Stephen C. McGuire:

For the past two election cycles we have been barraged with the claim that the Republican Party is waging a war on women. While that campaign tactic fell flat this year, there is a war being waged that we should all take note of. It is the Democrats’ war on the poor.

This war is years in the making and is composed of a well-intentioned but hapless series of failed liberal social engineering experiments.

The forced busing of school children in the 1970s was intended to foster integration and better race relations. In reality, it led to the massive migration of middle-class whites and blacks to the suburbs. The result was urban decay and struggling public school systems.

Urban renewal programs were another attempt at government-directed neighborhood transformation. Within a few decades, many of the housing projects developed under these programs devolved into crime-ridden, gang-infested, high-rise ghettos that were ultimately torn down.

One need not even mention our massive, soul-crushing welfare system that so often traps recipients in a cycle of poverty.

All told, more than $16 trillion has been spent by the federal government over the last 50 years to try to coax people out of poverty by ladling them with government largess. The Democrats’ massively expensive War on Poverty was fought — and poverty won.

Today’s misguided initiative is a move by Democrats across the nation to legislate a massive increase in the minimum wage. Like the progressive policies of the past, this is viewed as a compassionate measure, helpful to the poor.

In reality, the current minimum wage proposal would cut off the lowest rungs of the economic ladder, pricing many unskilled workers out of the market. It would continue a move toward automating labor-intensive activities and bankrupt small businesses that would be unable to pass on the higher labor costs to their customers. How deep is the market for a $10 Big Mac?

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that increasing the minimum wage to the levels currently under discussion would result in a loss of 500,000 jobs.

The fundamental flaw in the Democrats’ approach to the alleviation of poverty is that it rests on a government-centric approach. They view wealth as a static fixed pool that just needs to be divided up more “fairly.”

Not only do the Democrats’ policies for serving the poor actually trap many of the poor in poverty and dependency, but the policies also have a divisive effect on society. The natural reaction of those who receive voluntary private charity is gratitude toward their benefactors. It can engender a desire to work hard to become self-sufficient.

With government-sponsored welfare, taxpayers are often frustrated by being compelled to pay into programs they believe to be ineffective, if not harmful. The recipients view their benefits not as charity but as an entitlement. This is highly corrosive of the social cohesion.

Dispose of the canard that Democrats care deeply about the poor and Republicans are hardhearted misers who care only for the rich. A large body of academic research exists demonstrating that those who self-identify as “conservative” donate substantially more of their time, talent and treasure to charitable causes than do those who self-identify as “liberal.” Even excluding donations to religious institutions, conservatives give more generously to secular causes than do liberals.

We all care about alleviating poverty. The crucial question is determining what set of policies will be most effective.

The trillions of dollars that have been spent on the War on Poverty, it is written, have accomplished exactly as much as spending nothing on that so-called war would have accomplished. When people refuse to improve their behavior — personal habits that succeed in the workplace such as showing up on time for work and working hard, or not getting yourself pregnant when the father is nowhere in the picture — nothing government does will improve things for the poor.