In our increasingly partisan age, it is becoming more and more uncommon to find people willing to recognize the virtues of the opposing party’s positions and admit the flaws of their own. One of the most strikingly divergent issues is over the persistence of poverty in the United States, the world’s ninth wealthiest country.
The right’s ideological commitment is to the individualistic American Dream, in which the only limit on your success is yourself, while the left emphasizes the vital role of the community in individual thriving, but "community" generally means "government." In my opinion, both world views, when held to dogmatically, end up harming vulnerable people.
Because of their commitment to the idea of America being the land of opportunity and meritocratic upward mobility, it’s easy for conservatives to attribute people’s poor life outcomes exclusively to their own unwise choices and behavior. In this way of thinking, since people’s bad choices are the sole cause of their poverty, the only reason they are still poor is that they are still making bad choices.
Liberals tend to see America as a maze of veiled discrimination and oppression of various other groups by privileged whites and their self-serving economic and political structures. Thus, it is easy for liberals to blame people’s poverty on circumstances outside of their control. In this way of thinking, people are poor because they are oppressed and discriminated against.
I propose a thought experiment to demonstrate the pitfalls of subscribing either to a monolithically individual-blaming or environment-blaming view on poverty.
Imagine coming across a person at the bottom of the economic spectrum, like your average homeless guy in Five Points, and think about the different ways the environment-blaming versus the individual-blaming views cause you to look at him.
In the purest distillation of the liberal environment-blaming view, the guy is in the place he is in because of adverse circumstances. Maybe he has been the victim of racism, discrimination for his sexual orientation or religion, a subpar education in failing inner-city schools, etc., etc. Since he is a victim of society, society (i.e. government) should do all it can to remove these obstacles and level the playing field.
Meanwhile, in the strictest iteration of the individual-blaming view held by conservatives, the only person to blame for the guy’s socioeconomic failure is himself. If the American Dream is literally true, everyone can better themselves if they’re willing to put in the work, so the guy’s lack of success must due to him not being willing to put in the work. As you can imagine, you are probably less willing to help him if you believe that his poverty is entirely his own fault.
Now imagine that you are that homeless guy. Think about the different ways you can choose to see yourself through the liberal and conservative prisms.
If you subscribe to the liberal view on poverty, you are likely to look outwards for the blame. You’re homeless because your wife divorced you and took the house or because your children look the other way when you ask for help or because your brother won’t share the inheritance or because employers aren’t respectful enough, etc. These are all reasons homeless people have given me for their state. It’s rare to find one who lays any of the blame at his own feet.
If you view your situation through a conservative mindset, however, you will be much more likely to admit you share some of the blame for your homelessness. What’s more, you will be much more likely to think you can do something about it. The flip side of believing that your own poor decisions have led to your poverty is that your good decisions can get you out of it. But if you believe that you are poor solely because of conditions outside your control, you will consider any effort to get yourself out of poverty ultimately futile and thus (probably) not even try.
As we have seen, a strictly environment-blaming view is likely to result in well-off people being more willing to help the needy and address inequality or oppression, but is also more likely to inculcate a victim mindset and learned helplessness in the poor.
A strictly individual-blaming on poverty is likely to result in people being less empathetic and willing to help the poor, but is also more likely to make poor people take responsibility for their actions and try to improve their situation.
What is the solution? As the writer of Ecclesiastes says: “It is good to grasp the one and not let go of the other.” Liberals need to accept that the most effective help for poverty is on the personal and local level rather than the federal and acknowledge that no matter how many barriers to economic mobility exist, people can still transcend their environment. Conservatives need to accept that many of these barriers still exist in American society and begin to address them, using government powers when appropriate.
So going forward, let’s tackle poverty in a way that both empowers the poor to take responsibility for their own lives and mobilizes the better-off to remove the obstacles that perpetuate poverty.