War on Poverty

According to the World Bank the number of people living on $1.25 per day or less dropped from 2 billion to about 1.3 billion between 1990 and 2008. With that encouraging news, I am reminded of a few things we can and should be doing, not just to make life easier for the poorest of the poor, but to make it possible for a lot more of them to pull themselves up from that status.

One obvious measure would be to stop this insane use of food crops to make ethanol. Social justice advocates ought to be all over this. Can you imagine the good that could be done if billions in charity dollars were redirected to education, clean water, anti-malaria, and other programs that have direct positive impacts on poverty rates? This is not a trivial matter. Over 40% of the US corn crop and a large part of Brazil's sugar goes into ethanol. It doesn't save anybody any money, benefits mostly well off farmers, and has a devastating ripple effect on prices all through the food chain. We know all this. Why aren't we making more noise?

Another major issue is the campaign against anthropogenic global warming. Most of the measures put forward to combat it are designed to suppress economic activity by making energy more expensive. Emerging nations like China and India are having none of it and neither should we. I am a skeptic about this but if global warming is inevitable, and the alarmists are essentially saying it is, then we will need a more prosperous world to deal with it. Plentiful and inexpensive energy supplies are absolutely essential. We should be speaking up for the poor in this debate too.

One of my favorite subjects is trade and, except for fair trade, it's another area where we don't hear much social justice advocacy but should. As a general rule, the more we trade the more prosperous we become on both sides of the transaction. The knock on some "free" trade pacts is that they aren't really free, and that they often benefit the rich disproportionately. But less trade is no answer. The equity issues can be addressed and we should be pressing our trade representatives to address them but we should also be cheering them on as they negotiate and implement these agreements. They can have a greater impact on more people than a mountain of fair trade chocolate.

In this time of budget cutbacks and unsustainable government deficits those concerned about social justice issues are rightly lobbying officials and elected representatives to protect anti-poverty and emergency relief programs as much as we can. But not every anti-poverty policy requires government funding. There are things government can do that would have enormous impact and not cost anything. And it isn't just the poor that would benefit. The savings on engine repairs alone would more than justify eliminating ethanol mandates.

The steps I'm arguing for are doable. There are others but they all need public support. We need a national discussion without demagoguery to air them out. Most of us can agree that widespread prosperity is a good thing. We have opportunities to promote it on a global scale without sacrificing our own. We really should get a move on.

In eighteen years the world reduced the ranks of the most desperately poor by 700 million people. Hundreds of millions more moved up into the middle class. That still leaves a lot of poverty but if we could do that again over the next eighteen years  we would se it at levels unimaginable a generation ago. By at least one measure that would be leaving the world a better place than we found it.

Social Justice and the Ryan Budget

Rep. Paul Ryan defended his budget today in a speech at Georgetown and was met with protests over proposed cuts to welfare programs.  Yesterday he posted a letter in the Federal Register arguing for balanced use of the principles of solidarity and subsidiarity as the most effective means of addressing poverty and that his budget does that as best he understands the issue. He cites the Vatican's Compendium of Social Doctrine and Pope Benedict XVI's encyclical Caritas in Veritate to support his position.

In response he has gotten letters from 90 faculty members and Jesuit priests from Georgetown and at least two Bishops criticizing the budget for failing to protect the poor and vulnerable and him for misapplying Catholic doctrine. The Letter from Georgetown faculty included a copy of the Compendium. It's a hefty tome and not for the faint hearted but Rep. Ryan appears to have read it. He thanked them for the fresh copy, saying his had become a bit worn. There are also numerous newspaper editorials and blogs out offering him lectures on scripture and Catholic morality. 

I come down on Rep. Ryan's side on this. None of his critics appear to address his basic argument, that something has to be done. The federal deficit is on an unsustainable track and poverty has reached levels unseen in my memory. No one has offered a credible alternative. President Obama's budget was voted down unanimously in the House. The Senate has failed to offer any budget at all.

The best anti-poverty measures are those that offer improved job opportunities. It is a fair criticism of the Ryan budget that it doesn't do that, but only if the critic has a better idea and I don't see any better ideas on the table. I don't see any other ideas on the table. I certainly don't see how raising taxes will do that.

I don't like seeing poverty programs cut. Any such cuts will be painful. But if the overall effect of the Ryan plan is ultimately to move more people out of poverty and into the middle class, that could be a good thing. Rep. Ryan believes it will, that it will lead to growing prosperity and opportunity for all. I have no reason to think he is insincere. He also believes the best way to minimize the pain is to move decision making to a more local level, a concept that is plausible and, as he says, entirely consistent with Catholic principles of solidarity and subsidiarity.

Rep. Ryan is also correct that there is room for reasonable Catholics to disagree. This a policy debate more than a moral one. Many of us can agree that the proper test is the effect on the most vulnerable among us. The question is what the effect will be, and what will be the effect of the available alternatives. What happens if we continue on our present course? What if we continue the poverty programs at current levels and raise taxes to pay for them?

The US Bishops argue that the proposed cuts fall disproportionately on the poor, that a more balanced approach would cut more unnecessary military spending and raise some taxes. Fair enough but the military is already facing some pretty drastic cutbacks and this remains a dangerous world. The bishops don't answer the question of how raising taxes promotes economic growth, or how a foundering economy affects the poor. Catholic Social Teaching does. The poor, especially the poor, if they are able are entitled  to dignified jobs that pay a living wage. Those of us in the ruling class, us voters if you will, are obligated as a matter of conscience to produce an environment that provides them.

Paul Ryan has thrown down the gauntlet with some fairly specific proposals to address some very complicated issues. He deserves a response that goes beyond moral posturing. 

Saint Adam Smith

The World Bank has released new global poverty statistics based on 2008 data. The percentage of the world's population subsisting on less than $1.25 per day dropped to 22.4%, just over half the 1990 rate. At the time of the survey there were about 1.3 billion people in extreme poverty, down about 600 million from 1990 despite a rapidly rising population. Roughly 2/3 of these people lived in Sub-Saharan Africa and the trend was downward even there, at least in percentage terms.

A single generation has seen humanitarian progress unparalleled in history. There is every reason to think these numbers can be cut in half again over the next decade or so. If they are it will represent one of the great miracles of all time. We all, if we have any concern for social justice, ought to be pulling out the stops to make sure they are.

A good place to start might be to ask why we've made so much progress. What changed in the latter part of the twentieth century that produced such phenomenal results? Would more of whatever it was do it again?

International aid programs could play a role but they are notoriously wasteful and ineffective. Fair Trade projects can be useful but I have my reservations about them and I can't imagine they could produce gains of the magnitude we are seeing. Technology is certainly a component, especially in improved crop yields from the Green Revolution, but we will have to see continued gains there just to feed a growing population.

My candidate for hero of the hour is Adam Smith. One former third world country after another has applied his theories, opened up its markets, and allowed its people to virtually leap into the middle class. To do that they have had to impose a rule of law, reduce if not eliminate corruption, and abide by international norms.

Just look at East Asia and the Pacific where progress has been the most dramatic. The poorest of the poor dropped from 56% of the population to 14%. Is there any reason to think they can't match Europe and Central Asia where the rate is a manageable .5%? Wouldn't that be a wonderful thing?

The United States has had an outsized influence on all this in no small measure because we trade more than anyone else. Since WWII we have also prospered more than most. We have our poverty and we have seen stagnation in middle class incomes over the last twenty years but nowhere do we see the grinding destitution represented by life on $1.25 a day.

I am not an Obama fan and was frankly skeptical when the president announced a goal to double exports in five years but two years on we are on track to do exactly that. Signing long stalled trade agreements with South Korea, Panama, and Columbia should be a boost for that goal . Further agreements now being negotiated could fuel economic growth for many years to the benefit of all around. The middle class income issue has to be addressed but I don't see how that happens in a period of sustained slow growth. Slow growth in trade would almost certainly mean an anemic economy. How would that help the middle class?

There are other issues to be addressed. The term free trade often fails to reflect reality and the poor often benefit least. But cutting extreme poverty around the globe by half in eighteen years is no small feat. If more trade can contribute to doing it again, and It appears it can, I'm all for it.

I haven't seen a lot of headlines on this. Maybe we could change that. Can we canonize a non Catholic?

Care for God's Creation

It is a theme of Catholic Social Teaching that stewardship of the earth is more than an Earth Day slogan. It is a fundamental requirement of our faith. Another theme of that teaching however is that the measure of every institution is whether it threatens or enhances the life and dignity of the human person, especially the poor and vulnerable.

The current environmental preoccupation with anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions and draconian proposals to reduce them fail that measure. If sea levels rise those in coastal areas will need dykes. When hurricanes strike they will need shelter. Should crops fail they will be desperate for food. All of that takes money. If billions are kept destitute they will have nowhere to turn.

Laws intended to reduce reliance on fossil fuels by making them more expensive seem designed to perpetuate poverty. Low cost alternatives are not available. Higher energy prices will necessarily result in less economic activity. Fewer people will move upward into the middle class. More children will starve. This is an ugly picture.

Other modern environmentalist ideas aren't much better. Organic farming is seeing rising popularity. It is less productive than other methods, a step backward toward the day when the planet couldn't feed itself. Now that the population is at seven billion and growing, a pair of British ethicists has suggested infanticide can be justified on the grounds new born babies haven't yet developed personalities. Apparently the notion has been met with nods of Malthusian approval from much of the world's cognoscenti. More and better fertilizers would be worse.

Then there is ethanol. Even environmentalists have realized that diversion of food crops and farm land to fuel production is a bad thing. Never mind the rippling impact on prices through the food chain, ethanol is expensive, gets terrible mileage, and does nasty things to car engines and storage facilities. At least we've dropped the subsidies. We ought to drop the mandates.

We weren't put in this garden just to keep it pristine. We are here to till it, work it, make it productive and leave it in better condition than we found it. After all, the good steward in the parable invested his talents and made them more valuable. The worthless steward gave them back exactly as he received them.

I would argue that we have generally become better stewards as we have grown more prosperous. Our air is visibly cleaner than when I was a child. So for the most part are our rivers and we don't see the farm erosion we did decades ago.

We are certainly more productive. We have seen huge gains in living standards around the world since WWII. Before Norman Borlaug and the Green Revolution came along we couldn't feed half the people we feed today.

We have more to do. We've got that dead zone at the mouth of the Mississippi. Something is creating an autism pandemic. And who can forget those awful images of filthy brown air at the Chinese Olympics.

A lot of what we need to do is political. We have the technical, physical, and financial resources to fix a some serious problems in this world if we just had the will to do it. There is no reason any child should go hungry, die from malaria, or grow up illiterate.

But wasting time, money, and effort on impractical and self defeating ideas creates formidable obstacles. Some people would dismantle the industrial revolution if they could, or at least throw up impassable barriers to entry for those still trying to come in from the cold. This will be a better world when we can get past that.