A Liberal on Poverty

Kudos to liberal New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof for a candid column on poverty, and particularly the relationship between traditional safety net programs and "soul-crushing dependency":

This is painful for a liberal to admit, but conservatives have a point when they suggest that America’s safety net can sometimes entangle people in a soul-crushing dependency. Our poverty programs do rescue many people, but other times they backfire.

Some young people here don’t join the military (a traditional escape route for poor, rural Americans) because it’s easier to rely on food stamps and disability payments.

He also touches on the subject of my last post, single-parent families and poverty:

Antipoverty programs also discourage marriage: In a means-tested program like S.S.I., a woman raising a child may receive a bigger check if she refrains from marrying that hard-working guy she likes. Yet marriage is one of the best forces to blunt poverty. In married couple households only one child in 10 grows up in poverty, while almost half do in single-mother households.

At the end of the column, Kristof reflects on how little attention poverty gets in our politics, including the recent presidential election campaign.  (He narrowly avoided receiving extra credit for mentioning Paul Ryan's reported desire to campaign on the issue, only to be denied the chance by Romney campaign managers.  Ryan returned to the issue in a joint event with Marco Rubio last week.)

Michael Barone and Charles Murray responded thoughtfully to Kristof's column from the right.  Murray's "three laws of social programs" - imperfect selection, unintended rewards, and net harm - are particularly interesting, and probably deserve additional attention in this blog (in the sense that I should spend additional time thinking about them, and not in the sense that Murray needs my attention).

To me, these columns, plus Ryan's recent observations, nicely summarize the weaknesses that conservatives see in the traditional "war on poverty."  I'd venture to say most Americans, even most liberals, would concede these weaknesses in their most candid moments.  But I also think most Americans instinctively ask, if not our traditional approach, then what?  Throw up our hands and ignore the poor?  Giving up is understandably objectionable, and it shouldn't have to stifle innovation in our approach to poverty.

Conservatives have the job of explaining (a) why goverment has no legitimate role in fighting poverty, (b) why government cannot play an effective role in fighting poverty, or (c) if government has a legitimate, effective role to play, what it is.  I'd like to explore the last option.