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Capitalist Weapons for the War on Poverty
| Article
# : |
19571 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
11 / 1991 |
3,711 Words |
| Author
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Daniel J. Mitchell and Michael A. Price
Daniel J. Mitchell is John M. Olin Senior Fellow in Political
Economy at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. Michael
A. Price is an attorney who served as special assistant for
judicial affairs in the Department of Health and Human
Services during the Reagan administration. |
Liberals have long monopolized the debate over how best to help the poor--whether the issue be how to help the working poor or how to help the completely destitute. From the massive War on Poverty in the 1960s to the fairness issue of today, self-proclaimed advocates for the less fortunate have consistently proposed new federal spending programs, income redistribution, and more government intervention as the best way to raise living standards for the poor.
Increasingly, however, the big-government approach to poverty has fallen out of favor while market-oriented initiatives to help the poor have gained new adherents. Part of the reason for this shift in thinking is the failure of statist approaches to solve the problems for which they were created. Most notable in this category was the War on Poverty, which has spent hundreds of billions of dollars since its inception without any appreciable change in the level of poverty. Indeed, some critics have pointed out that poverty rates had been declining over time but leveled out after the War on Poverty began, with the obvious implication that not only did massive government programs fail to reduce poverty as promised, but that they may have prevented the poverty rate from declining further.
By no means, however, did the failure of public programs in the 1960s and 1970s cause everybody to recognize the limits of government. While the Left's agenda today is not quite as grandiose as it was twenty years ago, the current proposals advanced by state-oriented antipoverty activists would still increase government's role in the economy. Among the issues that probably will be debated in the current Congress are new taxes, jobs programs, higher minimum wages, national health care, greater regulation of labor markets through new civil rights legislation, and more spending on welfare programs.
Unlike past years, though, free market advocates will do more than reflexively oppose the laundry list of liberal program expansions. Spurred by the work of Charles Murray, author of the seminal work on poverty, Losing Ground, and led by the political efforts of policymakers such as Housing Secretary Jack Kemp, Heritage Foundation poverty expert Stuart Butler, and senior White House aide Jim Pinkerton, critics of big government have developed an antipoverty approach that recognizes that progress is impossible in the absence of economic growth, and that specific programs to help the poor should be based upon market incentives rather than government control.
One of the few principles conservatives and
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