approach that has failed to alleviate poverty everywhere it has been applied: build new buildings, create new jobs, and train people to fill those jobs. 

That approach has never worked, not once, anywhere on the planet, in the history of humanity — and there is a rather simple reason for that: it treats the symptoms of generational poverty and not the cause. 

Not having money is the symptom of poverty, not the cause. So what have governments done time and time again? They treat the symptom instead of the cause, and thus the problem perpetuates.

 This is the crux of the problem with Henderson’s (and most others’) approach to tackling poverty. It is also the approach that propelled cities like Detroit into a death-spiral of never-ending perpetual and irrevocable economic destruction. 

THE FIX

Instead of repeating the pitfall of treating the symptoms of poverty, we need to treat the causes instead. 

Perpetual cycles of generational poverty in the free western world stem from the continuation of self-limiting beliefs that are perpetually reinforced through cultural norms and social pressures. Those cycles must be broken by leading people toward creating and securing their own futures.

How do we do that?

In a word: Leadership. 

Instead of trying to develop buildings, we need to develop people.

We have to develop people who can in turn develop their own buildings, instead of expecting the artificially propped-up and heavily-subsidized buildings to somehow miraculously remain developed after they’re built. We are doing it backwards. 

We must lead people to understand the importance of industry, in a way that causes them to want to take action to better themselves.

If Henderson wants to tackle poverty, he must find a way to lead his city from the front — be it through his own overt actions, or “by, with, and through” others — in a way that produces measurable results. He must dismantle the cycles of cultural norms, social pressures, and self-limiting beliefs that cause generational poverty. He must incentivize people to live up to their own full potential by increasing their own individual economic output. He cannot expect the needle to move in the right direction by treating the symptoms. He cannot try to buy or build unsustainable infrastructure that will rapidly degrade and perpetuate the very blight we seek to eradicate. 

We cannot — under any circumstances — buy or develop our way out of poverty. We must lead ourselves out of it by developing people instead. 

We believe in you, Skip. You were dealt a bad hand, but now those cards are yours to play. With a slight change in causal perspective that differs from the failures of those before you, you just might turn this thing on its head — and we all really hope you do. 

Persuade. Change. Influence. 

It works. Don’t ask us how we know. 

Facts are stubborn things — and we’ll keep publishing them, whether city officials like them or not.

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