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Washington, DC – Earlier this week, American Idea Foundation President Paul Ryan joined the American Enterprise Institute’s podcast: Banter, to discuss how capitalism has done more to lift people out of poverty than any other economic system in history. Ryan, who is a distinguished visiting fellow in the practice of public policy at AEI, shared his thoughts on why millennials are attracted to socialism and what can be done to educate them on the perils of this political and economic theory. He also discussed how to address issues like income inequality and poverty.

The full podcast is available here and excerpts of Ryan’s responses follow.

Legislative efforts to expand opportunity and upward mobility:

“There are three laws that I worked to pass in my later years in government, when I was Speaker of the House, that work on these things. One was Opportunity Zones, which is a way of getting private capital into the poorest communities in America to revitalize communities. The second one was something called Social Impact Bonds, which uses private-sector solutions to seek to solve social problems. And then the Evidence Act, which is focused on Evidence-Based Policymaking and opening up the federal poverty programs for analysts to use data and analytics to go with what works best. My point there is it ends up validating that our principles work, that personal responsibility and incentives do matter. And these are new policies we put in place, or that the ink is barely drying on these laws, that I think will take the center-right principles and apply them to the problems of the day and help us get some serious profound results.”

Countering socialism’s rising popularity among younger Americans:

“The current generation has what I would call a very historically ignorant, romantic attachment to socialism. It’s just basic emotions and altruism, that is how I see it…. It’s a soft form of collectivism, so it just seems “cool.” I don’t think [most younger Americans] even really know what it actually is.

“But so, it definitely is in vogue…. We have work to do – and this is what my American Idea Foundation does and this is what I’m working on here at AEI – to make sure that young people have the scales lifted from their eyes so that they can see the perils and the pitfalls of socialism and understand that democratic capitalism, free enterprise, whatever you want to call it, is the best possible tool for upward mobility, for fighting poverty, for human beings that man has ever created….”

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“Capitalism is the best possible weapon against poverty and for upward mobility than any other system that humans can organize themselves upon.”

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“I really do believe there is a really good case for very classical liberalism among our nation’s youth. They just don’t quite see it yet. Their own personal experiences and preferences and needs and wants all speak to freedom of choice, free self-determination, and yet, they’re going to vote for politicians who want to deny them those things in all these basic areas? It doesn’t jive. It doesn’t fit.”

On Universal Basic Income:

“I understand the intellectual appeal. I do not support the idea because I think it lacks an aspect of self-worth and self and personal responsibility. I think it lacks a proper incentive structure for people to move themselves up and out in life and to feel that fulfillment in their lives. So, it’s sort of a hollow, materialistic solution to what is a bigger, deeper problem.”

On capitalism growing the economic pie and promoting opportunity for all:

“My elevator pitch on that is. What do you want? Do you want a government designed to promote equality of opportunity, or do you want a government designed to promote equality of outcome?

“These are two very different kinds of governments. Our system is designed for equality of opportunity. A socialist system is designed for equality of outcomes. And my pitch to young people is: When you have to have the government as your centerpiece in life, it has to be the core of everything, and take it from me – someone who spent 25 years in government, 20 of them in elected government – it’s not going to be done so equitably. It’s going to be cronyism, corruption, and, and you’ll have even greater disparity. You’ll have the super-rich, the super-poor, and very little in between. Again, look at countries like Venezuela.

“And so, the best solution to income disparity is more economic wealth, more upward mobility, better education, turn on the escalators of opportunity and of upward mobility. That is how you tackle the wealth gap. You bridge the wealth gap by growing the pie and making sure that everyone can have access to bigger slices of an ever-growing pie, versus trying to have government we distribute slices of a shrinking pie.”

Washington, DC – This morning at a symposium on the “Next Generation of Evidence,” hosted by the Brookings Institution, former Speaker Paul Ryan shared his thoughts on the Evidence-Based Policymaking Commission, recognizing the work of Co-Chairs Ron Haskins and Katherine Abraham and highlighting the work of the American Idea Foundation to expand opportunity.

Excerpts of Speaker Ryan’s remarks follow.

On the Evolution of Data and the Success of the Evidence Based Policymaking Commission:

“A few years back, we were getting frustrated in Congress about the lack of evidence in policymaking. Then, we were kind of getting stuck in ideological arguments on how best to fix problems and fight poverty through programs that were already implemented because we had very little data to prove what was working and what was not working. We saw what happened when we actually had measurements, and we felt that was the future. So, we decided to form a commission and I recached over to a friend of mine, Patty Murray, to work on legislation that ultimately got passed.”

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“[The Evidence Based Policymaking Commission] is a commission that actually produced a very good report, and we put much of their recommendations into law and so, all I want to say is that I salute the next generation that is assembled here today to promote evidence-based policymaking. This is the future, the sort of R&D factory for effective policy that we were envisioning. And as a former politician – or as a recovering politician, I should say – this work helps leapfrog partisan, ideological arguments and helps us get to what works: Where is the evidence? How do we make a difference? How do we effectively steward taxpayer dollars? And so, I’m very excited about what you’re all doing. I’m very excited about the next generation of evidence-based policymaking, and I’m very excited that Ron and Catherine Abraham, on behalf of the commission, are going to receive this award.”

How the American Idea Foundation will utilize Data and evidence:

“In my vocational portfolio, there are three things that I am doing: I am working on these issues at AEI, I have my foundation, and I also teach college at Notre Dame. I work with a department there called LEO, the Lab of Economic Opportunity, and we’re doing RCT’s with different charities and it was one of the economists there who gave me the idea of the commission.”

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“What I have learned in my travels across the country and learning about this space was that there really wasn’t a good connector of the grassroots poverty fighters on the ground — who are well-meaning and hard-working, but don’t have access to capital or to academics. They want to do RCT’s and help people but don’t really have access to the other side so that is what the American Idea Foundation is basically going to be. It’s going to be a connector to try and connect all these pieces so that we can have poverty solutions that are proven and effective, and that can be scalable and replicated.

A Role for Government and Civil Society in Expanding Opportunity:

“I think there’s a huge space for civil society and philanthropy and the private sector to play. Absolutely. They’re going to try some innovative ideas that may not be right for government at the moment, and that’s where philanthropy can come in and show programs that actually work and are effective. Philanthropy is probably the key piece of all of this because it can finance programs that work.

“But I also think now, with that next generation coming up in evidence-based policymaking, it is going to be so much easier to move the needle on poverty and to scale programs that are effective. I think that’s going to inform public policymakers, so that public policy is not going in the wrong direction but in the same direction.”

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“There’s going to be clearly a role for government. [It will be] more of a supply line role, than a frontline role…. What I do not think should be done is one [government] replacing the other [civil society]. I think they should come with each other.”

Washington, DC – Last month, former House Speaker Paul Ryan took part in a conversation moderated by Ron Haskins, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, focused on increasing the federal government’s use of data and analytics to promote evidence-based public policies.

Video of Speaker Ryan’s conversation, which was part of the 2019 GovDATAx conference, is accessible here. Excerpts of Speaker Ryan’s remarks follow.

Linking grassroots organizations with data scientists and policymakers:
“I spent the last six years running around the country, studying poverty, and basically spending time with grassroots poverty-fighters who are doing incredible work, but they’re sort of out there on islands and out on their own. And it occurred to me that so much more can be done if the right resources can come to bear, but also rigorous data and evidence. If you can join those things, you can make a huge difference in the fight on poverty. That’s what my Foundation, which I just launched yesterday, does.”

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“The American Idea Foundation is focused on connecting the dots, connecting the grassroots poverty fighters who have high charisma and high credibility. They know what they’re doing, but they don’t have resources and they don’t have the access to the rigorous data of the academics, and that can really help them build models that are scalable and replicable, and ultimately, that will help you really move the needle on poverty. So, my foundation is going to work on just connecting these dots, so we can really move the needle.”

Rethinking how the federal government measures success in fighting poverty:
“For 50-plus years, we basically have measured our success in the War on Poverty based on effort: What programs do we have? How many programs do we have? How much money? How many people are on the programs? We have not measured our success on outcomes or results, frankly. because we couldn’t measure that. Now we can. And so, we’re in the first generation and the passage of this [Evidence Based Policymaking] law is the beginning, not the end of this process. It’s just the beginning.”

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“Whether it’s working on the issue of recidivism and getting people back into communities, lifelong learning in the 21st century and closing the skills gap, which is extremely important for our economy, or like I said in the beginning in the poverty and welfare space, moving people into work with evidence based data on case management. Those are the three areas where I think evidence can be extremely powerful and you can see breakout reforms in those categories.”

Expanding evidence-based approaches throughout the federal government:
“As the person who co-authored the Evidence Based Policymaking law, this is exactly what we were anticipating and hoping would happen, which is, people from the data-world would convene and work on executing this. I basically see this as a critical tool of policymaking in the 21st century.”

Evaluating the War on Poverty Leads to More Efforts for Data and Analysis:
“We were coming up on the 50th anniversary of the War on Poverty and it occurred to me that we should just do a deep scrub of all the federal government’s activities in the War on Poverty on the 50th anniversary: Why don’t we just sort of do a check on them? Where are we? How’s it going, what’s working, what didn’t work, what should we do in the future?

“It took us a whole year in the Budget Committee and our staff basically dropped everything and focused on this and at the time, there was not even a comprehensive listing of what the government did, let alone evidence. We found a number of programs at the time: MIECH-V, that did evidence-based policy, which is very successful. There were some others like Perkins, CTE, and the First Step Act, which is brand new and is one of the last things I really worked to push through. And we basically discovered in doing this taxonomy of all federal poverty programs, what works and what doesn’t work and if there is evidence that this program was really necessary. That’s kind of how I stumbled into this.”

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“In addition to my Foundation which is trying to pair grassroots poverty fighters with data, academics and finances, I’m on the board of the Laboratory for Economic Opportunity (LEO) at Notre Dame. What I found really promising is LEO for years had already been doing this work with Catholic Charities and getting data from Catholic Charities. And so, one of the best things that I think can be done is doing what we call “case management” or “wrap-around services” that move people from poverty to out of poverty. To move people out of poverty, there are a whole host of things you have to do that are customized to a person’s particular needs or a family’s particular needs. Evidence-based policy puts you on a much more reliable path to get a results-oriented approach to fighting poverty. So, the case management system where you have a navigator that works with a family or a person to get them through poverty with evidence really can highlight a way. But now, you can do this government-wide.”