ConservativeHome's Big Ideas blog

Religious conversion as an anti-poverty strategy, and how conservatives' and liberals' views of the matter affect their approach to poverty policy

Ryan Streeter

Consistent with our focus on conservatives, poverty and opportunity this week, Tyler Cowen offers some keen insights into whether religious conversion matters as poverty policy.

He is responding to this query:

Would a massive conversion of low-income people to Mormonism reduce poverty? Utah looks to have some good demographics, which must be somewhat due to to the fact that 60% belong to the LDS church: http://www.adherents.com/largecom/lds_dem.html

They have the lowest child poverty rate in the country, the highest birth rate but the lowest out-of-wedlock birthrate.

Cowen says: "A viable *policy*, no, but a viable solution *yes*.  Many of the costs of poverty are sociological rather than narrowly economic per se."

He continues:

Mormonism, as a variable, is difficult for political agents to manipulate, although they (possibly) can squash it.  Raising this point, however, makes the poor look less like victims and more like a group partially complicit in their own fate.  That framing does have “marketing” implications for the politics of how many resources the poor will receive.  For this reason, liberals sometimes underrate the conservative point, because they do not like its political implications, and this leads liberals to misunderstand poverty.  The conservatives end up misunderstanding poverty policy.  Almost everyone ends up a little screwy and off-base on this issue."

Maybe we should support a tax-the-rich strategy...in China (and support Chinese Tea Partiers while we're at it)

Ryan Streeter

A new Bain study shows explosive growth in China's millionaire class.

The study claims:

Bain estimates that the number of high-net-worth individuals — mostly first-generation entrepreneurs who have more than 10 million renminbi, or about $1.5 million, in investable assets — will grow to 585,000 this year. That’s twice the number than in 2008. Moreover, the number of individuals who are worth more than 100 million renminbi is rising at its fastest pace.

This will, of course, show the world first-hand what class warfare in a communist state looks like. The growing upper Chinese class - a large share of which have benefitted very much by the "blessing" of the state (I'm not sure if the Bain study gets into that) - are creating a problem for the state.

For the authorities in Beijing, however, the rapidly widening wealth gap in China is an increasing concern. Many commentators now consider it as one of the country’s most pressing economic problems.

China's demographic and class-based economic issues will be among the most interesting in the world over the next 20 years and will have serious global consequences.

Striking workers there understand something that Tea Partiers here understood: it's just wrong when people get really rich really fast through their cozy relationship with the state. Over there, it is the broad entrepreneurial class that has benefited. Over here, it was largely the banking class. Our support was more implied than direct, whereas in China, there is a lot of direct involvement by the state in picking winners.

China's political leaders know that such direct involvement can result in grassroots blowback. The question is what they will do about it.

We conservatives are divided on what China's rise means for us. One thing that unites us, however, is that direct state sponsorship of enterprise and serious constraints on human liberty are hugely problematic. When asked about China, Republicans heading into 2012 should offer support for Tea Partiers in China. We can do that. The left can't, and probably wouldn't anyway, given its relatively squishy stance on human rights abuse in China.

Tyler Cowen: Let's let seniors choose cash or current Medicare program and see where choice takes us

Ryan Streeter

Citing a Matt Yglesias tweet supporting cash grants for seniors instead of the current Medicare program, Cowen writes:

They [seniors] might rather have a servant, or a better car, or an apartment which doesn’t require them to drive, or to eat a better diet or join a better gym. Or maybe they would rather live it up, travel, and perhaps die at a younger age.  That’s what pro-choice means.

On the public choice side, this suggestion would turn seniors into an active constituency for health care cost control.

Nonetheless I propose a more modest version of the idea.  When people turn a certain age, allow them to trade in the current benefits package for a minimalistic package (set broken limbs and offer lots of potent painkillers), plus some of the rest in cash, doled out over the years if need be.  For some people, medical tourism will fill the gap.

But if a person wishes, he or she can keep the extant benefit structure and forgo the cash altogether.  No one is forced to take this deal.

Objections?  You might think that “health” has a special moral status of some kind, but keep in mind “health care” is only one way of many to better health care outcomes, so you still can favor increasing the degree of choice.

Paul Krugman calls for a public provision option in Medicare, a bit like the VA system.  He doesn’t mention letting people choose some cash instead.  We have gone from “Free to Choose” to “Free to Choose more government.”

He makes a good point at the end: “And what would terrify the right, of course, is the likelihood that genuine socialized medicine would actually win that competition.”

What would terrify the left, of course, is the likelihood that genuine privatized cash would actually win that competition.

Choices in education, choices in health care. That's the future. That's what the right sees, and the left doesn't. Which is why conservatives have become the radicals on these issues, the "progressive" left the ho-hum status quo.

Freshman Senator Marco Rubio outlines nine "key steps" for US policy in Libya

Natalie Gonnella

Amid the prolonged spending debate and the introduction of the GOP's 2012 budget proposal, Senator Marco Rubio this week again called on the Obama Administration to reevaluate it's current policy with regard to the Middle East and the ongoing conflict in Libya.

In a letter to Secretary Hillary Clinton on Thursday (following a recent phone call with the Secretary), the freshmen Senator outlined nine immediate measures he feels the US should adopt as NATO airstrikes continue, stressing the point that "actively helping the Libyan people achieve the inevitable end of the Gadhafi regime is in America’s interests and would ensure the Arab world knows the U.S. is laboring for their freedom."

With the US taking a step back from the situation and European allied now leading coaltion efforts, here's a look at Senator Rubio's suggestions for US policy in Libya:

1. The U.S. should derecognize the Gadhafi regime.

2. Follow the arrival of the American envoy in Benghazi with the establishment of a “provisional” Embassy to assess opposition needs and to negotiate the terms of formal recognition, contingent upon assurances that a new Libyan Government will:

• Be representative of the Libyan people and take demonstrable measures to protect the basic human rights of the Libyan people.
• Reject terrorism, cooperate with international counterterrorism and nonproliferation efforts, and abstain from destabilizing neighboring countries.

3. Upon U.S. recognition, the U.S. should encourage other nations to recognize the Transitional Council.

4. Commit the influence of the U.S. Government to mobilize international support for a post-Gadhafi government that ensures basic rights, provides basic services (including security) and provides for representative government.

5. Upon recognition, provide at least partial access by the Transitional Council to frozen Libyan assets.

6. Shut down broadcasting by Libyan state television and radio, if necessary by direct jamming and if possible by getting international satellite providers to cooperate.

7. Enable opposition fighters to communicate independently of Libyan state telephone network.

8. Provide non-lethal military supplies to opposition, including medical supplies, information and communications technology. Consider providing body armor, trucks, armored Humvees.

9. Initiate discussions with the Transitional Council to mobilize international support both to remove Gadhafi and to prepare for a post-Gadhafi Libya – including international peacekeepers, and begin to obtain commitments for non-US forces to provide that support if needed.

In addition to his phone call and written correspondence with Secretary Clinton, Senator Rubio this week also met with Ambassador Ali Suleiman Aulajli, the former Libyan ambassador to the U.S. who resigned his post in support of the Libyan people.

The full letter can be viewed here.