Apparently, callously cramming the poor into wretched housing projects, rampant crime, dysfunctional schools and providing economic incentives to destroy families qualifies as care and concern to Krugman.

Leftist are narcissist. They spend so much time telling themselves how great and good they are that they never stopped to ask if the policies they advocate actually accomplish their professed goals. The history of the last 40 years as shone that if comes down to a choice between the power and prestige of Leftist and the immediate good of the poor, the poor lose out.

The modern political debate is not between those who profess to care and those who do not. The debate is between those who want the poor better off versus those who wish to exploit them for their own power.

The Burkean conservative knows that functional individuals, families and communities spring from an organic complexity that central planners cannot duplicate. The Great Society programs failed exactly in the way that conservative opponents predicted they would yet the self-labeled compassionate left has doggedly tried condemned more and more of the poor to a social and emotional hell just to maintain their own self-image.