What do liberals believe about welfare?
Welfare is necessary in a nation that intentionally keeps a 5-6 percent unemployment rate. (When unemployment dips below this, inflation starts to grow, and the Federal Reserve contracts the money supply to bring both inflation and unemployment back in line). To tell welfare recipients therefore to just "get a job" is terrible economics, because it is literally impossible to reduce the unemployment rate to zero.
In March 1987, the General Accounting Office released a report that summarized more than one hundred studies of welfare since 1975. It found that "research does not support the view that welfare encourages two-parent family breakup" or that welfare significantly reduces the incentive to work. Conservatives also accuse welfare of giving mothers an economic incentive to have more children. Ten major studies have been conducted on this issue in the last six years alone, and not one has found any connection between the level of payments offered and a woman's decision to bear children. The size of average welfare families is virtually the same as non-welfare families.
Because the poor cannot afford well-funded lobbyists in Washington, they make easy targets for budget cuts. Between 1970 and 1991, individual AFDC payments have declined 42 percent in real terms. Today, AFDC takes up less than 1 percent of the combined government budgets. Meanwhile, corporate welfare is running $150 billion a year, three times the federal spending on AFDC and food stamps.
How does liberalism differ from socialism?
There are important and fundamental differences between socialism and liberalism. When critics attempt to slander liberals by calling them "socialists," liberals should immediately challenge them to define the difference between liberalism and socialism. If they cannot, or continue to claim that they are the same, liberals should then chide them for being novices in political science, unable to define even the most basic terms of the debate.
Socialism means that workers, not private owners, would own and control the means of production: factories, farmland, machinery, and so on. In democratic elections, workers would vote for 1) their supervisors, 2) their representatives to a local and national council of their industry or service, and 3) their representatives to a central congress representing all the industries and services. Socialism has been proposed in many forms, ranging from republics to direct democracies, from centralized state bureaucracies to free market anarchy. Political scientists do not view the "socialism" nominally practiced by the Soviet Union as true socialism -- this was, essentially, a dictatorship over workers by a ruling elite.
By comparison, liberals believe that private owners should own and control the means of production, formulate company policy, and have the right to select their own management team. Liberals would prevent them from abusing their powers through checks and balances like strong labor unions and democratic government.
What do liberals believe about drugs?
Although some liberals oppose the legalization of drugs, most feel that prohibition of drugs has been a failure, no less than the prohibition of alcohol. The war on drugs has wasted billions of dollars, sidetracked police from solving more serious crimes and swollen the prison population with minor drug offenders. Between 1986 and 1991, inmates sentenced for a drug offense accounted for 44% of the increase in the state prison population. The solution to the nation's drug problem is to educate people about drugs and drug abuse, and make treatment programs available for drug addicts. Decriminalizing drugs would remove the criminal element from the drug trade, and allow government to regulate and tax this major black market.
What do liberals believe about democracy?
Liberals are probably the strongest advocates of democracy. Democracy solves a problem described by an old adage: "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." When power or wealth concentrates too heavily in too few hands in society, democracy is useful for dispersing much of that power back to the people. In other words, when enough voters become discontented with the status quo, they vote to change it.
Of course, those already in power bitterly resent this; that is why there is such a strong anti-democratic streak in wealthy conservatives and business owners. They complain that democracy allows the poor to legally steal from the rich. (Liberals counter that unregulated capitalism allows the rich to exploit and therefore steal from the poor, and taxes simply correct for that.) But democracy also works in the other direction as well. If we lived in a society where everyone was paid equally, despite their different inputs, people would surely vote to create a system of incentives and rewards. Democracy therefore strikes the balance between the corruption of absolute power and the lack of incentives, between unrestricted meritocracy and egalitarianism. It is the primary tool of moderated meritocracy.
Most liberals favor strengthening our democratic institutions; examples include mandatory voting, state or national referendums and initiatives, and expanded voter registration like the "Motor-Voter" law. Some go so far as to advocate direct democracy, in which the people, not their representatives, vote directly on legislation. However, an educated electorate is necessary for the success of any democracy, and there is a real question as to whether the public is educated or informed enough to vote directly on the nuts and bolts of government policies.
What do liberals believe about the constitution?
Liberals note that constitutions and their amendments are passed just like other laws: after extensive debate and by a vote of the people's elected representatives. The only difference is that constitutional amendments are much harder to pass than laws, because they require a two-third's majority in Congress and a three-fourth's majority of the States.
Liberals also point out that the constitution and laws of Congress both have the same purpose: to protect individual rights, establish personal responsibilities, and describe the operations of government. However, the constitution does all of this at a much more fundamental level. In other words, the constitution describes the general principles of how our society is to be run, and the law fills in the details. Many people would like to see their favorite moral beliefs enshrined in the constitution rather than law, but usually the constitution is an inappropriate place for that. A constitution that included too many specific statutes would be inflexible (due to the supermajority requirement) and would quickly grow obsolete.
Liberals believe that when the U.S. constitution was first ratified in 1788, it was a document serving the interests of rich white male landholders. Blacks were forbidden to vote until 1870; women until 1920; tax debtors until 1964; young people until 1971. Likewise, much of the Bill of Rights was not defended or enforced until recently. In early times the U.S. media was often censored for "seditious" material, and it wasn't until the early 20th century that the first case involving freedom of the press came before the Supreme Court. Since 1920, the American Civil Liberties Union has been the foremost defender of the Bill of Rights for minorities, the poor, and other groups who cannot afford justice and the preservation of their rights. It has taken centuries, but the U.S. constitution is gradually evolving into a true people's document.
Conservatives call themselves "constitutionalists," because they perceive that strong property rights in the constitution are the best way to protect their wealth and property from the greedy voting majority. But it is interesting to note that their proposed anti-tax, pro-property amendments would favor the special interests of those who already own the most wealth: rich white male business owners. Compare this to their bitter criticism of the ACLU for defending the Bill of Rights for minorities and poor people, and it becomes clear that many people simply use the constitution as a political football to protect their special interests at the expense of others.
What do liberals believe about the working class?
Wealth and income in the U.S. have been increasingly distributed upward in the last 20 years. Workers are working longer, harder and more productively than ever before, but the fruits of their labor have been going to the richest 1 percent. According to economist Paul Krugman, about 70 percent of all income gains made in the 1980s went to the richest 1 percent. Here are a few snapshots of this growing inequality: between 1973 and 1995, average hourly wages fell from $8.55 to $7.40, after adjusting for inflation. But between 1975 and 1995, CEO compensation among the Fortune 500 soared from 41 to 197 times what the average worker earned.
Economists measure income inequality by the Gini index. On this scale, a score of 0.0 represents a perfectly equal society; 1.0 means that one person earns all the income. In 1947, the U.S. Gini index stood at .374. By 1968, after two decades of highly taxing the rich, this fell to an all-time low of .348. However, since then it has been climbing, rising to .426 in 1994, the highest level of inequality since the Roaring Twenties. There are at least 10 reasons for this trend:
Loss of tax progressivity.
Failure of the minimum wage to keep up with inflation.
Loss of union clout and membership.
Deregulation.
The deficit. (Its huge interest payments go to the banking class.)
Increased personal and corporate debt. (Again, interest payments go to banking class.)
Falling individual welfare benefits.
Increased corporate welfare (which allows exploding CEO pay).
The growing percentage of the population entering the workforce. (This puts downward pressure on entry-level wages, in accordance with the laws of supply and demand on the labor market.)
The economic slowdown of 1973.
What do liberals believe about income inequality?
Income inequality is substantially correlated to most of society's problems. Two studies -- one by Harvard, the other by Berkeley -- measured income inequality in all 50 states. They found that states with greater income inequality suffered from all of the following problems:
Higher death rates for all age groups.
Higher rates of homicide.
Higher rates of violent crime.
Higher costs per person for police protection.
Higher rates of incarceration.
Higher rates of unemployment.
A higher percentage of people receiving income assistance and food stamps.
More high-school dropouts.
Less state funds spent per person on education.
Fewer books per person in the schools.
Poorer educational performance, including worse reading skills, worse math skills.
Higher infant mortality rates.
Higher heart disease.
Higher cancer rates.
A greater percentage of people without medical insurance.
A greater proportion of babies born with low birth weight.
A greater proportion of the population unable to work because of disabilities.
A higher proportion of the population using tobacco.
A higher proportion of the population being sedentary (inactive).
Higher costs per-person for medical care.
States with more inequality did not suffer more of these problems simply because they had more poor people; rather, these states witnessed more of these problems in the middle class as well. This shows that inequality, and not just absolute poverty levels, are linked to social problems. Statistics from Europe -- which enjoys much less inequality, and much fewer health and social problems -- confirm this correlation quite nicely.
Conservatives argue that correlation is not causation, that all these social problems may be causing income inequality. But the problem with this claim is that fluctuations in income inequality are too rapid, too drastic and too localized to be attributed to sudden changes of character, morals and work ethic in people, especially when they are the same people. It is much simpler to point to sudden changes in social policy, such as massive tax cuts for the rich and slashing welfare benefits for the poor.
Notice that the first eight can be bribed through Congress by corporate lobbyists. If the U.S. is to reduce its income inequality, it simply must eliminate or reform the corporate special interest system.
What do liberals believe about crime?
Liberals believe that the current criminal justice system is biased against the poor from first to last. A presidential commission found that 91 percent of all people have committed crimes that would have landed them a jail sentence. However, our prisons resemble the national poorhouse. After studying the statistics, noted criminologist Jeffrey Reiman writes: "For the same criminal behavior, the poor are more likely to be arrested; if arrested, they are more likely to be charged; if charged, more likely to be convicted; if convicted, more likely to be sentenced to prison; and if sentenced, more likely to be given longer prison terms than members of the middle and upper classes." Money is an overwhelming advantage in manipulating the criminal justice system. Liberals believe that all crime -- no matter how rich the criminal -- should be punished.
Liberals also believe that social factors contribute to differences in the crime rate. Two factors have been getting especial academic attention lately: media violence and income inequality. Dr. Brandon Centerwall has produced one of the most famous studies, which found that the mere introduction of television into a region causes its crime rate to double as soon as the first television generation comes of age. And two separate studies, one from Harvard, the other from Berkeley, compared state crime rates to their income inequality rates, and found that the states with the most inequality had the highest rates of homicide, violent crime and incarceration.
The liberal approach to solving crime is prevention, through addressing social factors like these. They view as illogical the after-the-fact responses of conservatives, who react to crime with larger police forces, more jails, and tougher laws and judges. It costs $16,000 a year simply to house a criminal in jail. If anyone wonders where the money would come from to fund social programs that prevent crime, let them look no further.
Welfare is necessary in a nation that intentionally keeps a 5-6 percent unemployment rate. (When unemployment dips below this, inflation starts to grow, and the Federal Reserve contracts the money supply to bring both inflation and unemployment back in line). To tell welfare recipients therefore to just "get a job" is terrible economics, because it is literally impossible to reduce the unemployment rate to zero.
In March 1987, the General Accounting Office released a report that summarized more than one hundred studies of welfare since 1975. It found that "research does not support the view that welfare encourages two-parent family breakup" or that welfare significantly reduces the incentive to work. Conservatives also accuse welfare of giving mothers an economic incentive to have more children. Ten major studies have been conducted on this issue in the last six years alone, and not one has found any connection between the level of payments offered and a woman's decision to bear children. The size of average welfare families is virtually the same as non-welfare families.
Because the poor cannot afford well-funded lobbyists in Washington, they make easy targets for budget cuts. Between 1970 and 1991, individual AFDC payments have declined 42 percent in real terms. Today, AFDC takes up less than 1 percent of the combined government budgets. Meanwhile, corporate welfare is running $150 billion a year, three times the federal spending on AFDC and food stamps.
How does liberalism differ from socialism?
There are important and fundamental differences between socialism and liberalism. When critics attempt to slander liberals by calling them "socialists," liberals should immediately challenge them to define the difference between liberalism and socialism. If they cannot, or continue to claim that they are the same, liberals should then chide them for being novices in political science, unable to define even the most basic terms of the debate.
Socialism means that workers, not private owners, would own and control the means of production: factories, farmland, machinery, and so on. In democratic elections, workers would vote for 1) their supervisors, 2) their representatives to a local and national council of their industry or service, and 3) their representatives to a central congress representing all the industries and services. Socialism has been proposed in many forms, ranging from republics to direct democracies, from centralized state bureaucracies to free market anarchy. Political scientists do not view the "socialism" nominally practiced by the Soviet Union as true socialism -- this was, essentially, a dictatorship over workers by a ruling elite.
By comparison, liberals believe that private owners should own and control the means of production, formulate company policy, and have the right to select their own management team. Liberals would prevent them from abusing their powers through checks and balances like strong labor unions and democratic government.
What do liberals believe about drugs?
Although some liberals oppose the legalization of drugs, most feel that prohibition of drugs has been a failure, no less than the prohibition of alcohol. The war on drugs has wasted billions of dollars, sidetracked police from solving more serious crimes and swollen the prison population with minor drug offenders. Between 1986 and 1991, inmates sentenced for a drug offense accounted for 44% of the increase in the state prison population. The solution to the nation's drug problem is to educate people about drugs and drug abuse, and make treatment programs available for drug addicts. Decriminalizing drugs would remove the criminal element from the drug trade, and allow government to regulate and tax this major black market.
What do liberals believe about democracy?
Liberals are probably the strongest advocates of democracy. Democracy solves a problem described by an old adage: "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." When power or wealth concentrates too heavily in too few hands in society, democracy is useful for dispersing much of that power back to the people. In other words, when enough voters become discontented with the status quo, they vote to change it.
Of course, those already in power bitterly resent this; that is why there is such a strong anti-democratic streak in wealthy conservatives and business owners. They complain that democracy allows the poor to legally steal from the rich. (Liberals counter that unregulated capitalism allows the rich to exploit and therefore steal from the poor, and taxes simply correct for that.) But democracy also works in the other direction as well. If we lived in a society where everyone was paid equally, despite their different inputs, people would surely vote to create a system of incentives and rewards. Democracy therefore strikes the balance between the corruption of absolute power and the lack of incentives, between unrestricted meritocracy and egalitarianism. It is the primary tool of moderated meritocracy.
Most liberals favor strengthening our democratic institutions; examples include mandatory voting, state or national referendums and initiatives, and expanded voter registration like the "Motor-Voter" law. Some go so far as to advocate direct democracy, in which the people, not their representatives, vote directly on legislation. However, an educated electorate is necessary for the success of any democracy, and there is a real question as to whether the public is educated or informed enough to vote directly on the nuts and bolts of government policies.
What do liberals believe about the constitution?
Liberals note that constitutions and their amendments are passed just like other laws: after extensive debate and by a vote of the people's elected representatives. The only difference is that constitutional amendments are much harder to pass than laws, because they require a two-third's majority in Congress and a three-fourth's majority of the States.
Liberals also point out that the constitution and laws of Congress both have the same purpose: to protect individual rights, establish personal responsibilities, and describe the operations of government. However, the constitution does all of this at a much more fundamental level. In other words, the constitution describes the general principles of how our society is to be run, and the law fills in the details. Many people would like to see their favorite moral beliefs enshrined in the constitution rather than law, but usually the constitution is an inappropriate place for that. A constitution that included too many specific statutes would be inflexible (due to the supermajority requirement) and would quickly grow obsolete.
Liberals believe that when the U.S. constitution was first ratified in 1788, it was a document serving the interests of rich white male landholders. Blacks were forbidden to vote until 1870; women until 1920; tax debtors until 1964; young people until 1971. Likewise, much of the Bill of Rights was not defended or enforced until recently. In early times the U.S. media was often censored for "seditious" material, and it wasn't until the early 20th century that the first case involving freedom of the press came before the Supreme Court. Since 1920, the American Civil Liberties Union has been the foremost defender of the Bill of Rights for minorities, the poor, and other groups who cannot afford justice and the preservation of their rights. It has taken centuries, but the U.S. constitution is gradually evolving into a true people's document.
Conservatives call themselves "constitutionalists," because they perceive that strong property rights in the constitution are the best way to protect their wealth and property from the greedy voting majority. But it is interesting to note that their proposed anti-tax, pro-property amendments would favor the special interests of those who already own the most wealth: rich white male business owners. Compare this to their bitter criticism of the ACLU for defending the Bill of Rights for minorities and poor people, and it becomes clear that many people simply use the constitution as a political football to protect their special interests at the expense of others.
What do liberals believe about the working class?
Wealth and income in the U.S. have been increasingly distributed upward in the last 20 years. Workers are working longer, harder and more productively than ever before, but the fruits of their labor have been going to the richest 1 percent. According to economist Paul Krugman, about 70 percent of all income gains made in the 1980s went to the richest 1 percent. Here are a few snapshots of this growing inequality: between 1973 and 1995, average hourly wages fell from $8.55 to $7.40, after adjusting for inflation. But between 1975 and 1995, CEO compensation among the Fortune 500 soared from 41 to 197 times what the average worker earned.
Economists measure income inequality by the Gini index. On this scale, a score of 0.0 represents a perfectly equal society; 1.0 means that one person earns all the income. In 1947, the U.S. Gini index stood at .374. By 1968, after two decades of highly taxing the rich, this fell to an all-time low of .348. However, since then it has been climbing, rising to .426 in 1994, the highest level of inequality since the Roaring Twenties. There are at least 10 reasons for this trend:
Loss of tax progressivity.
Failure of the minimum wage to keep up with inflation.
Loss of union clout and membership.
Deregulation.
The deficit. (Its huge interest payments go to the banking class.)
Increased personal and corporate debt. (Again, interest payments go to banking class.)
Falling individual welfare benefits.
Increased corporate welfare (which allows exploding CEO pay).
The growing percentage of the population entering the workforce. (This puts downward pressure on entry-level wages, in accordance with the laws of supply and demand on the labor market.)
The economic slowdown of 1973.
What do liberals believe about income inequality?
Income inequality is substantially correlated to most of society's problems. Two studies -- one by Harvard, the other by Berkeley -- measured income inequality in all 50 states. They found that states with greater income inequality suffered from all of the following problems:
Higher death rates for all age groups.
Higher rates of homicide.
Higher rates of violent crime.
Higher costs per person for police protection.
Higher rates of incarceration.
Higher rates of unemployment.
A higher percentage of people receiving income assistance and food stamps.
More high-school dropouts.
Less state funds spent per person on education.
Fewer books per person in the schools.
Poorer educational performance, including worse reading skills, worse math skills.
Higher infant mortality rates.
Higher heart disease.
Higher cancer rates.
A greater percentage of people without medical insurance.
A greater proportion of babies born with low birth weight.
A greater proportion of the population unable to work because of disabilities.
A higher proportion of the population using tobacco.
A higher proportion of the population being sedentary (inactive).
Higher costs per-person for medical care.
States with more inequality did not suffer more of these problems simply because they had more poor people; rather, these states witnessed more of these problems in the middle class as well. This shows that inequality, and not just absolute poverty levels, are linked to social problems. Statistics from Europe -- which enjoys much less inequality, and much fewer health and social problems -- confirm this correlation quite nicely.
Conservatives argue that correlation is not causation, that all these social problems may be causing income inequality. But the problem with this claim is that fluctuations in income inequality are too rapid, too drastic and too localized to be attributed to sudden changes of character, morals and work ethic in people, especially when they are the same people. It is much simpler to point to sudden changes in social policy, such as massive tax cuts for the rich and slashing welfare benefits for the poor.
Notice that the first eight can be bribed through Congress by corporate lobbyists. If the U.S. is to reduce its income inequality, it simply must eliminate or reform the corporate special interest system.
What do liberals believe about crime?
Liberals believe that the current criminal justice system is biased against the poor from first to last. A presidential commission found that 91 percent of all people have committed crimes that would have landed them a jail sentence. However, our prisons resemble the national poorhouse. After studying the statistics, noted criminologist Jeffrey Reiman writes: "For the same criminal behavior, the poor are more likely to be arrested; if arrested, they are more likely to be charged; if charged, more likely to be convicted; if convicted, more likely to be sentenced to prison; and if sentenced, more likely to be given longer prison terms than members of the middle and upper classes." Money is an overwhelming advantage in manipulating the criminal justice system. Liberals believe that all crime -- no matter how rich the criminal -- should be punished.
Liberals also believe that social factors contribute to differences in the crime rate. Two factors have been getting especial academic attention lately: media violence and income inequality. Dr. Brandon Centerwall has produced one of the most famous studies, which found that the mere introduction of television into a region causes its crime rate to double as soon as the first television generation comes of age. And two separate studies, one from Harvard, the other from Berkeley, compared state crime rates to their income inequality rates, and found that the states with the most inequality had the highest rates of homicide, violent crime and incarceration.
The liberal approach to solving crime is prevention, through addressing social factors like these. They view as illogical the after-the-fact responses of conservatives, who react to crime with larger police forces, more jails, and tougher laws and judges. It costs $16,000 a year simply to house a criminal in jail. If anyone wonders where the money would come from to fund social programs that prevent crime, let them look no further.
