It's Potahto, Dammit!
My old friend Tom Berg over at Mirror Of Justice quotes (approvingly, I'm guessing) former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson on the problem conservatives have with libertarians in their midst.
As Tom notes, Gerson's book Heroic Conservative, focuses "on the Republican Party's internal divide between the vision of libertarianism and the vision of empowering the poor."
Harrumph.
I've known a fair number of libertarians and as far as I can tell, all of them believe they're the ones empowering the poor. They also believe that poorly-designed and run welfare programs (i.e, just about all of them) enfeeble the poor.
A fairer description, from either Tom or Gerson or both, would be there's an internal divide in the party between two visions of empowering the poor.
posted by LAGuy @ 1:55 AM
3 Comments:
Well, to be fair to Tom or Gerson or both, isn't it really about empowering individuals? Empowering the "poor" is a little tricky, particularly since I doubt T & G are actually starting with the poorest. They're thinking more of distributing Donald Trump's wealth to their favorite beneficiaries; they're not thinking of distributing their own wealth to people who are 1/100th times less wealthy than they are.
There's an interesting element of perception in this discussion. You can "help the poor" by (1) decreasing income disparities or by (2) "making the pie higher" for everyone while continuing or even exacerpating wealth disparities. Most people will underestimate how much their lives have improved under method (2), focusing on the relative disparity rather than their own gains.
There's a lib for you: Can't see a pie without wanting to make it higher.
I don't think you can help the poor by making someone else's income closer to theirs--unless, of course, it's intentional infliction of emotional distress either (a) not to do so, or (b) for it simply to be so, as QG's link might be seen to imply.
SWMBCg, etc.
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