Liberals, Conservatives, and Caring for the Poor

Last week, newly-elected Senator Webb of Virginia did a lot of damage with his Democratic 'response' to President's State of the Union address. Webb has it wrong when he says that we have economic problems. This sort of continued negative spin on reality will result in bad policy.

Specifically, Webb alleged, like John Edwards during the 2004 Presidential campaign, that America is now two different countries, economically. They allege that part of America is poor, and growing poorer, not participating in the nation's healthy economic growth.

A recent piece in the Wall Street Journal by Arthur Brooks suggests why these Democrats view the situation in this manner. To wit, Brooks wrote,

"While just about everybody -- left and right -- agrees that poverty is unacceptable (although policy makers disagree as to whether a minimum wage hike would help or hurt the working poor), conservatives do not share liberals' concern about income inequality. According to the 2005 Maxwell Poll on Civic Engagement and Inequality, self-described liberals are more than twice as likely as conservatives to say income inequality in America is a "serious problem." And while 84% of liberals think the government should do more to reduce inequality, only 25% of conservatives agree.

This is empirical substantiation for the old cliché that conservatives just don't care about the poor, right? Wrong. In fact, the data do not tell us that conservatives are uncaring; they actually tell us that conservatives are optimists. Conservatives are relatively untroubled by inequality, and unsupportive of government income redistribution, because they believe the American economy provides private opportunities to succeed. Liberals are far more pessimistic than conservatives about the possibility of a better future for Americans of modest means.

Consider the evidence. While 92% of conservatives believe that hard work and perseverance can help a person overcome disadvantage, only 65% of liberals think so. This difference of opinion, contrary to the convention, is not because conservatives earn more money. In fact, lower-income conservatives are about twice as likely as upper-income liberals to say they think there's "a lot" of upward mobility in America. If a liberal and a conservative are exactly identical in income, education, sex, family situation, and race, the conservative will be 20 percentage points more likely than the liberal to say that hard work leads to success among the disadvantaged."

The data that Brooks cites matter profoundly. Both Webb and Edwards, and their ilk, are already biased to believe the worst about the economy and our society. They believe that income inequality is a major problem, and that nobody's individual efforts on their own behalf will lift them out of poverty.

Yet, we know from other studies, the exact ones which I do not have at hand to cite at the moment, that the income inequality numbers frequently cited by liberals are static, not dynamic. That is, they do not follow the same people for years, and find continued low incomes. Rather, they observe the lowest category of incomes, and, then, some years later, observe, 'yep, lookie there...some people are still poor." They simply assume the same people stayed in the same categories. In a word, pessimistic, as Brooks notes.

Nevermind that he Reagan revolution led to a broad middle group of politically-left-leaning voters to experience the economic fruits of lower taxes and healthy, low-inflation economic growth. It's as if those years never occurred, Reagan's recovery never happened, and nobody ever gets wealthier in America from hard work and diligence.

Conservatives do care about the poor. We simply feel that low tax rates, robust, low-inflationary growth, and fairness for all maximize everyone's opportunity for self-improvement and wealth-enhancement.