THE UNDESERVING POOR:

Poverty, race influence society's generosity (Rick Wilson, 9/28/08, Charleston Gazette)

The issue of race has cast a long and often ugly shadow over American life. That's hardly news, especially in a state that was born out of a Civil War sparked by racially based slavery. But some serious economic research has found that the effects of race and racism extend farther that we might suspect.

Many observers have noticed that the capitalist economies of Western Europe tend to spend more public resources than the United States on social programs such as old age, disability and survivor's pensions; family and child benefits; and unemployment and labor market programs. These nations also have some form of universal health care, although they spend less of their gross domestic product (GDP) on this than we do.

Harvard economists Alberto Alesina and Edward Glaeser, and Bruce Sacerdote of Dartmouth College investigated this issue. In 2001, they published a paper titled "Why Doesn't the United States Have a European-Style Welfare State?" (Note: the term "welfare state" as used here doesn't refer simply to programs that attempt to assist the poorest families but rather a range of programs and benefits across the population.)

They found that many things influenced these differences, such as different attitudes about inequality, different histories, economic and constitutional factors. But one of the biggest factors is the issue of race.

As they put it, "Racial discord plays a critical role in determining beliefs about the poor." Since members of racial minority groups are often seen as more likely to be poor, public policies that would reduce poverty are seen as primarily benefitting those groups - even though it doesn't really work out that way in practice.

This is one of the unacknowledged factors driving the Right's eagerness to punish sub-prime lending, which is why the same folks who were most vehemently opposed to the immigration bill are in full throat again.

MORE:
Kill the bailout: Illegal immigration and the mortgage mess (Michelle Malkin, September 24, 2008)

[F]ault lies at the feet of the crime-enabling banking industry and the ethnic lobbyists and the illegal alien-enabling Bush administration.

They screwed us. Now, they want us to fork over a trillion dollars.

Screw them.

Kill this bailout.

Is Karl Rove to Blame for the Mortgage Meltdown? (Steve Sailer, September 28, 2008, V-Dare)

[T]he foremost long-term goal of President George W. Bush's political strategist was to bring Hispanics into the Republican Party.

As you'll recall, Rove's best-known tactic for trying to appeal to Latino voters was repeatedly pushing "comprehensive immigration reform" (i.e., an amnesty for illegal immigrants).

Rove, though had other arrows in his quiver. One of his plans was to turn Hispanics into Republicans by providing them with loose credit so they could become homeowners.

(Rove's belief that there's a connection between being able to afford a home and voting Republican is not irrational. As I've documented since 2004, states with higher degrees of "affordable family formation" vote Republican more than states where people can less afford to buy houses. That's why the Republican "Red States" tend to be inland, where land for housing is abundant and cheap, while Democratic "Blue States" tend to have expensive housing because oceans or Great Lakes restrict suburban expansion.)

Thus, George W. Bush made several speeches rallying enthusiasm for his October 15, 2002 White House Conference on Increasing Minority Homeownership. For instance, there was his classic Bushian effort on June 18, 2002:

The goal is, everybody who wants to own a home has got a shot at doing so. The problem is we have what we call a homeownership gap in America. Three-quarters of Anglos own their homes, and yet less than 50 percent of African Americans and Hispanics own homes. … So I've set this goal for the country. We want 5.5 million more homeowners by 2010 -- million more minority homeowners by 2010. (Applause.) …

The five and a half million marginal minority homeowners that Bush bunglingly called for is a big number. At a mortgage of, say, modest $127,000 each, that would add up to, let me check my calculator, oh, $700 billion. Well, whaddaya know …

Bush rattled on:

I'm going to do my part by setting the goal, by reminding people of the goal, by heralding the goal, and by calling people into action, both the federal level, state level, local level, and in the private sector. (Applause.) …

And so what are the barriers that we can deal with here in Washington?

Now that you've asked, Mr. President, allow me to point out that the number one barrier to minority homeownership is that many American minorities don't earn enough money to be able to afford their own home.

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 29, 2008 8:34 PM