"Utah is a deep red state, but its conservatism is notably compassionate"
Or maybe conservatives are not ruthless towards the poor ?
Or maybe conservatives are not ruthless towards the poor ?
Liberals think of poverty more as a systematic social condition that individuals bear little responsibility for, either getting there or remaining there, and thus addressing poverty should be undertaken by formal social support systems.
It's not ruthless as much as different views of why poverty exists and how to address it, and like many issues, not all conservatives hold 100% conservative views. It's common to refer to conservatives who have a more liberal view of poverty as "compassionate", but it's just a word, not a judgement.
Conservatives see poverty as being at least partly a social problem. They just don't see bureaucratization as a healthy solution to the problem.
It's common to refer to conservatives who have a more liberal view of poverty as "compassionate", but it's just a word, not a judgement.
> It's common to refer to conservatives who have a more liberal view of poverty as "compassionate", but it's just a word, not a judgement.
Let's flip this around and see how it sounds: "It's common to refer to liberals who have a more conservative view of poverty as 'intelligent liberals'". Point being, "compassionate conservative" comes across judgy, no matter how it was meant. George W. Bush coined that line during the 2000 presidential campaign and was criticized along these lines back then, too.
But as a liberal myself, I don't really favor charity. I favor government solutions. I'd rather pay more taxes than pay to a charity directly.
The problem I see with charity is that (1) they can't provide comprehensive solutions, (2) vulnerable to the free rider problem, (3) inefficient as much resources needs to be spent collecting donations.
By comprehensive solution I mean that a lot of poverty is caused by complex set of factors. E.g. the person might lack job skills and have a mental health problem. Thus they need mental health care and a job training program. Putting together something like that is something a modern welfare state is quite capable of doing, while charity doesn't really have a solution. Charity is for giving you food when you are hungry or giving your emergency care.
Charity is poorly suited for having a long term medical follow up e.g. of high risk groups. E.g. Norway has one of the worlds best statistics for infant mortality. A lot of that is because there are extensive checkups through the pregnancy. Everything related to a pregnancy is completely free. For other health care there is usually a minimum fee. The US in the contrast has terrible infant mortality rate and that is mainly due to poor checkups. Charity in the US has been unable to solve that problem. All they can do is give hungry people food or patch them up.
Charity can't solve systematic problems.
The problem I see with government solutions is that (1) they can't provide comprehensive solutions, (2) vulnerable to the free rider problem, (3) inefficient as many resources need to be spent collecting and distributing taxes.
Put a random person from a bad neighborhood in a good one and they will almost always radically improve. You can look at IQ studies, correlation between IQ and genes is very high for a middle class, but very low for the poor. Hence middle class children reach the full potential of their genes while the environment is holding back the poor.
Look at the difference between West-Germany and DDR or North and South Korea. Huge difference in the outcome of each individual, yet it has nothing to do with personal traits but everything to do with the different society structures imposed on the people.
Focusing on the individual instead of society is also rather pointless as one can change society through policy but there is no way of changing an individual directly.
"Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain."