The American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution just released Opportunity, Responsibility, and Security, a report on how to reduce poverty and inequality in America. I was one of fifteen experts on the working group that drafted the report. Our recommendations deserve serious attention. We trust that they will motivate a new assault on America’s leading social problems. Equally significant, however, is the fact that we were able to agree upon this report. How did a diverse group of experts — who normally disagree — manage to do this? The answers suggest why our political leaders fail to do the same — and how they might do better. Several factors were important:
Values. The project was first conceived by Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist interested in the moral basis of agreement and disagreement. At his suggestion, the working group began its deliberations with values, which generally get little attention in policy debates. We agreed that social policy serves three main goals: opportunity, the idea that society must ensure the less privileged have a fair chance to “make it;” responsibility, that is, the principle that people must do the best they can to get ahead without government aid; and security, meaning the idea that those who cannot cope on their own deserve support. We agreed that our proposals must serve all these values or at least not violate them. Thus, conservatives could not promote just responsibility, by demanding more self-reliance from the poor, nor could liberals favor just opportunity and security, by building up benefit programs, as they commonly do. Morally, it was all three of these values or none.
Expertise. This was a highly expert group, and that also promoted consensus. Senator Pat Moynihan famously said that everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts, and this became our mantra. We had all read most of the same research studies and evaluations about why poverty and inequality exist and what might help solve them. Our report summarizes these facts up front. That agreement made it hard to argue for extreme positions. Very clearly, America’s social problem is deep-seated; it will yield only to a sustained commitment drawing on the best ideas of left and right as well as the private sector.
Continue reading at The Hill.
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