A Cure Worse Than the Disease
Poverty, as Glenn Beck notes, is an issue that unites us all, at least on the surface. It’s not a political condition, he says; it’s a human condition.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly a third of the residents in those cities [Detroit, Michigan and Buffalo, New York] are living beneath the poverty line, the highest rates among large cities in the entire country.
No matter what side of the political aisle you’re on, that is nothing short of appalling. Yet if you ask people what we should do about it, you’ll probably hear answers that inexplicably break down right along party lines.
Indeed. Instead, we should see what works and do it. Additionally, we should see what doesn’t work and stop doing it. I mean, if providing the same solution for decades hasn’t helped, it’s time for a radically different answer.
But as Glenn observes, there are some places that will stick with their solution through thick and thin (and failure).
Is there a perfect answer? Probably not. But what bothers me is that people stubbornly stick to their solution, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that it’s not working.
For example, Detroit, whose mayor has been indicted on felony charges, hasn’t elected a Republican mayor since 1961. Buffalo has been even more stubborn. It started putting a Democrat in office back in 1954, and it hasn’t stopped since.
Unfortunately, those two cities may be alone at the top of the poverty rate list, but they’re not alone in their love for Democrats. Cincinnati, Ohio (third on the poverty rate list), hasn’t had a Republican mayor since 1984. Cleveland, Ohio (fourth on the list), has been led by a Democrat since 1989. St. Louis, Missouri (sixth), hasn’t had a Republican since 1949, Milwaukee, Wisconsin (eighth), since 1908, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (ninth), since 1952 and Newark, New Jersey (10th), since 1907.
The only two cities in the top 10 that I didn’t mention (Miami, Florida, and El Paso, Texas) haven’t had Republicans in office either — just Democrats, independents or nonpartisans.
Over the past 50 years, the eight cities listed above have had Republican leadership for a combined 36 years. The rest of the time — a combined 364 years — they’ve been led by Democrats.
The same old welfare programs have basically failed these cities, but the residents keep re-electing the same party with the same tired ideas, where saying you care trumps actual results.
Glenn starts his commentary with a quote from a guy with another idea for combating poverty.
I think the best way of doing good to the poor is not making them easy in poverty but leading them or driving them out of it.
Radical, yes, but he’d never get elected mayor of any of these cities. It’s too bad, too, because Benjamin Franklin was quite a guy. I hear he had something to do with the founding of our country.
Filed under: Democrats • Doug • Economics & Taxes • Politics
Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!
Doug:
I’m not aware of structure of the states those cities are in, but usually mayors have little to do with the types of welfare available or opportunities for employment for citizens. So is there some point you are trying to make?. Do republicans even try to run for office in those places?
I’ll speak to how it’s worked here in Atlanta; Democratic mayor and Democratic legislature for years. We finally got a Republican mayor in the last election, which was what you might call a “lagging indicator”, as the state legislature had been slowly becoming more and more Republican over decades.
So the party of the mayor almost always reflected the politics of the legislature, and most certainly the politics of the city council, all in a general sense.
The point Beck is making, and I concur with, is that the party of “caring”, when they are in charge, aren’t making the situation better. The welfare state is deeply ingrained in our society these days, and Republicans who try to buck that failed system get called on it because they don’t “care”, as if handouts are the one and only way to deal with poverty.
Mr. Franklin would have a different opinion, but he’d get run out of town on a rail for not “caring”.
I must point out that Glenn Beck’s article cannot be taken very seriously because the argument is a logical fallacy. He cannot reach the conclusion he has found based on the information he presented to us. Let me explain.
Glenn takes a look at major US cities with the highest rates of poverty and sees that most are run by Democrats. That’s fine.
But did he look at the wealthiest US cities? No. If he did, he would find that in the ten wealthiest American cities (according to the US Census Bureau), 8 out of 10 are run by Democrats:
(populations over 250,000)
1 San Jose, CA
2 Anchorage, AK
3 San Francisco, CA
4 Virginia Beach, VA
5 San Diego, CA
6 Anaheim, CA
7 Raleigh, NC
8 Seattle, WA
9 Washington, DC
10 Honolulu, HI
San Diego and Anaheim are governed by Republicans. The rest are governed by Democrats. If Beck researched a little more thoroughly, he would also find that most major US cities are run by Democrats.
Beck’s “research” does not have the evidence to support his argument. How can Democrats be blamed for poverty if they also control the wealthiest? Not to mention most major cities?
This is a common problem in argumentation called bias on the dependent variable. It’s done most commonly by lazy hacks. Unfortunately, most people don’t recognize it.
Thanks, Jordan. I figured that to be true when I read that article, but did not want to do the research to uncover that bit of misdirection.
Jordan, you make a very fair point. But let’s look at some other data that tends to buttress Beck’s argument.
I did my own bit of research this morning on the 10 cities with the least poverty, and the parties of their mayors. Here’s what I found:
1: Plano, TX – Republican
2: Virginia Beach, VA – Democrat
3: Anchorage, AK – Democrat
4: Honolulu, HI – Democrat
5: San Jose, CA – Democrat
6: Mesa, AZ – Republican
7: San Francisco, CA – Democrat
8: Colorado Springs, CO – Republican
9: Las Vegas, NV – Democrat
10: San Diego, CA – Republican
4 out of the 10 cities with the lowest poverty levels have Republican mayors (and the mayor of Honolulu calls himself a “moderate”). And as already noted, 0 of the bottom 10 are governed by Republican mayors.
Given the fact, that you note, that most cities are run by Democrats than Republicans, this jump from 0 to 4 in the most-vs-least poverty lists is, I’d say, significant.
Not only that, but you’ll notice a lot of overlap between this list and your list of the wealthiest cities; 6 appear on both lists. In those cities, then, the rich are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer; something Democrats say they work hard to fight against, and which they constantly accuse Republican policies of doing. Yet 5 of the 6 cities in both lists are led by Democrats.
One of Beck’s points that I did not elaborate on is that the cities with the highest poverty rates are not just run by Democrats now. They’ve been run by Democrats for between 20 and 100 years (and for some, the last Republican mayor was a hiccup in an otherwise Democratic winning streak).
No, Beck’s article wasn’t a treatise on statistical correlations. And I highly doubt that most Democrats would even give the time of day to an article that pointed to some of their sacred cows as the culprit. (The minimum wage is a big cause of lost jobs, while enriching union jobs pegged to it.) What it does is hopefully get you thinking. With Democrats running so much big-city government, why are things still so bad there?
Maybe it’s time for real change.