Race and the Welfare State (Or, why Europeans live better than Americans)

[dumpster_baby]

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In our recent book Fighting Poverty in the US and Europe: A World of Difference, Edward Glaeser and I discuss why the welfare state is so much more generous in Europe than in the US. One important explanation is the much larger racial heterogeneity to be found in the US relative to the more homogeneous Continental Western Europe.
....

It seems easier for white middle class Americans to consider the poor less worthy of government support if they think of them as different. To put it crudely, but candidly, indifference comes easy if the poor are assumed to be mostly ‘black’. This is more difficult in Norway, where rich and poor are white, often blond and tall.

....

In Europe, however, socialist and communist parties imposed electoral systems based on proportional representation precisely because they open the door to representatives of minorities (the communists and socialists themselves). The few American cities that introduced this system in the Progressive era, between 1910 and 1930, soon abandoned it — or were forced to — in order to stop the election of black representatives. Today the only US city that uses proportional representation is the leftist bastion of Cambridge Massachusetts.

Proportional representation is widely viewed as one factor that promotes the implementation of redistributive policies by providing a political voice to minorities. Cross-country evidence shows that the size of public redistributive spending increases with the degree of proportionality in the electoral system. There is more. Many redistributive programmes in the US are run by the 50 states. States that are more racially heterogeneous have smaller redistributive programmes, even controlling for their level of income. Welfare is relatively plentiful in the overwhelmingly white states of the North and Northwest (Oregon and Minnesota, to cite two examples) and in some states in New England (such as Vermont). It is lacking in the racially mixed Southeast and Southwest.
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More here:
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_25-4-2004_pg3_4


This one really lays it on the line. Can you imagine the NY Times ever printing this piece?

[dumpster_baby]

1. a link of the professor's papers published on the web

http://post.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/alesina/papers.html

[bread_and_roses]

2. Interesting analysis

and definitely worth thinking about. Certainly, in this country, the effects of racism are so pervasive that they can never be left out of any analysis. IMO, the same thing the author predicts for Europe and welfare has happened here in regard to HIV/AIDS. As the epidemic became increasingly concentrated in populations of people of color and intravenous drug users (and their partners) it has dropped off the "sexy" cause radar and its' service network is in constant jeopardy of losing funding. I believe racism plays a large part in this, as in the utter abandonment of our inner cities to third world conditions.

[pop goes the weasel]

3. that's interesting but

it doesn't seem that the professor is aware of yet another important aspect of race in regards to welfare.

Welfare benefits are distributed so as to cause as much racial animosity as possible. It may not be "official" policy, but the same stories keep reappearing over the decades and in various states, of white applicants being told that some particular benefit is for blacks or hispanics only. Now, why would the officials in charge say things like that to people who qualify for the two-bit assistance that is available? Seems to me there is only one reason, and that is to create shock troops of racism by turning poor people against each other on the basis of race. (I recently had a talk with a black friend who has noticed the same thing; we were relieved to find out that we weren't just imagining something and that we each had similar impressions.)

When Europe starts down this same path, I bet dollars to donuts that the same thing will happen there. Elites have always preferred to redirect the resentment of the poor away from them and onto some subset of "others."

[dumpster_baby]

6. Yup. Racial wedge is the plan, and has been for decades

We can must address the "racial wedge/welfare state killer" problem before we have a hope of solving it.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of "good democrats" knees jerk at light speed when this subject is even broached.

[Classical_Liberal]

4. Yes I can imagine the NY Times posting this neoliberal tripe

What the professor overlooks is that coverage of the civil rights movement increased sympathy toward the poor including blacks. We need more coverage of the poor. That should do the trick in both Europe and America. The press in Europe isn't as crappy as it is here, and the education system is better. Also America had a race problem from the very beginning.

Basically the professor hates welfare, and is crying crocidile tears if you read the last line.

[leesa]

5. Or, it could be that they don't waste 50% of their money on the military

Our bloated military is dragging us down.

[dumpster_baby]

7. well, that is definitely part of it

But the situation is more complicated than that