In the Wall Street Journal, Arthur Brooks calls on conservatives to care about the poor, and to make the public argument that what they believe and work for is good for the poor:
The answer is to make improving the lives of vulnerable people the primary focus of authentically conservative policies. For example, the core problem with out-of-control entitlements is not that they are costly—it is that the impending insolvency of Social Security and Medicare imperils the social safety net for the neediest citizens. Education innovation and school choice are not needed to fight rapacious unions and bureaucrats—too often the most prominent focus of conservative education concerns—but because poor children and their parents deserve better schools.
Defending a healthy culture of family, community and work does not mean imposing an alien “bourgeois” morality on others. It is to recognize what people need to be happy and successful—and what is most missing today in the lives of too many poor people.
By making the vulnerable a primary focus, conservatives will be better able to confront some common blind spots. Corporate cronyism should be decried as every bit as noxious as statism, because it unfairly rewards the powerful and well-connected at the expense of ordinary citizens. Entrepreneurship should not to be extolled as a path to accumulating wealth but as a celebration of everyday men and women who want to build their own lives, whether they start a business and make a lot of money or not. And conservatives should instinctively welcome the immigrants who want to earn their success in America.
March 4th, 2013 | 11:42 am
This is wrong:
No. The core problem with entitlements is that allows us to push off on to others what is our own responsibility, viz. to reach into our own pocket and care for the poor.
Perhaps Arthus Brooks thinks my reasoning wrong because there won’t be enough Americans reaching into their pocket. If that’s true, then THAT is the core problem, and entitlements would then only make the core problem worse.
March 4th, 2013 | 12:07 pm
One of the seven themes of Catholic Social Teaching is as follows:
Good luck to conservatives trying to repackage their agenda to appear as if the above were guiding principle behind them.
March 4th, 2013 | 1:45 pm
“A basic moral test is how our most vulnerable members are faring. In a society marred by deepening divisions between rich and poor, our tradition recalls the story of the Last Judgment (Mt 25:31-46) and instructs us to put the needs of the poor and vulnerable first.” Good luck to liberals making the case that putting the poor in the hands of government bureaucrats is somehow in the interests of the poor. The modern welfare state has marched hand in hand with the destruction of lower class families and the creation of an indefensible culture of dependency. The welfare state does deserve credit for creating a number of jobs — for patronizing government bureaucrats.
March 4th, 2013 | 2:58 pm
David Nickol,
You might also refer to the tax returns of conservative vs. liberal politicians and see which side has a better record of giving from their own pocket to the poor. Or if you want more than that you might refer to wider demographic data showing that conservatives are more likely than conservatives to give to charity.
March 4th, 2013 | 5:42 pm
culture of dependency
publius,
This is a meaningless cliche.
March 4th, 2013 | 5:49 pm
see which side has a better record of giving from their own pocket to the poor . . .
Douglas Johnson,
How much conservatives give to charity is irrelevant to the points raised by Arthur Brooks.
In your initial message, are you suggesting that Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and all government programs that help the needy be replaced with private charity? Aside from being wildly impractical, it is totally at odds with Catholic Social Teaching on the role of government.
March 4th, 2013 | 8:06 pm
Liberals who see social security and other “entitlements” (a misnomer if there ever was one) as off-limits to reform are doing a great disservice to their country and to future generations who will be saddled with the cost of paying down a soon to be 17+ trillion dollar national debt. This is a form of generational abuse on the part of baby boomers who only care about themselves and lack the basic decency to begin to look beyond today and consider the long term needs of the nation’s young people. The system as it currently stands is demographically unsustainable, not to mention immoral.
March 4th, 2013 | 11:12 pm
David Nickol,
Neither of us are Catholic so I do wish you would stop trying to pretend you speak with any authority on anything relating to Catholicism. In the past you have refused to say that you even believe that Jesus is the Christ. In other words, you can’t really even know what the words mean any more than you could claim to know what love only because you’ve read a number of books on the subject. You should really stop trying to game people’s faith that way.
As for impractical, what in the world are you talking about? Is there a credible person somewhere that say Medicare is a practical, sustainable program? I’m not even going to bother getting into the rest of it with you if you think these are practical.
March 5th, 2013 | 9:47 am
David, re “cliche” … see the work of Nicholas Eberstadt. Our nation is approaching a historic milestone, with 50% of the population receiving some form of public assistance. Again, is it compassionate, is it moral, to supplement our standard of living by borrowing from our children and grandchildren? Are you aware of how much of the federal budget is devoted to simply paying the interest on our 17 trillion dollar debt?
March 5th, 2013 | 11:09 am
I do wish you would stop trying to pretend you speak with any authority on anything relating to Catholicism.
Douglas Johnson,
I do not claim to speak “with authority,” but I do claim to speak knowledgeably. Also, when I quote directly one of the seven themes of Catholic Social Teaching and provide a link to “Seven Themes of Catholic Social Teaching” on the web site of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, I don’t even need to claim to be knowledgeable. Anyone who wants to verify what I quoted can follow the link and read.
In other words, you can’t really even know what the words mean any more than you could claim to know what love only because you’ve read a number of books on the subject.
Catholic Social Teaching is not arcane doctrine that one needs a degree in theology to understand. It should be comprehensible to anyone who takes the trouble to read it. It is relevant here, I think, because it is the most comprehensive attempt that I know of to apply Christian principles to civic life.
Is there a credible person somewhere that say Medicare is a practical, sustainable program?
Sure. Everyone acknowledges that because of demographics and skyrocketing health care costs, some changes are necessary, but even conservative Republicans are not proposing the abolition of Medicare. And they are certainly not proposing that Medicare be done away with and replaced by private charity!
March 5th, 2013 | 12:06 pm
Are you aware of how much of the federal budget is devoted to simply paying the interest on our 17 trillion dollar debt?
Publius,
I am aware that a great many of those who are now screaming about the national debt—which is a long-term problem, not an emergency—are precisely the ones responsible for running it up. If you take a look at a chart of debt as a percentage of GDP, you will see that the enormous debt run up during World War II decreased during the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations. It shot up during the Reagan administration and the Bush (41) administration, declined in the Clinton administration, and rose steeply again in the Bush (43) administration. When George W. Bush took office, budget surpluses were projected as far as the eye could see, with the national debt being paid off by 2011. But what did George W. Bush do? He started two wars that he bequeathed to his successor, lowered tax rates, and added the Medicare prescription drug benefit.
March 5th, 2013 | 1:40 pm
This is a meaningless cliche.
It is nothing of the sort, David, and you know it. When you have an entire economy of a subset of the population organized around the distribution of means tested benefits traffick-copped by county social workers, you get a culture of dependency.
Back in the day, David Ellwood discovered that the mean duration on Aid to Families with Dependent Children was 6.6 years. However, that was the mean of two distinct populations. One stream was on and off after a brief term of years (2 years) and were a minority of those on at any one time; the other stream were persistent recipients. A close relation of mine was hired in 1981 to do house to house tutoring for the city school district in Rochester, N.Y. Her 1st pupil was a 16 year old pregnant girl in a family with an unmarried mother and four children. The mother had been on AFDC since 1965; the mother was around 30.
AFDC is gone, but you still have food stamps, some public housing, housing vouchers, and Medicaid. The eligibility criteria have grown progressively lax, so now north of 30% of the population qualifies. The means testing creates a perverse incentive to restrict one’s work effort, subvening people’s groceries promotes over-eating, and the administration of housing voucher programs creates fiendish difficulties for landlords and neighbors alike, frustrating the educative effect of those sorts of social relations.
Did I mention Social Security Disability? Admittedly, consistent and valid determinations of disability are difficult for an apparat to do, but it is interesting how since 1970 life expectancy at birth has increased by about three or four years while we at the same time the share of the working aged population deemed crippled has doubled. The person in my social nexus most recently declared disabled was so due to ‘fibromyalgia’; she is…
March 5th, 2013 | 2:21 pm
But what did George W. Bush do? He started two wars that he bequeathed to his successor, lowered tax rates, and added the Medicare prescription drug benefit.
Just to point out, if the Government of Afghanistan had wished to be left in peace, they chose the wrong course of action. Ditto Saddam Hussein, with whom we had been in a state of belligerency since 1990, for obvious reasons.
It should also be noted that industrial capacity utilization during the period running from the fall of 2000 to the fall of 2005 was consistently below long term means. It was not altogether unreasonable to be running modest deficits (~2.5% of gross domestic product). By fiscal year 2006/07, the annual public sector borrowing stood at around 1.2% of gdp per annum, higher than it should have been, but pretty penny-ante in context. The TARP program completed its disbursements at the end of 2009, but we have continued to run deficits of 9% of gdp per annum in the intervening years. The condition of the economy does not justify borrowing on that scale. There is fiscal irresponsibility and there is fiscal irresponsibility.
March 5th, 2013 | 3:27 pm
It is nothing of the sort, David, and you know it.
Art Deco,
I have only a few moments this afternoon, so I will try to respond more fully later. But I would just like to point out (as I have before) that denying something another poster has said followed by “and you know it” is basically calling the person a liar. When I said culture of dependency is a meaningless cliche, I fully believed what I said to be true. If you disagree, fine. If you want to argue about it, fine. But if you want to claim that I am saying something I know to be false, you are in effect saying, “You’re a liar.” On top of that, there’s something petulant about saying, “And you know it.” One imagines a person with hands on hips, grimacing and stomping one foot on the ground.
March 5th, 2013 | 5:47 pm
David, you ignore the 5 trillion dollars Obama has added to the national debt, not to mention the fact that the Republican presidencies you mentioned as being solely responsible for increasing the nation’s debt governed at a time when Democrats controlled Congress. Those Congress’s aided and abetted the nation’s spending spree, in some cases overriding presidential spending vetoes. The point is that both parties dug this hole, now the question is how do we get out of this mess. It would be a step in the right direction if liberals would admit that entitlement reform has to be part of the solution.
George W. Bush started the war in Afghanistan? And I suppose FDR bombed Pearl Harbor?
March 5th, 2013 | 7:28 pm
is basically calling the person a liar.
I prefer ‘poseur’. YMMV
March 6th, 2013 | 7:49 am
Art Deco,
One could also simply note that federal spending is up 40% since 2007.
March 6th, 2013 | 11:19 am
One could also simply note that federal spending is up 40% since 2007.
Douglas Johnson,
One could also note that the budgets for 2007-2009 were George Bush’s. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were George Bush’s. Obama took office in a serious recession, which began under George Bush in the midst of an unprecedented fiscal crisis that began under George Bush.
What federal money spent under Obama should not have been spent?
March 6th, 2013 | 2:14 pm
David Nickol,
1. “Overseas contingency operations” prior to the withdrawal from Iraq amount to around 4% of federal spending on Mr. Obama’s budgets.
2. Banking crises are expensive. Again, the expenditure associated with every aspect of the rescue of the financial system was complete by the end of 2009, bar some financing of the deficits of the mortgage maws. After that, the deficits should have been driven by revenue losses derived from slack in the economy and the expansion of unemployment compensation. We have not had deficits in the range of 2-5% of domestic product, but rather 9% of domestic product. He appoints the Simpson-Bowles commission, which gave him cover, then he ignores it. He owns this situation.
3. Some of the foregoing you would replace with formulaically distributed revenue sharing or with rebates under a negative income tax, but here goes. Funds not spent, or at least programs replaced:
a. $700+ bn in patronage distribution to state and local governments (derived from standing lists of pet projects of the Democratic congressional caucus).
b. A ten figure sum in discrete grants and loans to the green energy sector. (Last time I checked the book value of the Department of Energy’s loan portfolio was $50 bn).
c. Ongoing maintenance of over 50 petty independent agencies with a combined budget of around $7 bn – Claiborne Pell’s pet projects and other zombies the first to go.
d. Patronage distributed through NASA, the Federal Communications Commission, the National Science Foundation, and the Environmental Protection Agency (~$19 bn, IIRC).
e. Subsidized home loans for veterans’ (< 1 bn).
f. Subsidies to state education departments, local school districts, and higher education ($92 bn – and requiring regulatory changes you will never see).
g. Patronage distributed through the national laboratories and…
March 6th, 2013 | 2:21 pm
Aside from all that, there has been the refusal of the political class to consider altering the trajectory of spending on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Via
1. Putting the retirement age on a more rapid cohort-by-cohort escalator, to keep the ratio of those retired to those of the working population constant.
2. Adding deductibles to Medicaid and Medicare to at least prevent the growth in expenditure from exceeding the growth in nominal gross domestic product.
—
Aside from that, there is the penchant of the political parties for distributing bon bons via tax preferences. Mr. Reagan’s bedraggled tax reform was partially undone by Mr. Clinton’s interest in ‘targeted tax cuts’. Paul Ryan takes a great interest in expunging cross-subsidies through the tax code. Does the President give a rip about this?
March 6th, 2013 | 8:04 pm
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