Are The Poor Responsible For Their Poverty

Liberalism vs. Conservatism part 3- taken from video series I am doing with my son

In the first installment we covered one basic difference between liberals and conservatives which is the role each groups believes the government should take in the major issues of our day. Someone on YouTube asked this question “are the poor responsible for their poverty?”  This question gives us another opportunity to review some of the differences between liberals and conservatives.

In our 2^nd topic in this series, while talking about the proper role of government, we touched on the topic of the moral responsibility to care for the truly needy, but today let's consider the poor a little more, and lets be specific while we talk about the poor- we are not talking about the truly need (those who have mental or physical issues preventing them from taking care of themselves).  We are talking about poor who are capable of taking care of themselves.

Why would someone ask such a questions as “are the poor responsible for their poverty” in the first place?  Many have learned from the liberal viewpoint that the rich only got rich by taking advantage of the poor. To put it in the words of Ronald Regan “We have so many people who can't see a fat man standing beside a thin one without coming to the conclusion that the fat man got that way by taking advantage of the thin one!”  This is the liberal idea that economic growth is a zero sum game, or if I get richer someone else must be getting poorer.

Conservatives recognize that economic growth is not a zero sum game.  Notice I didn't say that conservatives believe, but that conservatives recognize, because economic data does not support the idea that the rich get richer at the expense of the poor.  

In my state JR Simplot became a billionaire starting out as a farmer and getting into a lot of other businesses.  It can be temping to vilify those wealthy thinking “why should he have so much when I don't,” but what is the reality?  Because of JR’s efforts there were 10s of thousands of jobs created over his lifetime.  He branched out into electronics at one point by being the major funding partner for someone else's idea for a business.  That start of a small electronics company became one of the leading memory companies in the world with 10s of thousands of jobs created in a totally different industry from where he gained his initial wealth.  No matter how I twist it I cannot think of any way that JR Simplot’s wealth hurt the poor, but just the opposite- his success resulted in a great deal of economic growth, jobs and the improved economic condition of very many.  Through his ventures he did not end up as the only one with wealth, but there were a large number of people who have become well off because of his ventures and this spawned many more business ventures.

So are the poor responsible for their own poverty.  Well… Yes.  Who else can be responsible for it, and herein is another fundamental difference between liberals and conservatives.  Liberals teach that the poor are victims of the rich and that the wealth of the rich should be re-distributed to the poor because they only got it by taking advantage of the poor.  Conservatives on the other hand show that when given liberty the poor do not have to stay that way.  JR Simplot started out very poor- he quit school and left home when he was 14 and started working on a farm- not the typical blueprint for a future billionaire, but he was free to work hard and try for success until he found it.  Only in a free society can the poor move upward.  If we eliminate the free society, we also eliminate the ability of the poor to move upwards.  One final point to consider President Lyndon B. Johnson started “the war on poverty” and now 46 years later and nearly 17 trillion dollars poverty is winning.  The federal welfare programs which amount to an income re-distribution program have succeeded in keeping the poor poor and making poverty worse… 

So, we have two ideas- the liberal idea that the poor are victims and need to be given handouts through re-distribution of wealth.  Or, we have the conservative idea that the poor and everyone else should be given liberty and the opportunity to improve their own situation in life.

Where do you stand?

Proper Role of Government

Liberals vs. conservatives part 2 taken from video series I'm doing with my son'

In our first installment we talked about one major difference between liberals and conservatives which was their ideas on the role that government should take in addressing the issues of the day. Today we will look a little closer at the proper role of government.

We'll start with a little story that I have adapted from someone else- let's say there is some land far from any city and outside of the boundary of any state.  We decide to move there because of the opportunity available in this land.  As several of us move there and start productive business opportunities a little community develops, but we don't have a government.  As individuals we have the right to guard our property and protect our families, but as time goes on we find that we have to spend too much time on protection.  As a result, we can't be very productive, so we get together and hire a sheriff to provide the protection of life and property and government is born.  We only have the right to delegate to the sheriff what we have the right to do for ourselves.

In our community, let's say that you have two cars and I need a car, and I think that you should give me your extra car.  I have no right to demand that you give me your extra car.  Even if everyone in the community thinks that you should give me your extra car, we have no right to demand it.  If we don't have the right to demand that you give me your extra car, we also cannot rightly have the sheriff confiscate your extra car to give it to me. Again we can only delegate to the government whatever we have a right to do ourselves- anything more than this is tyranny. 

This short story illustrates the conservative constitutional view of the proper role of government- that government has delegated to it only the powers to protect our basic rights of property, life, and our own pursuit of happiness.

Ezra Taft Benson said “The government itself has no innate power or privilege to do anything. It's only source of authority and power is from the people who created it.”

Where do the liberals fall in this story?  Liberals believe that it is right for the government to confiscate your car and give it to me.  They teach that it is good for the government to forcibly take your possessions to distribute them to others.  In their view the liberals think that government bureaucrats can better determine where the product of you efforts should be directed.  They tell us that this is how you “care” for the needy by forcibly taking from some to give to others.

Ezra Taft Benson again said “Any attempt through governmental intervention to re-distribute the material rewards of labor can only result in the eventual destruction of the productive base of society, without which real abundance and security for more than the ruling elite is quite impossible.”

Does compassion for those in need have any place in this?  Yes. Conservatives believe that we are morally obligated to care for the truly needy, but that people must be free to choose to help.  Liberals also believe in the obligation to help those in need, but feel it right to use the government to forcibly take your possessions to hand out to others without any say from you at all.  Liberals have the desire to do good, but want to do good with other people's money.

We discussed the proper role of government from a conservative and liberal perspective. The conservative idea that government can only rightly do those things that we have a right to do ourselves vs. the idea that government is unlimited and can do and take anything that they choose.

Where do you stand?