Poverty: Who To Blame (forthcoming 2021 or so)

1
Poverty Who To Blame(forthcoming 2021 or so)

• Prof. Bryan Caplan
• George Mason University
• www.bcaplan.com

2
The Book to Be

• Straddles moral philosophy and social science.
• Moral philosophy
• Flesh out a plausible moral theory of blame.
• Apply this moral theory to poverty especially
  absolute poverty.
• Why focus on absolute poverty? Think Jean
  Valjean.
• Social science
• Figure out how much of global poverty can be
  properly blamed on anyone.
• The major blameworthy causes of poverty
• Bad economic policy in the Third World.
• Bad immigration policy in the First World.
• Irresponsible behavior everywhere.

3
The Blame Game

• Suppose A has a problem. Who is to blame?
• Rather than get bogged down in moral philosophy,
  Ill just tell you my answers.
• In daily life, theyre probably your answers,
  too, despite tension with grand moral and
  political theories.
• If As problem is literally unavoidable, no one
  is to blame for it.
• If there are reasonable steps A could take or
  could have taken to avoid the problem, A is to
  blame for his own problem.
• If A could have avoided his problem by taking
  reasonable steps, but B refused to leave A alone
  to take such steps, then B is to blame for As
  problem.
• If B had nothing to do with As problem but could
  solve it at a reasonable cost, Bs probably still
  not to blame for As problem.
• Supererogation and the Good Samaritan.
• If youre curious and we have time, see Moral
  Philosophy in One Slide.

4
The Problem of Poverty

• Almost a billion human beings still live in dire
  poverty, below 1.25/day.
• The absolutely poor dont just have fewer
  goodies. They face hunger, homelessness, and
  early death.
• Thanks to hedonic adaptation, they arent as
  miserable as youd think, but absolute poverty is
  an awful problem.
• Absolute poverty is so far from our daily
  experience that we need memes to remind us how
  silly our First World Problems are.

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First World Problems
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The Blame Game and Poverty

• Who if anyones to blame for the problem of
  poverty?
• In pre-modern world, right answer was often no
  one because dire poverty is mankinds natural
  state.
• Today, in contrast, First World seems an
  existence proof that reasonable steps to avoid
  absolute poverty exist.
• Top steps, according to my provisional research
• Step 1 Third World governments should end bad
  economic policies, especially against
  multinational business.
• Step 2 First World governments should end bad
  immigration policies, especially against
  low-skilled guest workers.
• Step 3 The poor themselves should avoid
  irresponsible behavior.

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Bad Economic Policy in the Third World, I

• Economic policy is a choice, not a law of nature.
  Third World governments have long chosen badly.
• Old-school socialism, Expropriation, Autarchy
• Economic freedom in Third World remains very low,
  and very low economic freedom strongly predicts
  poverty and low growth.

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Bad Economic Policy in the Third World, II

• In two 1995 papers, Sachs and Warner find
  avoiding a short, clear list of awful economic
  policies (socialism, expropriation, autarchy) is
  a sufficient condition for solid long-run
  economic growth.
• There is not a single country in our sample
  (which covers 117 countries and approximately 90
  percent of the world's population as of 1985)
  which pursued appropriate policies during 1970-89
  and yet which had per capita growth of less than
  1.2 percent per year, and not a single qualifying
  developing country (lt4,000 per capita) which
  grew at less than 2 percent per year!
• Later research on managerial quality finds
• Large benefits of common-sense best practices.
• Government firms are very poorly managed.
• The poorer the country, the worse the management.
• EXCEPT multi-nationals the very firms
  developing countries treat with suspicion, if not
  outright hostility.

9
Bloom and Van Reenen, Why Do Management
Practices Differ across Firms and Countries?
Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2010.
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Bad Immigration Policy In the First World

• All First World countries heavily restrict
  low-skilled immigration.
• Standard estimates say open borders would DOUBLE
  world production.
• This massive increase in production (Trillion
  Dollar Bills on the Sidewalk) would swamp
  distributional effects.
• Holding skill constant, this drastically reduces
  Third World workers income, often by factor of
  10 or more.

• The logic Imagine 1M farmers stuck in
  Antarctica. What would happen if they were
  allowed to relocate?
• Antarcticans are better off and so is everyone
  who eats!
• Fear of sudden swamping misses how free market
  regulates migration.
• How does NYC keep 30M Americans from moving in?
• Diaspora dynamics reinforces this see Puerto
  Rico.

11
Irresponsible Behavior Everywhere

• Philanthropists traditionally distinguished
  between the deserving and undeserving poor.
• N.B. Deserving poor arent morally to blame
  for their poverty undeserving poor are.
• While this rhetoric has fallen out of favor, we
  still believe it. When someone pleads for your
  help, you naturally want to know why they need
  your help.
• This fits naturally into my framework. If there
  are reasonable steps A could take or could have
  taken to avoid poverty, A is part of the
  undeserving poor. Otherwise, the deserving
  poor. Reasonable steps like
• Work full-time, even if the best job you can get
  isnt fun.
• Spend your money on food and shelter before
  cigarettes and cable t.v.
• Use contraception if you cant afford a child.
• In rich countries, following these steps lets
  able-bodied adults reliably avoid absolute
  poverty.
• Average janitor maid incomegtgtpoverty line 96th
  percentile of world income distribution.
• In poor countries, responsible behavior at least
  makes absolute poverty much less likely.
• Global poor spend around 5 of income on alcohol
  and tobacco, and 10 on festivals. (Banerjee and
  Duflo 2007 see also Collins et. al, Portfolios
  of the Poor)
• Journalistic accounts.

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Blame Matters

• On a micro-level, almost everyone thinks blame
  morally matters.
• Homer Simpson parody We could sit around all
  day arguing about
• Who showed up for work.
• Who cheated on who.
• Who drank how much.
• Who crashed whose car.
• At the macro-level, though, the high-status view
  is Blame doesnt matter, just the effectiveness
  of solutions.
• My core premise blame matters. Blames affects
• What counts as a social problem.
• Whos morally obliged to change their behavior.
• Why should be shamed for failing to change their
  behavior.
• Is blame really doesnt matter, why is the
  blame game so acrimonious?
• Even thinkers who officially oppose blaming
  people for bad behavior normally continue to
  blame at least one lifestyle. Krugman
• Nobody -- not William Julius Wilson, not Larry
  Mishel, not yours truly -- denies that the bad
  effects of reduced opportunity would be much less
  if people always did what was in their best
  long-term interests. But people often don't,
  which is why loss of economic opportunity can be
  socially as well as economically destructive.
  That's not crude materialism, it's saying that
  people are human. (2012)
• Maybe I actually am right, and maybe the other
  side actually does contain a remarkable number of
  knaves and fools. (2013)

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Moral Philosophy in One Slide

• Moral realism the view that some moral claims
  are true is my starting point.
• Many smart people officially deny moral realism,
  but their arguments prove too much. Ex
• People disagree about morality.
• Moral views are influenced by culture.
• Moral views arent empirically testable.
• Many other smart people accept precisely ONE
  totally implausible moral truth Utilitarianism,
  the view that everyone should always do whatever
  maximizes aggregate happiness.
• Utilitarianism also proves too much. Ex
• Everyone with more resources than he needs to
  keep working is morally obliged to give 100 of
  his surplus income away to needier strangers.
• If you can secretly, painlessly murder a homeless
  person to harvest his organs to save two people,
  you are morally obliged to murder him.
• Every grand moral theory suffers from similarly
  compelling counter-examples.
• The alternative? Build moral theory from simple
  cases where right and wrong are obvious.
  (Micro-ethics.)