Let’s cut poverty in half
Yesterday, the Center for American Progress released From Poverty to Prosperity: A National Strategy to Cut Poverty in Half. It offers a 12 point agenda designed to reduce the poverty rate in half in 10 years.
Perhaps what’s most exciting about this report is that there’s nothing terribly exciting in it. Pretty much all of the recommendations have been made before: raise and index the minimum wage, expand the EITC, make it easier for workers to join unions, provide universal child care subsidies, make college more affordable, encourage savings, rebuild the safety net. But the point is that it doesn’t take geniuses to figure this out. The report makes clear that we’re not missing ideas about good things to do, but the political willpower to do them.
Poverty is finally starting to get some attention again. It’s one of the key elements of John Edwards’ presidential campaign. Bloomberg is focusing attention on it in New York. The House Ways and Means Committee had a hearing on it today. But even Charlie Rangel said that he’s focusing on getting rid of the AMT before he thinks about EITC expansions. So don’t count on anything happening unless we build public support for it. So go write your members of Congress and urge them to commit to reducing poverty.
The folks over at Inclusion have been pushing their argument that we should be talking about "Social Inclusion" rather than reducing (or eliminating) poverty. While I understand their argument, I don’t agree. First, I think that no one in the US has a clue what "social inclusion" means. If we’ve got someone willing to give us 2 minutes of attention, I’d rather say "eliminate poverty" and spend the next 110 seconds pitching the main policy proposals than say "promote social inclusion" and spend all my time trying to explain what I mean by that. Second, and more importantly, I think there’s a real risk of playing into the hands of folks like Larry Mead who think that poor people’s problem isn’t lack of money but that they are "outside the mainstream" and aren’t working a lot. And finally, when the media is finally paying some attention to this issue, I’d like the coverage to focus on the proposals, and not on liberals’ perennial attraction to circular firing squads.
April 27th, 2007 at 9:30 am
Good post, Elizabeth, and thanks for the various links. This reminded me of some interesting articles and research on socioeconomics I read for a recent course on “the challenge of multiculturalism for schools and social service agencies.” Did you follow the debate around Ruby Payne’s work on “the culture of poverty”? I’ll check if there are other sources in which you might be interested.
One question – do you think the Center for American Progress’ overall strategy adequately addresses considerations specific to generational poverty?
April 27th, 2007 at 4:05 pm
Thanks for the heads-up on the CAP report. One of the biggest reasons I feel so enthusiastic about John Edwards is his willingness to make eliminating poverty a centerpiece of his campaign.
My new members of Congress have not yet heard from on any issues (we moved into a new district) so I think I’ll make my inaugural letter about eliminating poverty.
April 30th, 2007 at 6:24 am
Why should I think Larry Mead is wrong? At least, in the course of living in East Oakland and driving an ambulance there, working in gas stations, and in reading about life in places like East Saint Louis and Newark today it seems to me that I see a lot of wrong-direction incentives. Fixing them seems not such a bad idea. The Clinton-Gingrich welfare reforms went a long ways in those directions, and most of the reported results I have read about seem positive.
April 30th, 2007 at 11:16 am
I too would like to see a substantial critique of Larry Mead’s testimony(which you linked to). Can you point us somewhere?
I am pretty far to the left, but I’m a scientist, and I do think that people respond to reinforcements (including children, and animals, too). I think it’s easy to mis-direct (animals, children, and adults, basically any organism with a brain) by not thinking through consequences of incentives.
In Mead’s statement, I can clearly see why I disagree with one of his suggestions Inducing poor men to work, if they have financial obligations, by using the threat of prison as a reinforcment seems like a patently bad idea. We do not need to increase the size of our prison population by creating debtor’s prisons because prison is notoriously bad influence on behavior. Raising that solution is falling into the same trap of not thinking through the behavioral consequences of reinforcment that is the weak point of bleeding heart liberal idealogy.
Someone must have collated other critiques about his testimony?
bj
May 11th, 2007 at 6:58 am
Here is a Reep making a pretty convincing case that Edwards is Not Ready For Prime Time: http://betsyspage.blogspot.com/2007/05/edwards-political-tone-deafness.html
I think she’s right – to the extent that Edwards’ ideas are important, they will be poorly served if he’s the messenger, based on his performance up to now. And Obama has had a few erratic moments lately, and Richardson has a, shall we say Corzinic attitude towards speed limits. The only Dem who seems to be consistently avoiding wrong-footing it is Clinton.