(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)
I have an admittedly odd appreciation for left-wing protest songs. For my money (sorry baby-boomers) there is none finer than Tracy Chapman’s Talkin’ Bout a Revolution. Released in 1990, Chapman’s spare and urgent song delivers an ominous warning:
Don’t you know they’re talking about a revolution?
It sounds like a whisper
While they’re standing in the welfare lines
Crying at the doorsteps of those armies of salvation
Wasting time in unemployment lines
Sitting around waiting for a promotion
Don’t you know they’re talking about a revolution?
It sounds like a whisper
Poor people are gonna rise up
And get their share
Poor people are gonna rise up
And take what’s theirs
Although stirring, the underlying assumptions of this song are dead wrong. Income redistributing revolutions obviously have a romantic appeal to some, but rather sordid history in practice. Ask the Russians.
Anti-poverty strategies fall into two broad categories: redistribution plans and growth oriented plans. One can either try to take wealth from one group and give it to another, or else focus on creating more wealth for everyone.
Today, the growth strategy stands triumphant.
A recent World Bank report, for example, finds that we are living in a golden age of global poverty reduction. The World Bank notes that economic growth is producing a “spectacular” decline in Asian poverty. In 1990, there were over 470 million people in the East Asia and Pacific region surviving on less than $1 a day. By 2001, there were 271 million living in extreme poverty- a 42.5% decline.
The World Bank projects that by 2015 there only 19 million people will be living under such squalid conditions- a 96% decline in twenty-five years. A complete elimination of extreme poverty in this region seems entirely possible well within our lifetimes, thanks to high rates of economic growth and job creation. Free market policies are lifting millions out of poverty, in stark contrast to the catastrophic consequences of income redistribution policies of socialist and communist regimes.
Other parts of the world, notably Africa, have not been doing nearly as well. A broad consensus now exists in explaining the reason. The work of Hernando de Soto on development economics, for instance, has convinced observers from Bill Clinton and Kofi Annan on the left to Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush on the right that a system of property rights is absolutely critical to allowing economic growth and thus eliminating poverty. Why do some countries remain mired in poverty? People cannot own property such as land, they cannot reliably contract with each other. Rotating cliques of kleptocrats often take turns using government as an instrument of theft, corruption, and oppression. Poverty will not decline without addressing these fundamental flaws, regardless western aid.
One does not need to look abroad for examples of growth reducing poverty. In 2006, the Goldwater Institute released a study comparing the relative success of states in reducing poverty during the 1990s. The study found that during the 1990s, on average high tax states had increases in poverty rates during the booming economy of the 1990s, while low tax states on average saw larger than average declines.
Economic growth (or lack thereof) can quickly make a big difference in poverty statistics. Mississippi began with the highest poverty rate in the country in 1990, twice as high as California’s poverty rate (25% compared to 12.5%). Enjoying the benefits of economic growth, Mississippi’s poverty rate dropped by 20% in the 1990s, while poverty increased by 13.6% in California. If such rates were to be sustained (by no means a given) then California would overtake Mississippi in poverty rates by 2010.
As we struggle through the current financial crisis, we must take care to remember the radical success of free trade and free market polices have produced in reducing poverty. Those who promoted free trade, property rates and lower taxes weren’t just talking about a revolution: they delivered one.
Jay P. Greene's Blog 
I remember having this debate in graduate school at Oklahoma. The reason why poverty is increasing in California, I was told, was because other states lowered taxes and cut social services, forcing poor people to move to California to get help.
I responded, “Oh really, so the poor will, on average, forsake job opportunities in their local community to move all the way out to California to get a welfare check?”
They answered “yes” with all seriousness.
The only way to stop this phenomenon, they said, was to terminate competition between states on tax, regulatory, and social service issues…ie uniformity under centralized control.
I miss graduate school – didn’t learn a thing, but I do miss the debates. ^_^
I went to college with Tracy Chapman. I think she was two years ahead of me at Tufts University, but I remember hearing her play “Talking ‘Bout a Revolution” and “Fast Car” at the Campus Center and at the Women’s Collective. (Yes, I went to a concert at the Women’s Collective, but that is a story for another day).
I always thought it was pretty funny that people imagined that Tracy Chapman was a street-person or runaway, like the protagonist in “Fast Car.” It’s true that she may have come from rough circumstances in Cleveland, Ohio, but managed to gain access to an elite prep school in Connecticut and then admission to an elite college, like Tufts.
Hers doesn’t seem like the story of hopeless poverty about which she sings. Instead, her story is one of having opportunity and talent despite one’s disadvantages. But I guess it wouldn’t sell to have a song called “Talking ‘Bout a Meritocracy With Equal Opportunity.”
Yes, it’s a little-known fact that when Jay was in college he was a female communist (that is, a person who visited a female commune).
I’ve got an itch, and only more Notorious JPG visits the Commune stories can scratch it!
Great song. And, while it’s worth pointing out that your stats are a little dodgy and anecdotal, I think that we can all generally agree that the MIX of growth policies and redistirbutive policies in the United States and other developed countries have worked well together. I hardly think this means the growth strategy is triumphant. The proper balance has been triumphant (not as exciting sounding, I know).
To resuce Tracy here, I would also point out that a desire for growth can not supplant liberty. Let’s pretend Tracy is Talking about a Revolution as it relates to public education. If you are sincere, Matt, in your dress-up of the school choice debate in Rawlsian terms, then Tracy is fundamentally right. She says “people are gonna rise up and take what’s theirs.” She doesn’t say they are going to take someone else’s stuff. They are going to claim what they have a right to claim based upon a theory of justice.
The point is that not all redistibutive policies can be framed as charitable paternalistic handouts. Sometimes jusice is the issue. Luckily, a belief in justice and a desire for growth are not always incompatible. Publicly funded education, delivered on justice grounds, has greatly contributed to the economic growth we all enjoy.
Bottom line: Leave Tracy alone!! (said in the voice of Chris Crocker).
I think theories of social justice can be very dangereous. Everyone supports “justice” but “social justice” implies justice for groups rather than individuals, which seems to me to be inherently problematic. An individual is a member of any number of groups, and thus being “socially just” will often conflict with being just to individuals, which is what I think of as true justice.
Is this comment directed my way? I didn’t say anything about social justice or group justice, nor would I.
Are you talking to me?!?! (said in the voice of Robert Deniro).
I think that a theory of social justice is embedded in the song. It could be the case that poor people are gonna rise up and take…equality of opportunity (?) but that doesn’t seem to be what she’s getting at in the lyrics.