THE MOLECULE OF MORE
These results don’t mean that conservatives care about the poor
more than liberals do. Instead, it may be that, like Albert Einstein, lib-
erals are more comfortable focusing on humanity rather than humans.
Liberals advocate for laws that provide assistance to the poor. Com-
pared to charitable giving, legislation is a more hands-off approach to
the problem of poverty. This reflects our often-observed difference in
focus: dopaminergic people are more interested in action at a distance
and planning, while people with high H&N levels tend to focus on things
close at hand. In this case, the government acts as the agent of liberal
compassion and also serves as a buffer between the benefactor and the
beneficiary. Resources for the poor are provided by bureaucracies that
are funded collectively by millions of individual taxpayers.
Which is better: policy or charity? It depends on how you look at
it. As one would expect, the dopaminergic approach, policy, maximizes
resources that are made available to the poor. Maximizing resources
is what dopamine does best. In 2012, federal, state, and local govern-
ments spent about $1 trillion on antipoverty programs. That’s approx-
imately $20,000 for every poor person in America. Charitable giving,
on the other hand, was only $360 billion. The dopaminergic approach
provided almost three times as much money.
On the other hand, the value of help is more than dollars and
cents. The here-and-now emotional impact of impersonal government
assistance is different from a personal connection with a church or
charity. Charity is more flexible than law, so it’s better able to focus on
the unique needs of real individuals as opposed to abstractly defined
groups. People who work for private charities typically come in close
contact with the people they help, often actual physical contact. This
intimate relationship allows them to get to know the people they help,
and individualize the assistance that’s provided. In this way, material
resources can be augmented with emotional support, such as helping
the able-bodied move toward employment or, more generally, show-
ing the underserved that another person really does care about them
as individuals. Many charities stress personal responsibility and good
character as the most effective combatants of poverty. This approach