February 16, 2012
Moochers Against
Welfare
By PAUL KRUGMAN, February
16, 2012
First, Atlas shrugged.
Then he scratched his head in puzzlement.
Modern Republicans are
very, very conservative; you might even (if you were Mitt Romney) say, severely
conservative. Political scientists who use Congressional votes to measure such
things find that the current G.O.P. majority is the most conservative since
1879, which is as far back as their estimates go.
And what these severe
conservatives hate, above all, is reliance on government programs. Rick
Santorum declares that President Obama is getting America hooked on “the
narcotic of dependency.” Mr. Romney warns that government programs “foster
passivity and sloth.” Representative Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House
Budget Committee, requires that staffers read Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged,” in
which heroic capitalists struggle against the “moochers” trying to steal their
totally deserved wealth, a struggle the heroes win by withdrawing their productive
effort and giving interminable speeches.
Many readers of The
Times were, therefore, surprised to learn, from an excellent article published
last weekend, that the regions of America most hooked on Mr. Santorum’s
narcotic — the regions in which government programs account for the largest
share of personal income — are precisely the regions electing those
severe conservatives. Wasn’t Red America supposed to be the land of
traditional values, where people don’t eat Thai food and don’t rely on
handouts?
The article made its
case with maps showing the distribution of dependency, but you get the same
story from a more formal comparison. Aaron Carroll of Indiana University tells
us that in 2010, residents of the 10 states Gallup ranks as “most conservative”
received 21.2 percent of their income in government transfers, while the number
for the 10 most liberal states was only 17.1 percent.
Now, there’s no
mystery about red-state reliance on government programs. These states are
relatively poor, which means both that people have fewer sources of income
other than safety-net programs and that more of them qualify for “means-tested”
programs such as Medicaid.
By the way, the same
logic explains why there has been a jump in dependency since 2008. Contrary to
what Mr. Santorum and Mr. Romney suggest, Mr. Obama has not radically expanded
the safety net. Rather, the dire state of the economy has reduced incomes and
made more people eligible for benefits, especially unemployment benefits.
Basically, the safety net is the same, but more people are falling
into it.
But why do regions that rely on
the safety net elect politicians who want to tear it down? I’ve seen three main explanations.
First, there is Thomas
Frank’s thesis in his book “What’s the Matter With Kansas?”: working-class Americans are induced to vote against their own interests by the G.O.P.’s exploitation of social issues. And it’s true that, for example,
Americans who regularly attend church are much more likely to vote
Republican, at any given level of income, than those who don’t.
Still, as Columbia
University’s Andrew Gelman points out, the really striking red-blue voting
divide is among the affluent: High-income residents of red states are
overwhelmingly Republican; high-income residents of blue states only mildly
more Republican than their poorer neighbors. Like Mr. Frank, Mr. Gelman invokes
social issues, but in the opposite direction. Affluent voters in the
Northeast tend to be social liberals who would benefit from tax cuts but
are repelled by things like the G.O.P.’s war on contraception.
Finally, Cornell
University’s Suzanne Mettler points out that many beneficiaries of government
programs seem confused about their own place in the system. She tells us that 44 percent of Social
Security recipients, 43 percent of those receiving unemployment benefits,
and 40 percent of those on Medicare say that they “have not used a
government program.”
Presumably, then,
voters imagine that pledges to slash government spending mean cutting programs
for the idle poor, not things they themselves count on. And this is a confusion
politicians deliberately encourage. For example, when Mr. Romney responded to
the new Obama budget, he condemned Mr. Obama for not taking on entitlement
spending — and, in the very next breath, attacked him for cutting Medicare.
The truth, of course,
is that the vast bulk of entitlement spending goes to the elderly, the
disabled, and working families, so any significant cuts would have to fall
largely on people who believe that they don’t use any government program.
The message I take
from all this is that pundits who describe America as a fundamentally
conservative country are wrong. Yes, voters sent some severe
conservatives to Washington. But those voters would be both shocked and angry
if such politicians actually imposed their small-government agenda.
