Q- There is irrefutable evidence that minorities, on average, have lower incomes than whites in this country. Is this fair?
A- Blacks comprise 12 percent of the population, but more than 75 percent of professional basketball players are black. Is this fair? You can't just look at results and make a determination; the cause is important. It is easy to attack groups or individuals that earn more than others and suggest it is unfair.
Money is made by pleasing other people and pleasing is subjective. An ill person is best pleased by a physician. There is money in bathing suits in the summer and mittens in the winter. Once basic needs are met, the majority of healthy people are pleased by entertainers like Michael Jackson or sports heros like Joe Montana. If income is accumulated through voluntary exchange, in my mind the distribution is fair; if by coercion then it is unfair.
Q- Blacks are also excelling in the political arena and in the public sector work force.
A- That might not be a reason to rejoice. A government paycheck symbolizes security whereas all successful groups have had to encourage risk-taking at some stage of their ascent. Of all the European immigrants, the Irish were the slowest to climb out of poverty and they were the ones that cast their fortunes with political patronage. As George Gilder so aptly put it,
"wealth comes from the competitive honing of skills and enterprises, from mastery of modern machines and technology, from a willingness to venture and create, from a sense of the margins of profit and loss. . . Government jobs allow immediate consumption but not investment and savings. . . The truth is, many liberals are afraid that blacks cannot prevail in a truly free competition."
Q- What about the evidence that without discrimination, present and past, blacks would achieve earnings comparable to whites?
A- That's true, In his monumental book, Wealth and Poverty, George Gilder presented an array of information in this area, but he's not a liberal. I've seen figures which show that during the twenty-five years since the massive dismantling of legal barriers against them, blacks have indeed performed far better than other Americans--catching up from far behind and in some areas leaving the white majority in the dust. There are some seldom discussed facts that have a bearing here. Some of the income difference between black and white populations simply reflects the fact that the black population is younger---blacks average 22 years versus 29 for whites. In 1980 families headed by 22 year olds, both white and black, had median incomes approximately $5,000 dollars less than families headed by 33 year olds.
Q- That's something, but not enough.
A- Let me continue, please. About fifty percent of the black population lives in the South, the nation's poorest region in terms of income. Blacks in New York City earned almost two and a half times what blacks make in Mississippi and one-third more than blacks in Atlanta. But even taking age and location into consideration, (which most studies and reports fail to do) there remains a difference of about twenty percent between the income of the two groups. As a percentage of their respective groups there are about twice as many single black males than single white males. Mr. Gilder claims
"If the differences between blacks and whites are corrected for marital status, the gap between the earnings of black and white males of truly comparable family background and credentials completely disappears."
Q- Excuse me---but "comparable family background and credentials" has got to be rare!
A- I'm glad you picked up on that---and you're right. Family background and credentials are the key---no doubt about it---but I still have a point to make here. I think you might be surprised to learn that between blacks and whites with top credentials, incomes of blacks surpass that of whites.
Q- Actually I'm not surprised. The law of supply and demand, coupled with civil rights mandates, would put a premium on the minorities. But I am curious about the areas you are talking about---"top credentials" is a little ambiguous.
A- I'm referring primarily to those on college and university faculties and doctoral scientists and engineers. Mr. Gilder looked at earnings-capacity utilization studies and found these top achievers tended to work as hard or harder than their white competitors.
Q- Not long ago equal-rights agencies were trying to improve black incomes by forcing employers to place more emphasis on objective qualifications and then to hire a certain number of minorities who could qualify on that basis .
A- But that approach backfired. Employers who feared charges of discrimination, started documenting their personnel policies more completely. Because they could no longer exclude minorities who appeared incompatible or unsuitable, as they would exclude any other applicant, they decided to simply exclude everyone without credentials, including the clearly suitable minorities they might have hired before. As an employer, I can tell you that intuition and feelings of compatibility are more reliable in choosing a good employee than all the tests and credentials in the world.
Q- But intuition will not stand up in court.
A- Exactly. So credentials became the order of the day. They were required in jobs where they weren't needed for any other reason except as a possible defense in court. This was a bonanza for young minorities holding university degrees. The trouble is these groups were already perfectly able to fend for themselves. As George Gilder said,
The equal-rights efforts merely accelerated their advance and cast shadows of favoritism over successes that would have occurred anyway. The favorable results however, end abruptly at lower levels of black society. Here credentialism is a wholly negative influence blocking the upward progress of many blacks who are attempting sometimes halfheartedly to escape the welfare culture.
Q- Are you suggesting the government policy-induced emphasis on credentials rather than job performance is responsible for higher unemployment among uncredentialed minorities?
A- Absolutely. Focusing on test-taking and down-playing performance on the job, has the effect of shielding the schooled from the competition of their ambitious, hardworking but unschooled counterparts. When employers are forced to pay high wages for low-productivity jobs, credentials become an easy way of sorting out the equally qualified applicants.
Can you really tell me that high-school diplomas enhance the skills of bricklayers, toll-booth personnel, building workers, and truck drivers? How relevant is a diploma to successful performance of these jobs? And what about the irrelevant testing requirements for most civil service jobs? Because government jobs are mostly overpaid, the credentialism problem becomes especially serious in federal bureaucracies.
Q- History has shown that a nation's productivity depends to a large extent on the degree its citizens exhibit traits such as ambition , determination, perseverance, aggressiveness, and the ability and willingness to work hard and drive ahead. Those were the attributes of previous generations of poor immigrants--the qualities that launched them into the middle class and made this young nation the most productive in the world. I think we will suffer if we fail to appreciate and encourage these assets.
A- I think you are right. Even if an uncredentialed person with the attributes you mentioned, does manage to land a decent job, when it comes to promotions, he is generally passed over in favor of a credentialed person, whose work may even be inferior.
Q- That makes it easier to understand why so many aggressive and ambitious workers decide to drop out of a system that is so artificially rigged against them.
A- You're right about the promotions being artificial---promotions generally conform to civil rights legislation. However, there is ample evidence to show that credentials are not an adequate indicator of good and productive work. During the second world war credentials, skills, lengthy training periods---all went by the board as minorities and women surged into the labor force and proved that inspiration and willingness could compensate for practically anything.
Q- What about the example of the unschooled peasants in third world countries who assemble electronics, semiconductor chips, automobiles and so forth?
A- That just goes to show that academic achievements are of little real importance in performing many jobs. Yet the government spends millions on campaigns that lets kids know there is no hope without those credentials.
Q- And even worse, misleads them into supposing an often worthless high school diploma is all it takes. Anyway, skills are built right into some of today's high tech machinery.
A- What bothers me is that both credentialism and racism reinforce the attractiveness of the streets. The welfare state minimizes the need for work and thereby puts a damper on enthusiasm and ambition.
Q- The problem I was trying to point out earlier is the lack of role models, or even worse, the predominance of poor role models in the backgrounds of many of today's impoverished minorities.
A- That's right. In the past it was possible to make up, by dint of effort and ambition, for a lack of finances and educational qualifications----if one were somehow inspired to do so. Other ethnic groups have overcome similar barriers by entering business, studying at night, working at more than one job and finding employers who value leadership and productivity more than years at school.
Q- In the real world, motivation is often the best teacher.
A- I'm troubled because we seem to be making the problem worse by mandating new licensing and other regulatory devices, by increases in the size and coverage of the minimum wage, and by the impact of other labor-market restrictions (like the Davis-Bacon Act in the construction business) that artificially raise wages.
Q- What is the Davis-Bacon Act?
A- It is one of government's attempts to interfere in the market place, this time by specifying that on all federally supported construction projects---and that means even if the government contributes less than one percent of the funding---the "prevailing" (code word for "union") wage must be paid. Naturally this restricts competition from lower-wage, nonunion labor, while keeping prices and wages artificially high.
Q-And costs the taxpayers more. In other words Davis-Bacon distorts the market.
A- Exactly!
Q- Just what is the difference between telling a minority dropout he can't get a job without a high school diploma or he can't get a job because of racist hiring practices?
A- One difference is that in the first instance---"no credentials, no job"---the laws that caused the situation can be changed. If government would stop second-guessing business people and looking over their shoulders---stop telling businesses who they can and cannot hire, for what wage, what benefits they must provide and so forth, then employers might be able to rely on their own evaluation of prospective employees, and even rely on intuition if they so desired.
Citizens of the United States of America should be permitted to strike the bargain of their own, not government's choosing. As things stand now, any prudent employer must lay a paper trail, including credentials, in case his or her motives in hiring, firing or promoting are questioned by Big Brother.
As for racism, that cannot be changed by legislation. Laws against the "isms" can only be enforced by the thought police---who else can determine the true motives for hiring and firing? Racist hiring practices will disappear only when employers, from within their own hearts and souls, are willing and able to recognize other human beings as unique individuals and not representatives of any particular class or group. That cannot be forced, but will only come when an employer has taken the time to develop his own character and set of ethics and values and is determined to live by them. An article in the Washington Post not long ago, lamented that today common decency can no longer be described as common.
Q- I've noticed that liberals tend to seek protection for rights not specified in the Constitution, but are only too happy to have the courts overturn certain enumerated rights. Article I of the Constitution protecting contracts is an explicit expression of economic rights. Prior to the New Deal, contracts between two parties as to wages and conditions of employment were upheld time and again despite efforts to impose regulations.
"The employee may desire to earn the extra money which would arise from working more than the prescribed time." said Supreme Court Justice Rufus Peckham in the case overturning a New York state law which prohibited bakery workers from working over ten hours a day or sixty hours a week. The law was then determined to be an infringement on freedom and the right to contract.
A- That was the 1905 Lochner case, which was later discredited by later more liberal courts.
Q- The earlier courts warned FDR that individual rights, according to the Constitution, took precedence over any attempt by congress to regulate the economy. Minimum wage and compulsory retirement laws were invalidated as violating the due-process clause and were considered to be beyond the scope of the commerce clause.
A- Labor market freedom may well be our most important economic freedom, because without the freedom to earn a living, citizens become slaves of the state.
Early in 1987 Judge Stephen Williams of the U. S. Court of Appeals, DC circuit, told the Federalist Society, ". . .before a determined judge it doesn't make a great deal of sense what the Constitution said."
Q- Now you're getting into the subject of unalienable or natural rights, a focus of the confirmation hearings regarding Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
Over the past sixty years the courts overruled attempts to uphold the due process and commerce clauses in cases where the ability to contract or exercise private property rights were involved. But Harvard professor Stephen Macedo has argued that property rights, which were supposedly protected by the framers of the Constitution with the insertion of the Fifth Amendment and its taking clause, were among the rights considered by our inspirational ancestor John Locke as natural unalienable rights.
A- Many people believe the natural rights this nation was founded upon pre-date Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and all of the relatively modern theorists and have their origin in Judaic-Christian ethics.
Or maybe you would prefer to hear the views espoused by Marcus Raskin.
Q- Who is Marcus Raskin?
A- He is a member of the Institute for Policy Studies who in a December 1986 interview on C-SPAN, told viewers a humane society would mandate an equitable share of its goods. According to Mr. Raskin, President Reagan's policies were a disaster with emphasis placed on a two class society with no chance for the poor and working poor.
Q- Raskin---I know who you mean. He was appalled that corporations are permitted to renounce responsibility by leaving the country to set up shop elsewhere. Mr. Raskin claimed that "equity must be seen in terms of inequity". A class system might be OK, but only if there are guarantees for health-care, day-care and education.
A- Why do corporations need permission and from whom? How did they get the responsibility for whom for what, when and why?
Q- Don't get philosophical on me now. Let's come back down to earth and redirect the conversation. How about some straight forward answers to a couple questions, like what ever happened to the federal Department of Health, Education and Welfare?
A- The department split up in the 1970s and the term "welfare" was dropped because it had become a term of opprobrium with which no one cared to be associated. The new department is known as Health and Human Services, HHS.
Q- Can you tell me anything about the Family Support Act?
A- It was enacted in October 1988 and has a lot to do with who owes whom what. The legislation declared that society owed single mothers support while they acquired the means of self-sufficiency; mothers, in turn, owed society the effort to become self-sufficient. Absent fathers owed child support to both. Mandatory child-support guidelines are required of every state, something unheard of until then. Wage withholding for child support payments went into effect nationwide as a consequence of the 1988 Act.
Q- Saying something is owed doesn't guarantee payment.
A- You're absolutely right! In 1963 sixty percent of the men in this country aged 20 to 24 earned enough to keep a family of three out of poverty; by 1984 only forty-two percent could do so. Between 1979 and 1986 wages of those with only a high school education or less, fell seventeen percent---partly for reasons we have just discussed.
Q- But didn't more people go to college?
A- People---yes. But the number of young men who actually earned college degrees fell by two percent, to twenty-five percent of all young men.
Q- A lot of the young guys who wouldn't normally have gone to college hid out on college campuses during the Viet Nam war. That probably has something to do with a "drop" from an artificially elevated high.
A- I don't know about that, but I do know without working wives, the entire bottom sixty percent of U.S. households would have experienced a loss of real income between 1979 and 1986. (adjusted for inflation)
Q- Figures for children in poverty were first calculated in 1929. In 1959, the figures stood at 26.9 percent and in 1985 at 20.1 percent meaning that although poverty had declined since the fifties close to 13 million children were living in families below the 1985 government's official poverty line cut-off of $10,989 for a family of four. Of those 13 million children, 43.1 percent were black, 39.6 percent were Hispanic and 15.6 percent white.
A- Do you have figures for the 1990s yet?
Q- According to the Census Bureau the number of Americans below the poverty line amounted to 13.5 percent of the U. S. population. The poverty figures released in September, 1991 showed the poverty rate for children under the age of six stood at 23.6 percent. The official poverty line, which varies according to such factors as family size and age, averaged $6,652 for an individual and $13,359 for a family of four.
A- Not to belittle the financial straits of any family of four receiving only $13,000 in income, still I think it might be enlightening to consider that my own family has probably contributed to those figures in the past.
Q- What do you mean?
A- You should realize that in some fields it is not uncommon to receive large sums of money one year and then nothing for two or three years. If net worth were considered the poverty statistics would be more accurate. They would also show a more accurate picture if housing, health and food subsidies were counted in figuring the poverty level. It is well known that some people are better off financially by being on the dole, than they would be working for low pay. Many low-income families, while their earnings may put them above the poverty level, do not have as high a standard of living as those with lower incomes supplemented by government subsidies.
I think everyone agrees the government needs to reward effort, not penalize work as it has been doing by its wrong-headed policies in the past.
Q- Poverty was one of those subjective words until policymakers stepped in and made it "whatever they want it to mean." Many people are counted as poor who are not deprived in any objective standard, because there is considerable disagreement as to what should be considered in determining poverty.
A- The results of a poll were released in the summer of 1991 showing that a very large percentage of the nation's children were going to bed hungry. I remember listening to the questions asked in the polling process and thinking to myself that if asked those same questions when they were young kids, any and all five of our sons could have answered in such a way that they would have been counted as "children going to bed hungry." In fact it was the rare child that wouldn't have.
Q- That's the type of subjective information I was referring to earlier.
I heard that in 1974, children became the poorest group in our population--whatever in the world that is supposed to mean since children have never had any money. Isn't money the thing that is counted in determining poverty statistics?
A- Poverty thresholds were first set in 1961 when the Social Security Administration, along with the Agricultural Department, determined the income necessary to adequately feed the number of children and adults in any given household and multiplied by three---food took approximately one-third of most people's household budgets back then.
Q- First, it seems to me that "adequately" is a subjective term. Second, food takes a much smaller fraction of household income today.
A- Patricia Ruggle of the Urban Institute advocates using a new method, which she has developed to measure poverty. She believes today's poverty level is too low because it is estimated using minimum needs. Instead of the 1989 level of $9,885 for a family of three, using her revised levels the poverty rate would be $15,000. She criticized the current level because it leaves no margin for clothes, taxes, transportation, work expenses and health care.
If her revised poverty figures were used, the 1988 poverty rate would be 23 percent instead of 13 percent and the rate for children would be 31 percent. The poverty rate for those 65 years old and up would climb from 12 percent to 29 percent. More than 50 million Americans, including 20 million children who would be poor under her criteria.
A- You could see why her method wouldn't appeal to the Bush administration.
Q- It seems like Ms. Ruggles' ideas would be even less popular with the former Reagan administration. She claims our earlier progress against poverty has been eroded since late 1970s and that we need greater investment in today's poor children.
Here is a taste of her particular brand of statistics: eighty-five percent of the poor are under 18, or over 65, or disabled and working. Of that eighty-five percent, forty percent of the poor are kids under age 18, less than five percent are single mothers who are neither disabled or working and fifty percent of the poor are white. Poor families typically have two children--forty percent of kids live in two-parent families---sixty-six percent of kids in poverty live in families where one member is working. Half the people in poverty remain poor indefinitely. Wage levels for low-skilled workers are now lower than they were in the seventies. In the sixties fourteen percent of kids were poor compared to twelve percent in poverty in the population as a whole. In the eighties, sixteen percent of the kids were poor compared to a little less than twelve percent as a whole . Zeroing in on 1989, twenty percent of the poor were children compared to thirteen percent overall.
A- Probably due to cutbacks in AFDC. (Aid to Families with Dependent Children)
Q- Ms. Ruggles claimed that forty-three percent of the poverty in this country could be attributed to female-headed families. Her poverty rate for black female-headed families was sixty percent in the early seventies and forty-seven percent today. The drop is due to decreased family size, higher education and a greater incidence of working mothers. She claimed that statistics showing 12 million poor are unreliable.
A- Remember the average family income has risen for all income groups since 1982. Even the incomes of the lowest income group rose twelve percent over eight years (1982-1989). Every group declined under Jimmy Carter. Sure the rich got richer, but so did the poor get richer. Dividing into five income groups the lowest increased by twelve percent, then eleven and a half percent then twelve percent then fourteen percent then twenty-two percent. The choice is have all get poorer or all get richer. Welfare can never replace work.
Q- But Ms. Ruggles is not alone. Rebecca Black of Northwestern University testified along with Ms. Ruggles at a Joint-Economic Committee hearing on poverty in August 1991. She claimed that even though the economy grew at a four percent rate in 1988, there was no significant decrease in poverty. Between 1983 and 1989 the gap between the expectation of a reduction in poverty, versus the reality of the actual reduction, widened. The following were not causes of that widening gap, according to Ms. Black: it was not due to the exclusion of in-kind income (that was counted) it was not due to any regional distribution of the poor; it was not due to a change in the welfare programs; it was not due to demographics affecting the poor. It was due to the stagnant or slow growth of the wages of the most unskilled workers, even though wages increased at a rapid rate for high skilled workers.
She brought up the astonishing fact that along with the one percent GNP growth during the sixties, wages increased $2.18 whereas GNP grew one percent in the eighties and wages decreased 32 cents. She attributed the increased wage differential to changes in technology, in international markets and in the fluctuating supply of more less-skilled workers.
A- That is contrary to most statistics that I've encountered.
Q- I remember Ms. Black made a comparison to Canada where between 1970-1990, poverty declined, due, in her estimation, to macroeconomic growth and the fact that the oil shocks didn't affect Canada as much as it did the USA. Between 1970-1990, the poverty rate stagnated in this country.
A- At that same hearing Professor Lawrence Mead made what might appear to be some very obvious but seldom mentioned points regarding the "tremendous effect of work level on poverty levels." He stated what should be plain to everybody, that while wages are a factor in poverty, number of hours worked is a more important factor. He asked, "Why do the poor work less while the rich work more?" He discounted the theory that there are not jobs available and stated directly that his studies found that inability to find work was not a major factor in poverty; nor were such cliches as barriers caused by low skills, need for training and child care and so forth. The presence of these were determined to be of marginal benefit. While the unemployment rate fell from ten percent to five percent, the poverty rate was reduced less drastically from only fifteen percent to thirteen percent.
Q- I see what you mean by your insistence that no two statistics are alike! Communism stressed equality. With the bankruptcy of communism in 1991, it seems like economic inequality has become acceptable worldwide.
A- As long as it is accompanied by opportunity.
Q- Exactly. Opportunity legitimizes unequal outcomes. The whole idea of equality of opportunity justifying unequal outcomes may be rooted in the peculiarly American belief that there should be no limits on the individual.
A- Professor Mead agrees that differences of opportunity explains some of the inequality among workers, but does not account for the apathy and inertia of those not working at all. The finding of high work levels among the general population and low work levels among the poor, is unique to the USA, according to Professor Mead. He credits the Family Support Act of 1988 with effecting more results than changing opportunities and maintains the Act is one of the best solutions to the problem of the working poor.
Q- Professor William Farrell of the University of Wisconsin, referred constantly to the "BPR"---the black poverty rates. The Professor claimed that from the late sixties to the early eighties poverty among single mothers increased, especially among blacks, primarily because black males were unable to find employment.
A- Professor Farrell's findings seemed to contradict the points made earlier by Professor Mead.
Q- He made an obvious point that single-female headed families were in poverty because of the drop in marriages among the poorer black communities. Professor Farrell disputed any link between welfare dependency and poverty and instead blamed low wages and fewer manufacturing jobs, the decline of unions and the increase of high tech jobs. He claimed that during the seventies, Los Angeles alone lost 70,000 heavy manufacturing jobs and blamed the malquiladoras (factories run by American firms on the Mexican border) for much of the problem.
A- I leave it to you to try and reconcile the various opinions of Raskin and Farrell, Ruggles and BIack and Mead and Gilder. I must admit it's sometimes hard to believe we're talking about the same set of facts.
A- In the January 1987 edition of the American Bar Association Journal readers were assured that "Lawyers are litigating on behalf of the homeless, promoting the passage of federal assistance and sponsoring legal outreach programs at shelters across the nation."
Q- So what's wrong with that?
A- That's all well and good for those who agree with David Crossland, then co-chairman of the Washington D.C. Bar's Ad Hoc Committee on the Homeless. He claimed "Only the federal government can adequately respond to the huge problem of homelessness."
Q- Well, a lot of people do feel that way. Individual state or local communities are afraid that by establishing humane programs in their areas they run the danger of attracting the homeless from neighboring communities .
A- In Coker v Bowen, plaintiffs, including the National Coalition for the Homeless, sued the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services in an attempt to force the 25 states participating in the Emergency Assistance to Families program ---EAF---to provide either shelter, the dollars to obtain shelter or assistance in securing shelter to homeless families.
Q- This is an example of putting more burdens on state and local governments. When congress wants to get things done and can't spend money as freely as it did before the much publicized budget accords, they shift the burden onto the states.
A- Congress can't stop spending---they mandate the services but make someone else pick up the tab for their spending habit---in this case the states.
Q- I thought congress forced itself to stop spending with the budget agreement they made with the president in the fall of 1990----the one that superseded the Gramm-Rudman legislation.
A- Dream on! Congress only writes the laws---it doesn't live by them. That Budget Compromise bill which passed the end of 1990 (for FY 1991) provided mammography screening for 18.7 women on Medicare (additional estimated 5-year cost of $1.25 billion), regulated medigap insurance polices (added federal penalties up to $25,000) and regulated the prices medicaid pays for prescription drugs (it hurt drug companies but is supposed to save the government $1.9 billion over 5 years), provided more home-care service for low-income frail and elderly (authorizes $580 million for program over 5 years) and expanded help for low-income people in general, all to the tune of $22 billion (supposedly over 5 years).
States are required to pick up premiums and co-payments and deductibles for Medicare beneficiaries below the poverty line beginning in 1991. By 1995 they will have to pick up the premiums of those living on income up to 120 percent of the poverty line.
Q- When Ronald Reagan was governor of California, he was unsuccessful in his attempt to tie welfare to work. As President, however, in his 1981 Budget Act he convinced Congress to allow states to test new employment approaches to welfare reform, including workfare. Any comments in this area?
A- Workfare more often means job-search-help rather than actual government jobs. According to Douglas Besharov of the American Enterprise Institute, about half of new entrants to AFDC use the program as a temporary crutch for an average of four years, whereas the other half average almost seven years on the program with a quarter of those receiving aid for ten years or more.
Q- I remember in the 1960s and 1970s it was considered cruel to require unfortunate people to work in order to receive help. But in the 1980s the consensus seemed to be that a combination of education and work were essential to encourage sound habits of self-reliance and bolster the morality of the country.
A- You're right, some people considered workfare to be a form of slave-labor.
Q- Our federal welfare system encompasses at least 59 programs incorporating more than 6,000 pages of regulations. One of Ronald Reagan's goals was to turn more of the administration back to the states.
A- Most governors are wary of plans offering increased flexibility. They recognize such flexibility as an attempt by the federal government to put more expenses onto the states in return.
Q- The Work Incentive program (WIN) required recipients to register but not necessarily participate in work programs if their children were at least six years old. The Department of Health and Human services proposed a program for FY1988 with the acronym GROW (Greater Opportunities Through Work) which required participation by parents of children over six months of age.
A- About the same time the nation's governors at their meeting in February 1987 proposed a $1 billion program (85 percent to be funded by the federal government) calling for a national standard of need and minimum level of benefits to be adjusted for geographic differences and tied to a percentage of the poverty standard.
Q- Meaning more colas. (Cost of living adjustments)
A- I read something in Arthur Schlesinger's book, The Coming of the New Deal, that I really thought was interesting. In 1934 Franklin Delano Roosevelt said,
There will of course be a certain number of relief cases where work will not furnish the answer, but it is my thought that in these cases all of the relief expenditures should once more be borne by the states and localities as they used to be.
Q- I recall in your own 1988 book, The Election Process, in your chapter on Michael Dukakis you made reference to the welfare program that was then in effect in Massachusets. Could you go into it a little bit here?
A- Massachusetts' workfare program is called ET (Employment and Training Choices). I assume it is still in effect, but I also assume there have been some changes in its implementation. Since I haven't kept up with ET, I'll tell you what I found out doing research for the book and refer to it in the past tense.
ET provided job training, a year's free child care, a back-to-work clothing allowance, a travel allowance and four months of free Medicaid to participants. For each former recipient placed in a job with an average starting salary of $12,000 the state saved almost $8,000 through reduced AFDC, medicaid and food stamp outlays.
Despite the increase in benefits afforded by ET, a welfare-rights-advocate group called the Coalition for Basic Human Needs sued Massachusetts to force it to just about double its cash grants to welfare recipients. On January 5, 1987 the Superior Court Judge Charles Grabau of Boston, interpreted a 1913 state statute ensuring adequate shelter, to mean that Massachusetts must provide benefits sufficient to enable healthy circumstances for raising children. Judge Grabau used that statute to justify his ruling that monthly benefits to a family of three be increased from $491 to $845.
Q- I remember you saying in the book something to the effect that even if the judge was not actually legislating morality, he was coming pretty close to legislating compassion.
A- Judge Grabau ruled, in effect, that as a matter of compassion, one group of citizens could be forced to make another group comfortable. Wanting good things for others is a normal human feeling and should be encouraged, but not by government. In Massachusetts those wants were given the force of law.
Q- Harking back to 1987 again, in March of that year the Senate Labor and Human Resource Committee proposed legislation that would have given $3,700 to each former welfare recipient who was able to find employment and remain employed for at least three years. The funds were to come from the money saved by removing them from the welfare rolls. Payments would not be made until the actual savings were realized.
A- Even more money could be saved if such funds were earmarked to reduce the deficit. We are paying an exorbitant price to carry our mammoth debt; the interest alone is costing approximately $200 billion a year. Besides saving interest costs, the reduction of our national debt would stimulate the economy---government would no longer be crowding out the private sector's demand for investment dollars.
Anyway, how was the Senate plan suppose to work?
Q- During a former welfare recipient's first year of employment, the state would receive 75 percent of the benefit that would have been paid to the recipient had he or she still been on welfare. That figure was to drop to 50 percent during the second year and 25 percent in the third year of employment. After three years, the average bonus per ex-welfare recipient was estimated to be about $3,700.
A- A pretty good bonus. Maybe enough to make a person quit and start the three year cycle all over again?
Q- That's pretty cynical! Also included in the target groups were recipients of social security disability payments.
A- The plan may have sounded practical and even paid for itself but what about the philosophy here? The concern seems to be wholly practical with little though to the ideals of the nation or whether it makes spiritual as well as economic sense.
Q- Does anybody care?
A- I care!
There are parents who pay their children for getting good grades or for cleaning their own rooms---bonuses or incentives they call it.
What about instilling self-respect instead? Do things to make yourself proud, not so you can pick up a government check or gain parental or society's approval.
Who wants to live in a family of spoiled children or a nation with spoiled citizens? No back-bone, no self-motivation, no evidence of self-worth or character---ugh!
But those in authority, whether parent or legislator, tend to get what they expect. Keep the expectations low and you won't be disappointed.
Edmund Burke, the British statesman, argued that "men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains on their own appetites." Especially in America, liberty depends directly on individual virtue.
Q- I am certain people respond to challenges and are capable of far more than they themselves realize. However, I believe government should provide opportunity and inspire citizens to do their best.
A- Granted, but I won't let you escape the crux of the matter---the need for individual responsibility. And I'm in the company of great minds when I say it! Listen to historian Russell Kirk:
What gives a man dignity, and what makes possible a democracy of elevation, and what makes any society tolerable, and what gives just leaders their right to office, and what keeps the modern world from being Brave New World, and what constitutes real success in any walk of life, is private moral worth.
Q- Speaking of "worth"---I heard that in the fall of 1990, Martinsburg, Virginia passed a law prohibiting panhandling without a license worth $25.
A- In September, 1991, a federal Judge ruled a century old California law prohibiting pan-handling was unconstitutional as prohibiting speech "with obvious political relevance."
Q- I remember that. The speech you're talking about was begging.
A- And the political relevance?
Q- I suppose the political relevance was a lesson to passersby to the effect that this is a cruel, uncaring society and we should vote more compassionate people into office so they will raise our taxes. Give me a break!
A- In 1990 a New York law prohibiting begging in the subways was ruled unconstitutional, but then it was overturned on appeal. The appeals court judge ruled that begging on streets is not protected speech.
Q- Now we have to see what the 9th circuit court of appeals has to say in the California matter.
A- In 1979 a trial court judge ruled that language in the New York state Constitution justified the finding of a brand new right---the right to shelter. This was in response to suit filed by the Coalition for the Homeless. Since then similar suits have established the right to shelter in other jurisdictions.
Q- California's Welfare & Institutions Code #10000 et seq. and #17000 et seq. require counties to relieve and support indigent citizens. The Homeless Litigation Team, which consists of lawyers from eight public interest law firms in the Los Angeles area, have expanded the application of the code. They intended, by this process, to establish the "right to shelter" in California.
A- Prior to 1984 identification was needed to hobbing shelter. Identification is something most homeless people don't have, and even with an ID, an application for shelter could take weeks to process. In 1984 the Litigation Team won its first case, Eisenheim v Bd Supervisors which ended the identification requirement and mandated that benefits begin immediately upon application. A series of cases followed, including Ross v Bd of Supervisors in which the court ruled that the previous housing allowance was not enough. In response the country began issuing vouchers for approved hotels.
Q- That sounds to me like the judiciary branch is overstepping its boundaries and doing a little legislating of its own.
A- You haven't heard anything yet! In the ruling on Paris v Bd of Supervisors, higher standards were required of hotels housing the homeless. In the 1987 case Blaire v Bd of Supervisors the court ruled that in determining "minimum subsistence needs" what it actually takes to live in a given area must be taken into account. Blaire meant a twenty-five percent increase in welfare checks which amounted to a $33 million increase in allotments to the homeless over a two year period.
Q- I wonder who is going to pick up the tab? Isn't that taxation without representation?
A- In the words of the team's chief trial lawyer, Mark Rosenbaum, "The rights of the poor have frequently been treated as largess by the government, or as charity by the public. This litigation has proved that indigents have significant and enforceable rights."
Q- Give me some doubletalk! Mr. Rosenbaum's words must have meanings unfamiliar to the rest of us.
A- My feelings exactly! Largess and charity, as used by the ordinary layman, fit precisely the concept of general welfare relief. Rights, on the other hand, are rights to action only, not to objects. Rights are moral principles and impose no obligation on others.
Q- Any alleged right of one man, which necessitates the violation of the rights of another, is not and cannot be a right. No man can have a right to impose an unchosen obligation, an unrewarded duty or an involuntary servitude on another man. . .The right to life means that a man has the right to support his life by his own work (on any economic level, as high as his ability will carry him); it does not mean that others must provide him with the necessities of life.
A- That sounds like something Ayn Rand would say.
Q- It's a quote from The Virtue of Selfishness. Ms. Rand didn't disguise the meaning of words, if she had she would have given the book a more saleable title like The True Meaning of Compassion or A Higher Good or something noble. Members of congress name their pieces of legislation, The Clean Water Bill, The Civil Rights Act, The War on Poverty---who would dare vote against such high sounding legislation?
A- You've got something there. I was a member of the ACLU for quite a while, and its name had a lot to do with it. Who would not be for the expansion and protection of civil liberties?
Q- What happened?
A- Although I admire some of the work the ACLU engages in, their efforts overall, in my opinion, lead to the opposite of what they purport to stand for. Many of their battles, in my opinion, lead to a greater restriction of civil liberties.
Q- In other words, you think they may do more harm than good?
A- We differ in our philosophy but have the same goals. I admit that harm and good are subjective here.
Getting back to the right to shelter---I believe there can only be a right to acquire shelter---if not through purchase or rental, as a result of one's own labor, then the shelter is obtained through the charity of others either willingly elicited or coerced by government edict.
The "significant and enforceable rights" of indigents that Mr. Rosenbaum speaks of are nothing more than a theft sanctioned by government. One group. .
Q- Working taxpaying individuals.
A- . . .are being forced . . .
Q- What choice are they given?
A- . . .forced by government to provide for those who are not capable of providing for themselves. Fault has absolutely nothing to do with the analysis, nor does compassion. When a beggar asks for a dollar on the street you can either say yes or no. When a charitably minded organization asks for a contribution to set up out-reach programs for the unfortunate to save them the embarrassment of begging, you can help or not as you freely choose. But government doesn't ask--- it takes by force.
Q- Wouldn't you say that individuals give tacit permission to have the fruits of their labor distributed to others by electing legislators whose records suggest that they will redistribute the income of producers to non-producers?
A- To an extent that is true, however in more and more instances lawyers and activist judges usurp the legislators' role as illustrated by the cases brought by the Homeless Litigation Team. Nobody gets a chance to vote for lawyers, and not often for judges.
Q- That's true, methods of seating judges vary throughout the country. Even media editorials are quick to speak "for the people". On February 9, 1987 the Wall Street Journal said "We're sure Americans don't want to turn their backs." If we're all so sure, then why is the taking mandated by law? Surely no one believes the federal government can serve the needs of the unfortunate better than local non-government organizations?
A- The truth is they are afraid they will not get the money if they ask---so they take. Perhaps what they would get if they didn't take is something from local communities more valuable than money---concern, participation of the citizenry and some creative new approaches to our problems.
Q- As the Wall Street Journal article said,
Many Americans remember when congress thought poverty was caused by a lack of money, so it provided money. It thought unemployment was caused by a shortage of jobs, so it created work. congress thought hunger was solely attributable to lack of food, so it made food freely available. But each problem proved to be far more complicated than originally thought. Three decades and more than a trillion dollars later we are seemingly no further along on these social problems than when we started.
I've heard that civil rights lawyers spend months combing through state constitutions, statutes and city ordinances looking for ways to make governments provide housing, or extend other benefits to specific groups of citizens. Legislators give birth to new law, but these practitioners seek to deliver entitlements by twisting and turning the old laws, hoping a judge will be able, through their contortions, to make out what was formerly not there----a brand new right---the right to shelter!
A- Twist as they will, so far no one has been able to set a nationwide precedent by finding a right to housing in our federal constitution.
Q- But it's not from lack of trying. In 1983, federal court Judge Leo Glasser of Brooklyn, ruled that if "a state promises to provide emergency shelter to eligible families as part of its agreement with the federal government to administer social security benefits, it is illegal to fail to provide housing."
A- That's not a new concept. There may not originally be an obligation to do something, but once undertaken, in this case, once a government entity decided to administer benefits voluntarily, a duty arises to do it well and completely.
Q- In other words, "If you can't do a job right then don't do it all."
A- It is good legal advice. In the field of education, ex-students have been known to sue school districts because of the poor results that were achieved in their education. In order to get passerby physicians to help accident victims, Good Samaritan laws were instituted holding a doctor blameless from the results of such emergency administrations.