Q- It may be impossible to deal with the homeless problem until there is a consensus on what it means to be 'homeless'.
A- Even the census bureau is unable to come up with adequate information when it comes to the number of homeless people in the country. Nevertheless statistics are casually thrown around, and even made up, as homeless advocate, the late Mitch Snyder once shamelessly claimed to have done in order to arouse passion and sympathy for the so-called victims of homelessness.
Q- I understand that Mitch Snyder advised homeless people not to cooperate with the census bureau. He was certain their findings would minimize the count and consequently allow politicians to do little about the homeless problem.
A- In an honest attempt to account for all the homeless, the Census bureau spent $2.7 million and involved 15,000 census workers. Yet an instructor at two California State University campuses. . .blames unsympathetic bureaucrats, politicians and greed for an 'epidemic' of homelessness that he claims is grossly understated.
The instructor is a San Francisco man who at age 51 lost his clerical job and didn't make enough working part-time jobs to cover his rent. He moved to Bakersfield where he found employment providing insights into the homeless situation to students from the prospective of a homeless person. According to an October 6, 1991 newspaper account (Associated Press) now age 55, this University lecturer offers classes in homelessness.
After a short quiz on poverty, students were given a homework assignment of interacting with homeless people.
A few years ago the East Hampton School on Long Island had kids smear mud on their faces and wear tattered clothes and sleep in cardboard boxes to learn about homelessness.
Q- I've heard that in 1986 alone, homelessness nationwide increased by an average of twenty to twenty-five percent and that families with children account for more than thirty percent of the homeless. Others claim the homeless are not your typical average American at all, but are drug addicts, alcoholics and the mentally ill. Whatever else you think about the homeless problem---whatever the actual numbers, there is a problem. I just wonder if you have an opinion on why the problem mushroomed over the past several years?
A- When you speak about the cause of homelessness you'll get as many different opinions as you will when you ask about figures. I'm convinced there are a number of things that led up to the current predicament, not the least of which was the phase-out of approximately 500,000 beds in mental hospitals across the nation and the enactment of stricter laws for involuntary confinement. As with so many policies born of good intentions, these that took place in the late sixties didn't have the anticipated results.
Q- What was that?
A- The idea was to provide more effective community based voluntary care. The trouble is, many people with serious mental disorder refused to volunteer for the care. On top of that, the organization and expense involved in providing services was underestimated. Out of the 2,000 planned federally funded community mental health facilities, only 800 were ever established. Untreated illness, more often than not, led to alienation and life on the streets, and once on the streets, the new laws protected the rights of persons to continue to refuse help.
Q- A few years ago didn't the American Psychiatric Association (APA) recommend involuntary confinement as a solution to the homeless problem?
A- Only provided the following guidelines were observed, all of which called for judgment calls: the patient must be obviously mentally ill so that he is incompetent to make medical decisions, exhibit mental deterioration involving hallucinations or delusions and show obvious suffering. Furthermore there had to be evidence that the disorder was treatable and facilities available to do an adequate job.
Q- Civil libertarians were, and remain dead set against paternalistic social intervention and are adamant that the law must prohibit involuntary treatment of any sort, no matter how effective it might claim to be. The only exception would be if the person is deemed dangerous to himself or others.
A- That is also a judgment call. The APA insists that adherence to its proposal would result in only the most ill and most likely to be helped ever being confined.
California currently has a law which states that an individual must be so "gravely disabled" that he or she cannot provide for his or her own shelter, food, or clothing before the state can step in. Under such policies society must be prepared to witness an ever increasing number of non-dangerous mentally ill people inhabiting doorways and parks.
Q- I remember reading an article in the August 3, 1990 edition of the Wall Street Journal by J. Douglas Ousley, rector of the Church of the Incarnation in New York City. He asked the same question, "Should insane people who roam the streets be confined against their will or should they be allowed to remain free?" He said that he was torn, but finally pinned his reasoning on the definition of "free". He decided a person who had no awareness of what he was doing or who had no control over the inner compulsions that drive him, could not have civil rights that include freedom of movement. Therefore, since no rights would be violated, "we would all be better off if (such people) were confined and had a better chance for a more human existence."
There are people who work with the homeless who claim that most of them are average Americans; normal people who've led normal lives and held normal jobs until whamo---they found themselves and their families out on the streets.
A- The truth is the homeless are made up of some of both groups. On December 8, 1986 the Donahue Show focused on the homeless issue. Mr Joseph Mowry, a gentleman who had gone to the Soviet Union to obtain publicity for the homeless ( and was subsequently used for Soviet propaganda) was a guest, along with Soviet newsman Iona Andronov. Mr. Andronov found it hard to understand how "the richest and greatest county in the world" allows poverty.
Q- Sounds familiar.
A- "It's a shame.", he said to audience applause, "In the USSR you have not homeless people on the street."
Q- That's a real joke compared to what has since been revealed about the state of the Soviet economy!
A- A representative homeless person admitted that through his own mismanagement he ended up on the streets. Sure the city provides shelters, he said, but people get killed in those shelters. He told Mr. Donahue's audience that he had once been a cook in the navy but he used to drink. He didn't want charity or welfare, he wanted a place he could afford.
Q-"Want" was his word?
A- Absolutely. He had nine children but wouldn't go to his family in "this shape". A young woman in the audience asked the question others were wondering about: "When the homeless have family, why not go to family?"
Q- Why, in other words, should taxpayers come to the rescue and let family members off the hook because a father is too embarrassed to let his daughter see him in a degraded condition?
A- It's not the reluctance I'm questioning; that's natural and only too easy to understand; but where is the justice when taxpayers are asked to juggle their priorities and pay for someone else's mistake? Perhaps swallowing one's pride is a contribution owed to society.
Q- Justice is a sticky word.
A- One lady in the Donahue audience didn't see any opportunities in this country for today's youth. She gave the impression that children of yesterday's immigrants were raised in luxury and surrounded by wealth. I wanted to tell her to read Herman Wouk's novel Inside, Outside to get a more realistic impression of what motivated immigrants in the early years of this century. In that novel a character comes to America not knowing the language and spends two years, from age 18 to 20, working as a sorter and marker in a laundry. Sixteen hours a day, "in a damp cellar lit by one electric bulb" for the unbelievably meager salary, even in those tough days, of $2 a week. His friends do the same job only on the street level and for $5 a week. The young hero is justifiably envious of his friends, not just because they make more than double what he is paid for the same work and are not stuck in a dark basement, but primarily because of their access to a toilet!
Q- You've got to be kidding! Surely you're not attempting to defend such working conditions? Most of us are justifiably proud of the progress that has been made in the conditions of even illegal workers in this country.
A- But very real incentives must be acknowledged. Mr. Wouk's young hero took what was then considered the most desirable of only three choices, low-pay, distasteful work under terrible conditions, begging or taking charity. (Yes, they had soup-kitchens eighty or ninety years ago, too.). But his willingness to work hard and make sacrifices was rewarded---he ended up owning the laundry.
Q- Great! You're spouting Horatio Alger fiction. (Mr. Alger wrote over 100 boys books in the mid-nineteenth century, in which the heroes rose from rags to riches through virtue and hard work. For example: Ragged Dick (1867) Luck & Pluck (1869) and Sink or Swim (1870).)
Q- Great! You're spouting Horatio Alger fiction. (Mr. Alger wrote over 100 boys books in the mid-nineteenth century, in which the heroes rose from rags to riches through virtue and hard work. For example: Ragged Dick (1867) Luck & Pluck (1869) and Sink or Swim (1870).)
A- Fiction? OK, you talk to older people in this country and you will find many successful men and women who have such stories to tell---non-fiction. Just don't forget that a lot of Americans come from a pioneering tradition and the one thing we all share is the psyche of immigrants to a promised land. Many people believe the safety-net has already become so comfortable that opportunity does not beckon the way it once did. Opportunity and the American Dream may have been embraced with more enthusiasm by those with dependents and empty bellies.
Something said by the author of The Psychological Seduction, William Kirk Kilpatrick, gave me an insight into the benefits that accrued to nineteenth century America from the popularization of books like those of Horatio Alger. Kilpatrick said,
Moral education is not simply a matter of becoming more rational or acquiring decision-making skills. It has to do with vision, the way one looks at life. . .it follows that one of the central tasks of moral education is to nourish the imagination with rich and powerful images of the kind found in stories, myths, poems, biography and drama. If we wish our children to grow up with a deep vision of life, we must provide a rich fund for them to draw on.
Q- I hardly think Mr. Alger's stories, the equivalent of today's paperback romance novels, were the "rich fund" to which Mr. Kilpatrick was referring. I grant you that today the hero in Herman Wouk's novel would have been prevented from working sixteen hours a day in a dimly lit cellar, without a toilet, for unjust wages. I think you are the only person in the country who is questioning whether that is good or bad. The rest of us consider safety and health regulations--- all the legislation for fair labor standards that are commonplace today--- as an advancement.
A- I think a lot of people may not have considered what was given up in exchange. The price that was paid for better working conditions was less opportunity and control over one's own life. By preventing people from working as long, as hard and for as low wages as they may wish ---by disregarding their personal judgment as to what is in their own best interests and what might best further their own private agendas---policy makers deny opportunity and substitute oppression. Poverty is a by-product of oppression. I think you might have disagreed with a lady in the Donahue audience that said, "Let the people, not the government solve the problems."
Q- Maybe you should recognize that a lot of Americans are sick and tired of hearing about the white middle class that lifted itself by its boot straps.
A- They recently heard about the black middle class---Clarence Thomas. But I know you're right---only stupid, tiresome and uncaring people ever refer to hardship, discipline and work anymore. But an increasing body of evidence is being accumulated which shows that when anything, but let's take poverty and homelessness, is made into a successful activity, it will increase.
Q- Are you suggesting when we give to beggars on the street, or establish soup kitchens and shelters, we are encouraging homelessness and poverty? Are you suggesting we might be spoiling the unfortunate by making things too easy for them?
A- Benjamin Page, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago in the 1980s, said on page 17 of his book Who Gets What From Government:
If we view inequality as harmful to society and destructive of human welfare, it is natural to conclude that the state ought to redistribute income so as to achieve more equality.
You might also consider that if children and adults were evenly distributed there wouldn't be a difference in their poverty rates. But, according to Victor Fuchs, Economics Professor at Stanford University, forty percent of all children and nine percent of all adults live in households with three or more children and fifty-seven percent of all adults live in households containing no children.
Q- That means even if incomes of adults are similar the per capita income is much lower in homes with children. We certainly didn't need anyone's study to tell us that.
A- Nor is it a surprising discovery that non-labor income attributable to pension and Social Security benefits, has grown more rapidly than labor income, which has in fact declined in recent years. Children are clearly more dependent on the labor income of their parents, which helps account for the statistics showing an increase in childhood poverty in recent years.
Q- In 1985, non-cash benefits to the poor were valued at $56.2 billion; almost double the $30.2 billion cash benefits. If according to a 1986 study by the Census Bureau, non-cash federal assistance was to be considered, the number of citizens living in poverty might be 11.5 million lower than officially estimated. Every year beginning in 1979, the non-cash portion of public assistance has resulted in a lower number of poor people than officially published.
A- But anything can be carried to extreme. To include even the insurance value of Medicare-Medicaid benefits in counting non-cash aid, would lead to the ridiculous result that in eight states the value of those benefits would put an elderly person with absolutely zero cash income in the "above poverty" level.
Q- That is ridiculous. Counting Medicaid could mean that "the sicker the richer".
A- Of course not all income is reported.
Q- Are you referring to the underground economy?
A- Yes. If by reporting minimal earnings or unexpected increases in assets, a family would be disqualified from subsidized housing or lose their food stamps or reduce their social Security benefits, most families are simply not going to report the income. Unwittingly, government policy is a powerful incentive to dishonesty.
Q- I remember reading about malfeasance in one of your books. Do you know what I mean?
A- I quoted the co-director of a New York anti-poverty group. I couldn't get over her statement that,
"Poverty is the number one killer of children in the United States. It's murder by malfeasance."
Malfeasance is misconduct or wrongdoing contrary to official obligations. Misfeasance is the improper performance of an act which is lawful to do. However, the feasance this woman was apparently looking for is nonfeasance, the omission of an act one ought to do . This seems to be clear from the rest of her statement describing 'murder' as lead-paint poisoning, elevator-shaft deaths, apartment fires and inadequate nutrition. This logic would imply that birth control would also be murder---look at all the children that are prevented from life by omission of unrestricted sexual intercourse; something that could just as easily and arbitrarily be argued as an "ought".
But looking beyond the inaccurate use of language and absence of logic, what would (she) have society do? After all there are numerous alternatives. We could sterilize those we judge may become unfit parents (states did this not that long ago) or remove children from homes where we judge they may be endangered by lack of attentive parenting (still being done today). Ms. Well-Meaning's solution, "Apart from the obvious solution. . .more money. . ." is to think about the problem first of all, then we must educate and third, find a way to keep the poor" . . .from feeling like an island apart, broken off from the mainland".
Q- Her three-step solution was (1) more money, (2) think and educate others about the problem and (3) cheer up the poor---she didn't say how? More women in the workforce should lead to more money.
A- Now you've opened up a whole new subject.
From 1939 to 1979 women made approximately 49 percent of what males earned whereas in the mid-eighties they were making 65 percent of a male's earnings. Ok ---partly because male earnings had dropped about eight percent, but that's still progress, and it's getting better as younger women pick up graduate degrees and professional designations. In 1987 these women between the ages of 21 and 24 were making 86 percent of a male's earnings. In 1960, only four million women held professional, technical, managerial, and administrative jobs; in 1987 there were eleven million women in those jobs. In 1960 women accounted for one out of every three college students and today they're on a parity with men. In fact the 1987 freshman class at Chapel Hill, North Carolina was 63 percent women.
Q- New Choices in Changing America, a report issued by the Democratic Commission in August, 1986, found the increase of women in the workforce to be positive overall. It presumed that women in the workforce would increase America's productivity and enable the country to better compete globally, especially because there may well be a shortage in workers ten or twenty years down the pike because of demographics.
A- I believe increased technology will prevent that shortage and, as unpopular as my belief may be, I nevertheless feel quite certain women working in the home will increase America's productivity far more than their working in the labor force.
Q- That's definitely a minority viewpoint.
Stephanie Coontz author of The Social Origins of Private Life: A History of American Families. believes the fight to "preserve the family" masks an agenda for accelerating the acceptance of economic and political inequality.
A- Ms. Coontz and I are obviously on different wave lengths. She ridicules the idea of "traditional families" claiming society would have to mandate abortion and birth control for unmarried women, prohibit divorce, except among the rich, force unwed mothers to give up their children for adoption, and be prepared to care for all the older, minority and disabled children who cannot find homes. She says it would also mean "prohibiting employers from replacing formerly unionized, male-dominated jobs with cheaper female, foreign or part-time labor."
Q- The Democratic Commission report called for better day care, more parenting leaves, flexible work hours, pay equity and comparable worth.
A- Pay equity and comparable worth are further examples of legislation that hurts those whom it purports to help. It is likely, if forced to pay equal wages, that an employer would prefer male workers and so a woman who might be willing to work, at least on a temporary basis for lower wages, in order to prove her abilities, would be denied the opportunity.
Professor Thomas DiLorenzo has used South Africa as an illustrative example:
In South Africa, white racist labor unions lobbied for "equal pay" laws for black workers because they knew the laws would protect white employees from competition by relatively less skilled black workers. Since most blacks were less experienced, forcing employers to pay them wages that exceeded their marginal productivity would price them out of jobs. In other countries the motivation behind the laws may be well-intentioned, but the effects are the same.
People have got to start recognizing their enemies! Comparable worth legislation would have even more disastrous results for women. China, Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union all tried having government bureaucrats determine wages rather than leaving that determination to the marketplace---needless to say, it didn't work!
Q- But comparable worth was recommended by the report, not only to give single mothers a better living, but was supposed to give married women more leverage with their husbands. Supposedly, husbands will feel compelled to do more of the house and family chores because comparable worth will assure that men no longer contribute more financially to the family than women.
A- The Reagan administration issued a report about the same time as the Democratic Policy report. The Reagan report called for increased tax deductions for dependents.
Q- Wasn't that suppose to encourage more women to stay home and take care of their children?
A- Women's new-found wide-spread ability to work and support themselves has both pros and cons. The pros have been dealt with steadily by every magazine and talk show across the nation for the past twenty years. Independence and self-worth are worthy achievable goals and were the subject of my first book which was directed to young people and women especially.
Q- What about the disadvantages?
A- Because today a woman is more readily accepted in the work place and has more choices than ever before, it is easier for her to leave an unhappy relationship;. but it is also easier for her husband to desert her. When men and women are economically independent, one rivet to the relationship has been removed---there is one less reason to stay together and work things out. I am only stating a fact. I would never advocate dependence to keep a marriage in tact. It is far better to continue a marriage by choice rather than by necessity.
Q- It' s tempting to think if only the family could be made to function properly everything would be fine in our society.
A- I'm not that naive. A University of Michigan Panel Study of Income Dynamics that followed a representative sample of 5,000 families since 1968, found that only one-seventh of childhood transitions into long-term poverty were associated with break-up of the family, while more than half were linked to changes in employment and finances.
Q- I thought you weren't aware of that study. It found that the poverty rate in 1985 was only 1.3 percent higher than it would have been without any of the changes within the family structure since 1967. The way I see it, that absolves the women's liberation movement. You know how they are always seen as the cause of the increased divorce rate in this country---apparently divorce isn't responsible for as much of the increase in poverty as we used to believe.
A- That may be, since the study did find that the majority of the increase in family poverty since 1979 occurred in two-spouse families. Only thirty-eight percent occurred in single-parent families. But you know how little credence I put in studies and statistics. I have studies that show that 64.7 percent of all poor families with children are headed by a single parent---that the poverty rate of one parent families is 38 percent and for two parent families the rate is six percent. Also remember the Michigan study was measuring increase.
Forgetting poverty numbers, I know of no one that can make me believe divorce is anything but horrible for men, women and the children involved.
Q- Even so, it has been shown that high school dropouts---not career women---have the highest divorce rates.
A- Let's concentrate on the broader picture and forget all the studies and numbers---we can produce enough statistics to neutralize one another. The point is there are many causes of divorce and too few supports for marriage. I will only suggest that the role of wife and mother are seldom described in a favorable light so that the rewards can be appreciated.
Q- Ok---forget statistics and realize that today a single mother is condemned to poverty and welfare if she doesn't work outside the home---even a two-spouse family can be sentenced to poverty unless the woman goes out into the workplace. That is today's reality!
A- But you must admit there are mothers who could financially afford to choose the homemaker role and instead decide to work outside the home. And of course there are women who choose a career instead of children.
Q- Why should they be forced to choose when men have both children and careers at the same time?
A- If you forget about "at the same time" there is no reason to choose. According to the Census Bureau, one in every five wives earns more than her husband---obviously most earn less. Nevertheless, women, even more than men, are living more educated, longer, healthier lives and can have several careers in succession if they choose to do so. Children and career need no longer be an either-or choice. To choose to have everything all at once means a woman has to be a super mom and many can not handle the strain. Even when they can, husbands and children often suffer along with society at large.
Q- I've heard that low-skilled men, especially young black men, find they cannot compete with AFDC. (Aid to Families with Dependent Children)
A- It's a crime when Uncle Sam effectively tells these men "Take a hike, I can be a better provider for your family than you can." Some men benefit from the motivation of a dependent but supportive family. Single men usually put out less effort than married men with dependents.
Q- I've heard that that the stresses of poverty and the provider role itself present obstacles and challenges that discourage effort and achievement.
A- Baloney! Most men respond to challenge. In fact the obstacles and problems are catalysts inspiring greater effort and creativity.
Q- If your agenda is to keep women tied to the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant you'll have a strong fight here.
What about the many successful businesswomen on TV panels who are proof that women can 'have-it-all-at-once"; happy intelligent children, successful supportive husbands and a brilliant career outside the home.
A- I believe a woman can have it all, but not only is it easier, it is far better for society for her to have it in stages.
Mothers have to make children feel wanted and needed. You may have heard of the suicide note left by a teenager a few years ago that read, "You have given me everything to live with and nothing to live for."
Q- I will admit there's a glimmer of truth in what you're saying. The large number of latch-key children are a relatively new phenomenon and a direct result of mothers working outside the home.
I have worried about today's youngsters; they will be in charge of this country forty or fifty years from now. I wonder when I read stories about latch-key children and hear people demanding dollars for child-care centers. But no one is suggesting money is everything.
A- We have heard about the early poor-in-dollars-rich-in-spirit years of Mario Cuomo, Tom Harkin, Clarence Thomas and countless politicians and other prominent individuals and can unhappily compare those lives to the shortened lives of teenagers who were given things to live with but no philosophy to live by.
Q- On the other hand, numerous polls and surveys have purported to show that children with working moms are more independent, responsible and a host of other good things, and that the only problem with a mother working is the mother's own guilt.
A- People will believe anything if they want to badly enough.
Q- On This Week In Northern California June 30, 1991 Jim Steyer, spokesperson for Children Now, argued that society has a duty to provide quality health care for all children. He reasoned that we bailed out the savings and loans, the Kuwaitis and at that time were considering doing the same for the Russians. I agree that we need to get our priorities straight.
A- Wade Horn, a member of the recent Commission on Children, Youth and Family, gave a presentation for the Heritage Foundation on July 23, 1991.
Q- Wasn't the Democrat's Commission on Children chaired by Senator Jay Rockefeller?
A- Actually only two-thirds of the members were appointed by the Democrats. I thought you might be interested in some of their findings.
The media has done a pretty good job of telling us about the one million abused and neglected children, the 400,000 in foster homes and about the one out of five who in 1990 was living in poverty. But what they don't talk about, maybe because it's not news, is the number of children in this country who are doing well. The vast majority of children are living in homes with their own parents, have their material needs met and most are being raised by nurturing parents.
Q- This sounds more like a white wash and not what you'd expect from a committee made up of a majority of Democrats.
A- Hold on---there's more. Every day there are 2,500 children born out of wedlock, 700 low-birth-weight babies are born, 7,000 teenagers become sexually active, 1,1000 teens have abortions, 100 teens contract syphilis or gonorrhea and six teenagers commit suicide.
Q- That's what I call mixed findings.
A- Of course everyone wants to know why this is happening. The findings of the Commission are not necessarily surprising, but they are interesting. They found there are many external forces buffeting families, but individual decisions and the behavior of adults is what affects children more than any other factor, and these decisions and behavior patterns can be controlled.
Q- Exactly what behavior patterns are they talking about?
A- The most serious, and unfortunately common ones are (1) abusing drugs and alcohol, (2) having children out of wedlock (3) divorce and (4) once divorced, neglecting the emotional and financial support of children.
Q- I guess it's obvious that from drug and alcohol abuse stem many of the other problems you alluded to earlier; like abused children leading to foster care; drug habits leading to low -birth-weight babies and so forth.
A- As if single-parent families were not enough, society now has to contend with no-parent families.
Q- You mean AIDs and crack babies.
A- Exactly. The Commission agreed that the message of the last twenty years, that "family structure is irrelevant" or that "no one family configuration is better than any other" is baloney.
Q- Oh Great! That's just what we've been talking about--- how family configuration doesn't really matter that much, at least according to the University of Michigan Panel Study of Income Dynamics.
A- Well, according to Mr. Horn, the Commission on Children found that such a feel-good philosophy was a nice pacifier designed to help us stop worrying about divorce, single parenting, spending less time with our children and all those things that common sense would normally tell us make a big difference in a child's life.
Q- You mean the Commission nixed the stand-by motto "It's not the quantity of time, it's the quality of time."?
A- In fact Mr. Horn used those exact words as an illustration of a reversal in thinking. The studies showed that family structure is the single most important factor related to successful outcomes in childhood. They found that half of today's children will spend some time in single parent families before age 16---half of all marriages will end in divorce and half of those will end in a second divorce before these same kids reach age 16. They also found that kids from single parent households exhibit above average rates of suicide, drug use, mental and physical illness and violence. When family configuration was taken into consideration, the relationship between crime and race, and crime and low-income, completely disappeared.
Q- You can't believe anyone. Expert A says X and Expert B says not X. In this case I'm afraid most Americans will choose denial.
A- You're right---this is something we don't want to face. And there are always studies supporting another point of view and assuring us we don't have to pay attention. Those who feel guilty do so because they probably grew up in two parent households with stay-at-home-moms, and feel they should provide their own children with the same kind of childhood. But just for the record, here is another statistic refuted elsewhere. It was found that twenty percent of the children in two parent families will spend some time in poverty before their tenth birthdays compared to seventy-three percent of children under age ten in single parent homes.
Mr. Horn said, the Commission found that
"clearly living in a stable two parent family with one or both parents employed is a child's best hope of escaping poverty and having his or her material needs met. Government should therefore encourage work, independence and strong families."
Q- So what else is new?
A- The Commission documented even the obvious. Mr. Horn reported that parents spent forty percent less time with their children in 1990 than they did in 1965. Many people are coming to believe that a lot of the social problems we have today are more a result of shifting values than of economics.
Q- I've noticed a gradual but continuous shift. In fact I can see a trend toward material consumption and glorifying the individual, reaching back to the seventies. Today parents of both sexes are more likely to find thirty minutes to run around a track or workout on a stationary bicycle than to find time to read to the kids.
A- The various figures I've seen make me believe that the reason there are fewer stay-at-home-moms today than in the past is an economic reason. A good many people simply can't make ends meet with only one parent working and this despite the very real desire in some families to have one parent at home with the kids.
Q- That is really criminal. How could we have let this happen?
A- Pendulums of social tolerance swing first too far in one direction then in the other and generally settle for awhile at a happy medium before the cycle repeats. I suspect the fifties was one of those "happy medium" times and that in the nineties we are ready to reverse the societal excesses of the seventies and eighties and on the way may encounter a certain amount of excesses at the other extreme.
Q- You mean excessive intolerance? I hope not.
A- Maybe we're getting smart, or knowledgeable enough, to avoid extremes. I think it is a good sign that many people in leadership positions are beginning to view government's role as that of a catalyst to inspire and encourage discussion. Secretary of Health and Human Services, Louis Sullivan is talking now of a "community of concern" and the "culture of character". I hope to see these phrases, and the care and responsibility they represent, catch on.
Q- A lot of people blame no-fault divorce laws for making it too easy for families to separate rather than workout their problems.
A- I'd say that easy divorce would fall into the negative camp reserved for things that make successful family life harder, along with many other disincentives. We can already see in California, as we make divorce more difficult, that more families are staying together.
Q- What are the other disincentives?
A- For instance in some public housing units, rents skyrocket if a single parent decides to marry. I'd call that a disincentive, wouldn't you?
Mr. Horn spoke of Commission recommendations favoring Head Start and job programs because they provide choice and local control.
Q- All the job programs I ever heard of reduce local control. Government bureaucrats end up deciding the type of jobs that will exist and the types of skills people shall have. They had it down to a nat's eyelash in Nazi Germany where officials oversaw every job change, always directing workers into areas that would best serve the bureaucrat's own subjective determination of "the public interest".
A- That's what I've been saying. An individual's interest ceases to matter in the pagan search for the "good of the tribe". We have just seen the Soviet empire crumble---a government that completely dominated its labor market.
Q- We have no disagreement as to the deleterious effects of government job programs, but I suspect the Commissions job programs were different.
A- Cash and non-cash assistance were both considered to be useful by the Commission, but members agreed some reciprocity by the recipients should be encouraged.
Q- Reciprocity? What would they have those receiving assistance do?
A- A little self-control and responsibility were mentioned.
Q- Wouldn't you say the family-support act we talked about earlier, encourages responsibility?
A- I would say that is a step in the right direction all right. Actually the Commission had several recommendations. It endorsed public school choice as a push towards parent empowerment. It endorsed the earned-income tax credit as against the $1,000 refundable tax-credit.
Q- That's interesting. What did they have against the proposed refundable tax-credit?
A- They felt since the credit could add a goodly sum to current welfare benefits, it would solidify single parenting as an option---something they would not like to do.
Q- My personal objection is that the only proposal to pay for the credit that I've heard is to raise taxes. A tax cut that must be paid for by a tax hike is a classic example of government planning.
A- I hear you.
Q- Did Mr. Horn happen to mention whether the Commission took a stand on health care for children?
A- I'm not sure if Mr. Horn was speaking for the Commission on Children,Youth and Family, or for himself when he said that the health-care recommendations that came out of the Pepper Commission would raise taxes, cost jobs and discriminate against families with children.
Q- That sounds like a conservative viewpoint to me.
A- Mr. Horn told his audience that he wanted to empower consumers and permit undistorted markets to function in medical care and health insurance as a means of providing the best health care for the most people while targeting public programs to those most in need. I'd say you had his personal viewpoint pegged correctly.
On the other hand, the Commission explicitly recommended that abstinence be put on a par with other kinds of birth control----this would signify to most people that the Commission itself was more conservative than expected.
Q- That's not so surprising. Teenagers are too embarrassed, immature, or for whatever reason, they fail to use contraception, so it only makes sense to encourage abstinence.
A- Let me summarize: The final report conceded the importance of morals and values, endorsed two parent families, recognized the need to encourage the formation of more two-parent families and the need for tax codes and welfare reforms to remove negative impacts on two parent families, endorsed school choice, acknowledged that government should permit families to keep more of what they earn and in that vein they recommended a $40 billion tax cut.
Q- What about tax credits---I thought you said the Commission endorsed them.
A- Actually I believe Mr. Horn said there was a debate going on as to the pros and cons of doing away with personal exemptions and refundable tax credits in favor of the earned-income tax credit---although he made it fairly clear that he personally is a champion of the earned-income tax credit.
The other recommendation was for coordinating across agencies and putting the many programs having to do with children under one umbrella called something like the Administration of Children and Families. That last recommendation was prompted by Governor Wilder's discovery that in Virginia there were 14,000 social service cases and only 5,000 children in the program. It was obvious that the same child came up more than once in the case load of different workers.
Q- I just want to backtrack a minute and get your personal opinion regarding the earned-income tax credit---not the Commission's opinion.
A- Keep in mind that I am always in favor of any legislation that would allow citizens to keep more of their own income, which generally means I favor tax breaks. However, I am generally against robbing Peter to pay Paul---that is against redistribution via a more progressive tax code. Within that general framework I would choose the best of the available alternatives. Let's first examine the proposal more fully using 1989 data because there hasn't been enough time to gather sufficient data about the use of the credit in more recent years.
The idea behind the earned-income tax credit was to reward working families with meager incomes. The earned income tax credit was available to working families with at least one child living at home and a 1989 income of less than $19,340. A maximum credit of $910 was allowed until income exceeded $10,240 it then decreased until income reached $19,340. It was suppose to pay $6 billion to ten million low-income families. In 1990 the maximum benefit to a family was just under $1,000 or $953 . That was supposed to reach $1,583 in 1991 and go to $2,000 by 1994. The five-year cost was estimated at $13.1 billion with a huge increase anticipated after 1994. Low-income working families with children would also get a tax credit of six percent of their eligible earnings or a maximum of $426 in 1991 in order to purchase health insurance for their children. The anticipated five year cost of this proposal was an additional $5.2 billion.
Q- At least it would be putting that money into the hands of the people rather than bureaucratic programs.
A- Unfortunately a 1990 Internal Revenue Service study of 1,347 returns found that nearly 40 percent of those who did take advantage of the credit in 1989, were not legally eligible. In 1990 there was a study to find out how many are eligible but not taking the credit. Many eligible low-income taxpayers with a child are filing as "single taxpayers" (class ineligible) instead of "head of household".
A lot of wrinkles need to be ironed out and then alternatives scrutinized before I could commit.