Every now and then, a columnist I admire writes something that makes me stop cold. David Brooks did that on September 5, 2025, with his essay Why I Am Not a Liberal.
Brooks is often thoughtful. He looks at evidence carefully and makes conservatives and liberals alike rethink their assumptions. That’s rare. But in this column, he knocks down a straw man, swaps his argument halfway through, and leaves the reader with conclusions that don’t hold.
The Straw Man
Brooks points to studies where very poor families received an extra few hundred dollars a month. The extra money helped with bills, food, and rent. But, he notes, it didn’t magically transform kids’ language skills, health, or parents’ career prospects.
Here’s the problem: who ever thought even a significant, temporary cash payment would do all that?
When people are deep in poverty, a modest transfer doesn’t rewrite their life story. It helps them get through the week. It keeps food on the table, the lights on, and maybe a roof overhead. To demand it deliver sweeping transformations is like giving someone a glass of water and faulting it for not ending a drought.
The Bait and Switch
Critics like Brooks say liberals think cash is the only solution. That’s the bait. Then comes the switch: when small checks don’t fix everything, they claim the whole idea of extra income security is a failure.
But nobody seriously argues that cash alone is enough. It’s the foundation — the first step. Without it, nothing else works. Add training, health care, housing, and education — now you have a ladder out of poverty.
The KPI Trap
Brooks also treats cash like a business investment, measured against “key performance indicators.” Did it boost employment? Did it change behavior? Did it show “return on investment”?
But that misses the point. The first purpose of income security isn’t to check boxes on a spreadsheet. It’s to keep people alive, fed, and housed. Everything else comes after.
The Conservative Appeal
To his credit, Brooks is right about one thing: escaping poverty isn’t only about money. Character, health, education, and resilience matter too. Conservatives rightly celebrate those who beat the odds.
But let’s be clear: building policy around the rare bootstrap story is no way to run programs or a poverty reduction strategy. For every rags-to-riches tale, there are thousands of families crushed by rules that claw back earnings, penalize savings, restrict training, and limit family help.
That’s not “lifting people out of poverty.” That’s keeping them in it.
The Reality
Brooks writes, “We are pretty good at transferring money to the poor.” We aren’t. The system is full of traps:
- Earn a bit more? Your benefits are clawed back.
- Try to train for better work? Denied.
- Save money? Cut off.
- Get real help from family? Penalized.
- Share housing? Benefits reduced.
Everyday people know the basics of escaping poverty: get a job, get training, save, rely on family, share costs. Yet our rules punish each one.
The Takeaway
Liberals sometimes over-promise what cash can do. Conservatives sometimes over-praise grit and ignore structural barriers. The truth is in between. Income security is the floor, not the ceiling. Without it, nothing else works. With it, people can climb higher — but only if the ladders aren’t kicked away by bad policy.
David Brooks, your column reminded me why I am not a conservative. But it also reminds us all: when it comes to poverty, we need fewer straw men, less bait-and-switch, and more honesty about what it takes to build real opportunity.