To the Editor:

I felt that your Sept. 5 article on homelessness in Ames was, when it did not deteriorate into psychobabble, primarily a vehicle for socialist propaganda in support of sweeping redistribution of wealth.

I am therefore surprised to find Vic Moss writing a letter (Sept. 8) arguing, essentially, that the article didn’t make it clear enough that the free market is responsible for homelessness.

Of course I don’t support blaming people for all of their own difficulties.

Many reasons for homelessness are not an individual’s “fault;” many people deserve the help that the Emergency Residence Project can provide.

It is not useful, however, to assert that these people are homeless because other people are overly successful.

Mr. Moss seems to believe that “wealth,” rather than being a flexible commodity constantly generated by work, is a fixed sum: there is only so much wealth, and if I work for an extra dollar, that dollar must be taken from someone else’s pocket.

This is shown by his contempt for the “notion” that individuals can earn wealth through effort and should not be punished for doing so.

I’m particularly suspicious of Moss’ use of the Christensen study, stating that the richest one million households, with incomes over a half a million dollars, earn as much as the poorest 40 million households.

The poorest 40 million, I calculate, average over 12 thousand dollars.

Firstly, this is household income, not individual income. There is no correlation here for the number of adults (or workers) in the home.

Officially, many students living alone are considered “poor.” Very few of them are in danger of starving to death.

Finally, we must remember that government aid and handouts, though typically not counted as income, do a great deal to raise the living standards of people who have low incomes on paper. The vast majority of these 40 million households, therefore, are at little risk of homelessness.

Indeed, there are differences among people’s income, a situation which could not be changed except under the most ant-like communism.

As economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, those who have more income tend to be those who are older, and have more years of work and learning behind them. Those people also have more wealth, as they have had more years in which to save and invest.

To condemn them for this is to suggest that nobody should do anything which might better him or his family, lest his neighbor envy him.

This is bad for those individuals who have their wealth extracted from them, of course, but in fact it is also bad for the rest of us.

Those residents of Story County who were criticized for their high incomes in the original article are mostly well-to-do because they provide valued goods and services which the rest of us purchase voluntarily.

If they were not allowed to earn further benefits for themselves, they might well stop producing.

That would show Mr. Moss that the amount of total wealth is not fixed, because it would take a precipitous drop; and the poorest would be the hardest hit by the resultant suffering.

Furthermore, the vast majority of poor people can do something to better their circumstances, but they may be discouraged from doing so by well-meaning propagandists who tell them that they can never be successful so long as other people have gotten there first.

Apathy and despair can only worsen the problem of poverty.

Wendy Applequist

Graduate Student

Botany