>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
In our recent book Fighting Poverty in the US and Europe: A World of Difference, Edward Glaeser and I discuss why the welfare state is so much more generous in Europe than in the US. One important explanation is the much larger racial heterogeneity to be found in the US relative to the more homogeneous Continental Western Europe.
....
It seems easier for white middle class Americans to consider the poor less worthy of government support if they think of them as different. To put it crudely, but candidly, indifference comes easy if the poor are assumed to be mostly ‘black’. This is more difficult in Norway, where rich and poor are white, often blond and tall.
....
In Europe, however, socialist and communist parties imposed electoral systems based on proportional representation precisely because they open the door to representatives of minorities (the communists and socialists themselves). The few American cities that introduced this system in the Progressive era, between 1910 and 1930, soon abandoned it — or were forced to — in order to stop the election of black representatives. Today the only US city that uses proportional representation is the leftist bastion of Cambridge Massachusetts.
Proportional representation is widely viewed as one factor that promotes the implementation of redistributive policies by providing a political voice to minorities. Cross-country evidence shows that the size of public redistributive spending increases with the degree of proportionality in the electoral system. There is more. Many redistributive programmes in the US are run by the 50 states. States that are more racially heterogeneous have smaller redistributive programmes, even controlling for their level of income. Welfare is relatively plentiful in the overwhelmingly white states of the North and Northwest (Oregon and Minnesota, to cite two examples) and in some states in New England (such as Vermont). It is lacking in the racially mixed Southeast and Southwest.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
More here:
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_25-4-2004_pg3_4This one really lays it on the line. Can you imagine the NY Times ever printing this piece?