“But there seems to be little political pressure for such reforms. The costs of the social disorders that afflict poor blacks are incurred mainly by poor blacks themselves, and poor blacks do not vote very much. Moreover, blacks support the Democratic Party so overwhelmingly that Democrat politicians have little incentive to expend their necessarily limited political capital on policies that might benefit blacks at the expense of groups that are in play between the two parties, such as public school teachers”. — Richard Posner
Feb13th2008
You know, it’s going to be tough for Republicans to ever gain any black support when all they do is promote welfare for the rich. Take this recent “stimulus” package. If you have a couple of kids you’ll get a check for $1200 if you make enough money to pay taxes. Sounds pretty good right?
Well, sort of. Where does that money come from? Printing presses as well as loans from China. Printing presses dilute the value of the currency people hold, and makes people on fixed incomes have a harder time (like many blacks). In addition Republicans have added provisions to this bill that increase the value of homes bailed out of the mortgage crisis from $400K to $700K. I did a quick head calculation and figured that while I’ll get a check for $1200, the government will take from me about $4000 to fund bailouts for people with super expensive homes.
Now, when the Democrats tried to add provisions to this bill to send some money to people who don’t pay income tax (though they do pay the social security tax of course and they are taxed with inflation more heavily than the rich), the Republicans decided it was time to get all fiscally conservative. This bill was too expensive. They filibustered.
I’m no fan of this bill, but when most of the money provided is welfare for the rich and the Democrats try to just a give a little money to the poor, and suddenly the Republicans start fighting, it’s hard to imagine any informed poor person (many of whom are black) voting for people that screw them so badly. Republicans absolutely do not deserve the black vote.
Richard Posner believes that Democrats take blacks for granted, and hardly ever push legislation to help them. Meanwhile, Richard Posner (who I can only assume is some other guy who happens to have the same name as the first Richard Posner) is very critical of all of the legislation pushed by Democrats to help blacks.
Although they contradict each other, I think both Richard Posners make good points - I would like to see them debate each other in an open forum.
Jon,
AFAIK, Democrats, more than Republicans, pushed for a fiscal stimulus. They seem to be the most eagerly for it, atleast.
Second, again AFAIK, the bipartisan part was the lower income part. Republicans started filibustering when Democrats wanted to keep adding (pork) to it.
In the end though, I side with the economists, if it was up to me we wouldn’t have any fiscal stimulus, see here.
LauranceB,
My favorite part about this quote is how it explains why Democrats continue to avoid any type of real education reform.
If there is one area where charter schools, or vouchers, or any real education reform will have the largest affect it is in the ghettos - where poor blacks are overrepresented.
Yet all progress in that area has come from the right…against the wishes of Democrats. Whether were talking about charter schools or vouchers, the main proponents have been on the right and the main opponents on the left.
Democrats will continue to talk about education and its importance but will also continue to do nothing of substance to change it. Their issues will always be issues that fundamentally benefit or atleast do not harm the teachers union, be it: more funding for education, smaller classrooms (ie. more teachers), more minority teachers, and various other issues that have no (or dubious) historical record of helping.
Richard Posner explains the politics behind such a decision.
HP,
You may believe that education reform is what’s best for black Americans, and you may be right, but black Americans don’t.
On the contrary, Black Americans believe that the issues that matter most to them are minimum wage laws and other economic initiatives targeted at the less wealthy classes, and affirmative action/civil rights legislation. On each of these, it seems to me, Democrats have been responsive to what black Americans want, quite to the contrary of what Mr. Posner (at one point) claims. Indeed, if that were not the case, then Mr. Posner would have no cause to claim that those laws have done the damage that he claims they have done.
In short, Mr. Posner’s first argument - that legislation meant to help blacks has actually hurt them, effectively rebuts his second argument - that Democrats have been disinclined to push such legislation.
Posner is distinguishing between (he believes) legislation that helps (lower minimum wage, vouchers, charter schools, etc) and legislation that is more symbolic (and may have hurt) in nature. He is answering the question of why Democrats don’t support legislation that helps. Or to say it another way, he is distinguishing between legislation that is meant to help and legislation that actually helps. When you see it that way he seems consistent.
I disagree with your first comment. I don’t think black Americans don’t think vouchers are good for them.
See for example this:
In addition, I bet that if you dug deeper into the statistics of blacks and separated them by income you would see that the support for vouchers and charter schools is strongest at the lower incomes - again, where it would have the most positive effect.
I think you are being awfully generous to Mr. Posner (the one who believes that the Democratic Party is loathe to waste political capital on “black” issues).
To use one of your examples, for you and Mr. Posner to fault the Democratic Party for not wasting it’s political capital to lower minimum wages for black Americans seems ridiculous, since most black Americans want higher minimum wages. The Democrats are expending their political capital to obtain higher minimum wages, which is precisely what black Americans want - whether or not Mr. Posner thinks they should want it is irrelevant.
On the issue of vouchers, I am perfectly willing to believe that blacks are receptive to vouchers, but I don’t believe it is a high priority issue for them - or even for non-blacks, for that matter. (Present company excepted.)
It would be interesting to see how low income blacks would poll on minimum wage laws as opposed to blacks in general (who, overwhelmingly would not be affected by it either way, so you wouldn’t expect them to put much thought into its affects). Specifically a poll of black high school drop outs, ex-cons and single mothers.
Economic theory would predict that they would be against it since it adversely affects them the most (see here, here and here) but experience tells me that they would be for it. I wonder how it actually breaks down and if there is a difference, how wide.
I don’t know about polls hp, but as for the ex cons, Drop outs, and single mothers that I have helped. They are all in favor of school vouchers, and meaningful reform of the school system.