An irony of American politics today is that conservative policies have
helped lift the most people out of poverty, but most Americans don't know that
because conservatives have been horrible at communicating the success of their
own policies, Arthur Brooks writes in his new book, The
Conservative Heart: How To Build a Fairer, Happier, and More Prosperous
America.
In a July 7 interview with The Christian Post, Brooks, president of the
American Enterprise Institute, added that Christians are especially well poised
to deliver the message that public policy should aim for the benefit of people,
especially the poor and powerless.
"This could really be the true Christian moment," Brooks
said.
People are more happy when they earn their success, with each individual
defining success for themself, Brooks explains, and because of this the
"conservative heart" sees work as a blessing, rather than a
punishment.
"People naturally feel dissatisfied with simply having things given to
them for free," he wrote in the introduction. "It is the mission of the
conservative movement — the very reason for our existence — to make it possible
for every single American to earn his or her own way."
In his CP interview, Brooks talks more about how government policies can
make it more difficult for Americans to earn their own way.
Here is a lightly edited transcript of that
interview:
CP: One of the things that came to mind as I'm reading your book,
sometimes I hear Republicans mock Democrats who say their problem is the
messaging, not the policies. "The problem is your policies," they respond. Your
argument flips that around, you're telling conservatives the problem is with
your messaging, and, for certain Republicans, your policies as well. Is that a
fair reading?
Brooks: Yes, that's true. And both sides could use better policies, of
course. Nobody's perfect.
But the biggest problem we have and the central irony of our time is that
conservative policies are designed in a way that is going to help poor people
more than liberal policies, but people don't know that, because people simply
won't listen to people who are purveying a particular type of policy unless they
think that those people care about the people they're intended to
help.
Republicans tend to look calloused toward the poor, are perceived as
callous toward the poor, so they're not trusted to work on policies that we
know, in point of fact, that are designed toward pushing free enterprise all the
way down to the bottom of the economy, lifting people up. So the result is, now,
51 years of a relatively unsuccessful "war on poverty" that's built on very
large government ideas, and the other side has better ideas but nobody trusts
them to implement them.
CP: What role should the government play in the
economy?
Brooks: That's a big question. But, basically, there are two things, as a
simple matter.
The first thing the government should do in the economy is provide a
safety net for the poorest of the poor, and, in my view, only for the indigent
and always with work. Conservative economists and liberal economists, people of
very strong ethics, have believed from the very beginning that in an enriched
society the government can and should provide a safety net.
The second is to redress market failures, because markets don't always
succeed. And that means taking care of public goods, like the Army and
protecting the environment, which is called externalities. That means taking
care of information problems like crime and corruption and dealing with
monopolies.
And, pretty much, that's it. That's what the government should do in an
economy — a safety net for the poorest, the most vulnerable citizens, and
redressing market failures.
That's a lot, by the way. That's everything from the Army to Medicaid to
food stamps to a lot of things.
But the boondoggles we have, the wasteful programs, the special favors,
the 17,000 pages of tax code, most of which were written for particular
interests — that stuff needs to go if we're going to have the kind of economy
that serves the most people, that's a real steward economy of American
ethics.
CP: Suppose you have a high school graduate looking for work, or
stay-at-home mom or dad who wants to enter the workforce part time, or a someone
recently released from prison looking to turn their lives around. With any or
all of those situations, can point to government policies that make their goals
more difficult?
Brooks: For sure. Number one is government policies that twist the values
that we have that are the greatest precursors to success. And the values that
predict success in every one of those cases the most are faith, family,
community and work. And "work" as a sanctified virtue, not just as a means of
earning income.
So you have public policy after public policy that gets in the way of
people effectively practicing their faith. You have, even more so, in the
integrity of family life or the fragmentation of communities, or creating
disincentives for people to work and thus build up these habits that are best
predictive of people earning success.
Number two is that we have government systems of command and control
schooling that seem more intent on protecting adult's jobs than helping children
succeed. You have antiquated school systems that are vastly more expensive than
they ever were and they don't have better outcomes for kids. So that's another
barrier people have in their way.
And the third is dramatic and expanding regulatory barriers that are
making it harder and harder for the economy to produce jobs exactly for the
groups you talked about. So, you have somebody out of school who wants to get a
job, somebody who wants to work part time, somebody with kids in the home, it's
getting harder and harder to do that because we have an economy that's not
creating jobs, particularly jobs for the bottom half of the
economy.
We know how to do it. We know how to solve the problem, by the way. We're
just not doing it because we're keener on systems that regulate than we are on
systems that set people free. http://www.christianpost.com/news/arthur-brooks-conservative-policies-help-the-powerless-christians-can-lead-the-way-interview-141520/
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