Public Affairs and Public Policy: New Jersey and the Nation

Copyright © 2012 by Michael P. Riccards

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Contents

FOREWORD

PREFACE

CHAPTER ONE

Cost-of-living Brief

CHAPTER TWO

Dancing on Ice Floes: Survival Strategies for Artists in the Atlas Shrugged Era of Public Arts Funding

CHAPTER THREE

TECHNOLOGY AND PUBLIC POLICY: HISTORICAL EXAMPLES AND AN IMAGINATIVE USE TO PROMOTE THE HUMAN RIGHTS OF CHILDREN

CHAPTER FOUR

Homo-manipulatis Hubris and the Cycles of Natural Economics A Metaphysical Argument against Economic Centralization

CHAPTER FIVE

The Dollar Problem and Its Solution

CHAPTER SIX

New Jerseyans with Disabilities: Still Struggling for Access to Employment, Health Care, Housing, Community Acquiescence, and

CHAPTER SEVEN

Promoting Opportunity for the Next Generation 2011 Kids Count Data Book

CHAPTER EIGHT

Social Security Policy Options

CHAPTER NINE

Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United

CHAPTER TEN

Reducing Fear of Crime in Houston and Newark

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Prosecutorial Misconduct and Abuse

CHAPTER TWELVE

Amici Curiae Brief in Salim Ahmed Hamdan v. United States of America

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Towards Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of Global Public Authority

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Words without thoughts never to heaven go: William Shakespeare, the Old Faith and the New One

FOREWORD

My friends:

This is the fourth printed volume in the Hall Institute of Public Policy series entitled New Jersey 2020. Since I started the Institute seven years ago, it has remained dedicated to its original mission: to further discussion and dialogue in a non-partisan way of the major issues facing the state. And since New Jersey is so uniquely central to the United States, many of those issues are in fact important to the nation.

Added to our website with its over 400 contributions of opinion and commentary, the Hall Institute now has a television forum and also a radio blog as well. With all of these venues, the Institute continues to explore the most critical areas of interest. In this volume, we have ranged from childhood poverty, cost of living differentials, prosecutorial misconduct, the troubled economy, and the ways in which religious differences impacted in the seventeenth century on the greatest dramatist in the English language.

Those essays are mean to provoke interest and more importantly to help us move toward solutions to our difficult problems. For me, the purpose of the Institute is to help find solutions and to render in Andrew Carnegie’s words real and permanent good.

Sincerely,

George E. Hall

PREFACE

Through four printed volumes the Hall Institute of Public Policy has compiled articles that will have a far reaching impact on some of the state’s and the nation’s most pressing problems. These volumes seek to present fair and balanced treatments of issues with the hope that solutions will emerge by deliberate democratic dialogue. The very range of these issues shows what challenges us as a unfinished agenda.

In the first essay, Jarrett Chapin, a Ph.D. candidate in English at the University of Wisconsin and formerly at the Hall Institute, lays out a sophistical cost of living analysis. He was originally asked by the staff of Senator Frank Lautenberg to provide him with targets that he could use in Senate debates.

Lawrence E. McCullough, a public relations consultant to the Hall Institute, reminds us in this time of scarcity of the importance of the arts. McCullough has been an actor, a playwright and an arts promoter and his essay pulsates with a sense of deep commitment.

On a different tone, Glenda Kirkland, executive director of the Isaiah House and associate professor of sociology at Bloomfield College, insists that technology can play an important role in the human rights of children. She recalls the historical examples of change and of hope.

Independent researcher and New York City expert on domestic security Mike Presutti, creates the concept of homo-manipulatis—looking at the very cycles of national economics. He comes out strongly in favor of the regulatory mechanisms inherent in capitalism and competition.

The praise of classical capitalism is embodied in Lewis Lehrman’s essay on restoring the gold standard. Lehrman is an investor, a historian, and was a Republican candidate for the governor of New York State.

A more interventionist state is promulgated in Salvatore Pizzuro’s discussion of New Jerseyans with disabilities. Pizzuro is one of the outstanding national advocates on the issue, and in October 2011 he and the Hall Institute of Public Policy hosted a state-wide conference on the problems facing the disabled in New Jersey.

The Annie F. Casey Foundation has published its 2011 report labeled, Kids Count. The Foundation shows how poverty affects too many of our young, and how it has widespread consequences for the nation as a whole.

The Congressional Budget Office closely examines the largest and most successful entitlement program, Social Security. With the demographic changes in the population base, the contribution pyramid has become truncated. The nonpartisan CBO lays out some policy options.

Some of those concerns—poverty, income, health insurance—have been based on the U.S. Census Bureau’s wealth of data about the U.S.A. No source of data is more suggestive or more voluminous than the Bureau’s tabulations and analyses.

All civil society must rest upon law and order—not just to protect life and property but also our core liberties, for we are a free people. In a somewhat dated, but rather relevant policy study, the Police Foundation found that establishing a closer tie with the local population has a major impact on law enforcement. Most interesting, one of the cities showcased is the troubling urban area of Newark.

I have examined the issue of prosecutorial misconduct, and in 2012 the Hall Institute and Seton Hall Law School, under the aegis of Professor Paula Franchese, put on a statewide conference that addressed the issue of abuses in the area of law enforcement discretion.

That discretion is even more complicated in the war on terrorism, which has struck our land and come very close to New Jersey especially. The events of 9-11 and the question of how to treat non-American enemy combatants has brought forth a series of law suits in the areas of preventive detention, torture and foreign interrogations. In one famous case, Hamdan v USA, some of those major issues are presented from the side of the petitioner.

Many influences are apparent in world politics, one arising again from the divisiveness of religion has a polarizing dynamic. In one statement, the Holy See’s Pontifical Commission on Justice advocates a more worldwide bank to deal with the economic problems besetting nations, especially now in Europe.

On a second issue, the effects of sectarian division are examined in light of one of the most protracted and bitter splits—the schism of Anglo-Protestantism from the Roman Catholic Church, beginning with Henry VIII and formalized by Elizabeth I. Caught up in that change of sea currents was the greatest of all writers in our language, William Shakespeare. He was born in a devout Catholic family, had to live in Protestant Elizabethan times, and spent his later years in articulating what is an almost stoic pessimism and calm. He was a soul for all ages.

The world was one divided between Catholic and Protestants; now it is Christian and Muslim. Sectarian differences are and have been linked up too often with intolerance and even violence. This volume is meant to elucidate social issues, political problems and human nature in all of its possibilities and shortfalls.

The editor has kept the different disciplines’ and associations’ methods of footnoting and attribution. In addition some reports are in multiple columns. The editor has respected those differences in reprinting these pieces.

Michael P. Riccards

CHAPTER ONE

Cost-of-living Brief

by

Jarrett Chapin[1]

In order to measure whether one state is more expensive to live in than another, Americans might typically look to the regional consumer price index (CPI) which surveys about 90,000 various goods and services to estimate price differences as a measure of inflation between regions. It is inferred that if someone makes enough to live in one state, the CPI can be used as a multiplier in order to derive the approximate cost of living in another state. Or, as was the original intent of the index, to justify wage increases based upon evidence of inflation. The CPI in the general region of New Jersey is 181.8 compared to 169.7 in Kentucky, 168.4 in Nebraska, 169.7 in Texas, 169.7 in Florida, and 173.8 on average for all U.S. cities.[2]This list of index numbers illustrates that New Jersey’s CPI is indeed higher than most, though it provides little in terms of evidence of causes and impacts on specific regions and demographics. For instance, if housing is provided by relatives at no charge, a move to New Jersey might cost comparatively less than it would for the average renter. This is not reflected in the CPI though it might be important information to which policy makers and voters should have easy access.

We recommend as an alternative to the CPI, the Self-Sufficiency Standard, in New Jersey the Real Cost of Living Index, which is used in some states as an alternative to the Federal Poverty Level (FPL). Though the ultimate purpose of the Self-Sufficiency Standard is to provide more accurate and geographically sensitive estimates of the income required to sustain families of varying sizes, the Self-Sufficiency Standard can be very helpful to policy makers who wish to track the essential costs paid by their constituents in a transparent and geographically specific way. Also, as the CPI has flaws which will be reviewed below, in terms of inflation, the Self-Sufficiency Standard reports higher inflation than the CPI. One reason may be that there is actually more inflation at this level, (the minimum needed to meet a need) in basic needs costs (housing, food, etc.) than is experienced by higher income consumers and/or for luxury items (Appendix 1). For example, housing and health care have risen faster than the cost of airplane tickets or computers. In addition, the Standard includes taxes and tax credits, most important for policy officials who wish to study the real financial burdens of their constituents, represent real costs to all consumers which are left unmeasured by the CPI or the federal poverty measure.[3]

1. The Consumer Price Index

The consumer price index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W) has been used for various purposes. As a relative cost-of-living index (COLI), since 1975, policy makers have used the CPI-W to enact automatic cost of living adjustments (COLAs) for Social Security benefit rates.[4] Officials also use the index to control government spending levels, and to formulate monetary policy, income brackets, and interest rates for Treasury Inflation Protected Securities. Developed originally in 1914 in order to keep wages in step with inflation for unionized members of the shipbuilding industry, the CPI is not an actual COLI but an approximate cost-of-living index that measures the rate of inflation based on prices compared to a particular base period of reference.[5] Most of all, the intention of the 1914 project undertaken by the BLS was to allow for a reopening of questions of wages, hours or conditions at not less than six months’ intervals ‘pro-vided it can be shown that there has been a general and material increase in the cost of living.’[6]

Though the CPI may often be associated with the cost-of-living, it is used primarily for COLAs and for measuring inflation levels to help the federal government set fiscal and monetary policy. A purely relative measure, the CPI only represents a relative increase in general cost derived from a continuing sample of roughly 90,000 consumer goods and services which are organized into several categories and weighed according to consumer spending patterns derived from the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CEX). The weighted categories are: food and beverages, housing, apparel, transportation, medical care, recreation, education, and other goods. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), for instance, supposed in 2005 that apparel accounted for more expenditures in the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W) than it did in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) and therefore weighed it more heavily toward the final index value. Likewise, the CPI-U which is supposed to represent about 80 percent of the population, or those concentrated in urban areas, received heavier weights in that year for the larger housing category than did the CPI-W which represents 32 percent of the population. Recently, the BLS has also experimented with a CPI for elderly populations, the CPI-E, which artificially assigns more weight to the healthcare category. This new index has been criticized for inaccuracy as it overstates inflation by counting costs that are rarely paid out-of-pocket by the consumer.

Various groups, including the BLS, have warned that neither the CPI-W nor CPI-U should be interpreted to be an accurate cost-of-living index but only an approximate measure of the changes in cost-of-living over time. One important reason for this is related to the idea that the weighing process just mentioned shows that the CPI can be specific to population subgroups that form around certain consumption patterns that are uncommon to the majority of consumers. From a (2002) report prepared by the Committee on National Statistics of the National Academy of Sciences upon the request of the BLS contends: since the spending of a household is positively related to the level of its income, the consumption patterns and prices paid by the rich play a greater role in determining the rate of change in the overall CPI than do those of the poor.[7] In 1996, a special commission, the Advisory Commission to Study the Consumer Price Index, often referred to as the Boskin Commission after the commission chair Professor Michael Boskin, was appointed by the U.S. Senate to study the accuracy of CPI as a tool for measuring inflation. Among its findings:

1) Substitution bias occurs because a fixed market basket fails to reflect the fact that consumers substitute relatively less for more expensive goods when relative prices change.

2) Outlet substitution bias occurs when shifts to lower price outlets are not properly handled.

3) Quality change bias occurs when improvements in the quality of products, such as greater energy efficiency or less need for repair, are measured inaccurately or not at all.

4) New product bias occurs when new products are not introduced in the market basket, or included only with a long lag.[8]

The Boskin Comission also concluded that the index overstated consumption by as much as 1.1 percent, a very large amount considering the purpose for which the federal government uses the CPI. According to the commission, the BLS has not taken into account the problems posed by new commodities and new services and the changing economic, social, and environmental climate within which the consumer is operating. Said differently, the commission suggested that the BLS look into the effect that the environment has on the cost of consumer living. The Commission recommended: the BLS should develop a research program to look beyond its current market basket framework for the CPI.[9] Keeping the above criticisms in mind, the CPI can be used to compare the relative cost of living as a superficial indicator between states—though it is difficult to proceed from the CPI toward the policy process because the data is so vast and the methodology generalizes and obscures the cost of living for individual consumers.

The CPI is not sufficient for measuring inflation or deflation for policy makers because the data it produces generalizes the differences in the regions that it surveys and it does not provide an adequate report of the causes of the data.

2. Federal Poverty Level

The federal poverty level, a calculation of the lowest level of income required before a family is in poverty—a negative cost of living estimate—was originally calculated in 1963 when Molly Orshansky, an employee for the Social Security Administration multiplied the USDA’s cost of a diet that met minimum nutritional standards by 3. The multiplier of three was used because Consumer Expenditure Surveys found that the average family spent one-third of their income on food, thus the rationale was that if a family had enough to meet their food needs, if one multiplied by three, they would have enough to meet their other needs. This formula is still used to calculate food benefits in the reverse direction, for the purpose of subsidizing food based upon a family’s determined need. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) describes the process of distributing assistance in a formulaically similar way:

The amount of benefits the household gets is called an allotment. The net monthly income of the household is multiplied by .3, and the result is subtracted from the maximum allotment for the household size to find the household’s allotment. This is because SNAP households are expected to spend about 30 percent of their resources on food.

Note that the federal poverty level does not vary by place, that is, it is the same by family size/composition everywhere in the United States (other than marginally higher levels in Hawaii and Alaska), and is only updated for inflation (using the CPI). Food Stamp (SNAP) benefits compensate for this problem by incorporating actual local costs for housing, child care, and work expenses into the calculation of net income before determining the benefit amount.

3. Self-Sufficiency Standards

As a response to the insufficient FPL, The Poverty Research Institute (PRI) of Legal Services of New Jersey (LSNJ) argues that this method for estimating minimum income needs based on decades-old food consumption patterns is outdated. They, and University of Washington researcher and creator of the Self-Sufficiency Standard, Diana Pearce, maintain that the cost of living—measured as the income required to pay for all basic needs without public or private assistance—is now much higher. The cost of food has been displaced considerably by increases in the cost of housing, health care, and, in the case of families with children, child care. They estimate that increases in the costs of the household necessities may put the net income-proportional cost of food at one sixth rather than one third. Furthermore, PRI suggests that another problem with the FPL approach to the calculation of the cost of living is that the FPL and other measurements rarely take differences of geography into account when estimating the cost required for households of various sizes to subsist. In other words, the selection of goods, the variety of different needs among families of different sizes and compositions, and the variation in the costs of particular goods like housing which can differ by region and even county, have meant that the FPL no longer reflects the actual cost of living and its very real variation across place and time.

The PRI has responded by introducing the Self-Sufficiency Standard to New Jersey, a series of measurements of the cost of living in every county in New Jersey that vary by geography and family composition (Appendix 2 shows the Self-Sufficiency Standard for a 1 adult, 1 preschooler household across all 21 counties). Additional research based on the Standard has also revealed significant variation across the state in terms of the percentage of the population living on incomes below the real cost of living.[10] According to this research, the highest proportion of residents with incomes below the real cost of living are concentrated in some of the regions of the state with lower costs of living, because lower-income households are also concentrated here. Dr. Pearce has also developed and calculated the Self-Sufficiency Standard for 37 other states and the District of Columbia.

The University of Washington, in researching the data for the PRI report on the Self-Sufficiency Standard, gathers and basically augments data for its report from various credible sources like HUD (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development), the Department of Agriculture, and state agencies, but it does not rely on one source or index, nor does it use a simple multiplier. It examines each basic need with a geographic specificity, usually at the county level, and at least at the state level, depending on the data source. Also, as mentioned before, by counting taxes as an expense to consumers, the Self-Sufficiency Standard has another advantage over the CPI adjusted FPL. Though the Self-Sufficiency Standard may be updated by using the CPI, its base amount places more emphasis on child care and taxes.

According to the PRI, housing and child care are by far the greatest expenses for working families with children. Generally, families with two children (when one is under school age) spend about half their incomes on housing and child care expenses alone[11] Looking at the 2005-2007 American Community Survey Three-Year Estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau, we have found evidence which somewhat supports PRI’s findings. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, approximately 900,000 New Jerseyans (68.9 percent) of 2.4 million owners and renters in New Jersey, a group comprised of 505,447 homeowners and 396,294 renters, paid more than 35 percent of their household incomes for housing. What is important about this data is that a very small number of New Jerseyans, about 93,300 (9 percent) renters and 155,931 (7.8 percent) homeowners, pay what might be considered to be a fair amount of their income for shelter, between 30.0 to 34.9 percent. As the calculators of the FPL pointed to statistic trends in the Agriculture Department’s Household Food Consumption Survey of the 1950s to support the notion that one third of income was the proportion of income that was commonly spent by households on food at that time, there is also evidence in the consumer expenditure survey to support the idea that 33 percent or one third is likewise a common expenditure for shelter today. If this is true then, unfortunately, New Jersey owners and renters are overburdened. We present (Appendix 4) publicly available evidence which illustrates that over 900,000 New Jersey renters and homeowners pay over 35 percent of their total income to housing. Though there is evidence that a large number of New Jerseyans pay over 35 percent of their income for housing, it might be said that given the high level of housing support in New Jersey, some of residents whose housing costs are over 35 percent of their income may actually be sharing the cost of renting or owning with the state.[12] This might account for the unusually high number of homeowners and renters in the 35 percent or more category.[13]

4. Comparison

Compared to Virginia which has a similar sized population of residents and households, the number of renters and home owners who pay a larger portion of their incomes to housing is significantly larger in New Jersey (Appendix 4 and 5). As Virginia’s population is smaller by about 1,000,000 residents or about one eighth, the number of Virginia renters and home owners who pay a larger portion of their incomes to housing is also diminished by comparison. According to 2005-2007 American Community Survey 3-Year Estimates New Jersey’s mean and median incomes are both higher than Virginia’s by approximately 12 percent. The simple income difference may explain some of the differences in housing costs though it cannot explain all of it.

The City of Passaic, New Jersey, with a population of 67,974 and Lynchburg, Virginia, at 67,720, both have approximately the same number of residents. In Lynchburg, according to the U.S. Census Bureau in 2000, the number of persons 25 years or older with a college degree was (25.2 percent); in Passaic, (13.7 percent). High school graduates were also to be found more frequent in Lynchburg (78.0 percent) than in New Jersey (55.5 percent). Most striking, the median household incomes in 1999 were almost the same, $32,234 in Passaic and $33,594 in Lynchburg. Lynchburg, compared to New Jersey, is a thriving city where the same income seems to correlate with higher levels of education and more business activities. What makes this data so telling is that the cost of living in the busy little city of Lynchburg is incredibly low compared to the city of Passaic.

The actual differences materialize between Passaic and Lynchburg in every class of housing cost when we look at data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Fair Market Rent (FMR) database for 2009 (Appendix 6). To add to the HUD’s data, looking back at the 2000 U.S. Census Bureau data, the rate of home ownership in Lynchburg in the 2000 census was then 58 percent compared to 27 percent in Passaic. It is unlikely that new data would illustrate meaningful change in these numbers.

On the county level in the same general areas of both states, the PRI, that uses FMR data in its calculations, has calculated the current Self-Sufficiency wage for 2 adults with one infant in Passaic County to be $41,124; in Lynchburg County, the same family can survive on approximately 82 percent of that amount, $31,727. The most up-to-date and detailed comparisons for many more cities in 37 states can be found at the Center For Women’s Welfare website.¹⁴ We have included a Self-Sufficiency Standard table of by-state comparisons which shows the differences in income for a single adult with one preschooler and one school age child (Appendix 7).

Comparing the sources and the individual costs that comprise cost of living data should be helpful for lawmakers who wish to understand what makes living in New Jersey so difficult for families (Appendix 8). What is keeping the CPI from becoming a real COLI is its lack of a base amount that represents the costs of a basket of goods that are regionally and characteristically representative of the population that it affects. Policy makers might think about an approach to measuring inflation that is more state and city specific. As the PRI has coordinated with Diana Pearce and the University of Washington to develop the Self-Sufficiency Standard, the BLS might also coordinate with smaller state agencies to produce state and county specific data that could later be aggregated into a new core CPI. Such a measure should properly include all costs to residents such as taxes, tax credits and health care, as has the Self-Sufficiency Standard. Adding taxes and tax credits into our calculation of the cost of living would be especially good for New Jersey residents. Of course, there is a need to reform the way goods are sampled and to confront the other methodological flaws of the CPI.

There are advantages to using the Self-Sufficiency standard rather than opaque indexes and arbitrary levels to examine the causes behind the costs of living. Studies of public policy and government must take into account cost-of-living differentials.

Works Used/Recommended

National Research Council. At What Price?: Conceptualizing and Measuring Cost-of-Living and Price Indexes. Ed. Schultze, Charles; Christopher Mackie. National Academies Press. Washington DC: Hardback, 2003

The Advisory Commission to Study The Consumer Price Index. Toward A More Accurate Measure of the Cost of Living.Washington DC: Commission, 1996

Burdick, Clark and Lynn Fisher. Social Security Cost-of-Living Adjustments and the Consumer Price Index. Social Security Bulletin. 67.3 (2007): 73-88.

Legal Services of New Jersey-Poverty Research Institute. Poverty Benchmarks 2009: Assessing New Jersey’s Advances, Declines, and Growing Challenges in Addressing Problems of Inadequate Income. 2008.

Diana Pearce. The Real Cost of Living: The Self-Sufficiency Standard for New Jersey in 2008. Prepared for the Legal Services of New Jersey Poverty Research Institute.

http://www.lsnj.org/PDFs/PovertyResearchInstitute/RealCostofLiving2008.pdf

Appendix 1:

Source: US Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics. Consumer Price Index: Northeast Region All Items, 1982-1984=100. CUURO100SAO. Retrieved from www.bls.gov/cpi/home.htm

COMPARING THE SELF-SUFFICIENCY STANDARD WITH THE CONSUMER PRICE INDEX

"Clearly basic costs for families earning Self-Sufficiency Wages have increased in New Jersey over the last decade. However, how does this compare with overall inflation rates? We examine this question in Figure 1 by comparing the Self-Sufficiency Standard in Somerset and Cumberland counties for one adult and one preschooler to the rate of inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI).

If the Self-Sufficiency Standard Wage in 1999 was increased using the CPI, the amount a family would need in Cumberland County to meet basic needs would be $33,479 in 2008. This is over $4,000 less than the actual increase in the cost of basic needs. Somerset County, if inflated with the CPI, would only be $43,870, over $10,000 less than the actual increase. This shortfall is in spite of tax cuts and increased tax credits that have helped offset rising costs for families. It appears that the rate of inflation as measured by the CPI substantially underestimates the rising cost of basic needs for families with incomes at Self-Sufficiency Standard levels (Source: The Real Cost of Living: The Self-Sufficiency Standard for New Jersey in 2008).

Source: Diana Pearce, The Real Cost of Living in 2008: The Self-Sufficiency Standard for New Jersey, Legal Services of New Jersey, 2008.

Appendix 2:

Figure 2. Map of Counties by Level of Annual Self-Sufficiency Wage

One Adult and One Preschooler

New Jersey, 2008

Source: Diana Pearce, The Real Cost of Living in 2008: The Self-Sufficiency Standard for New Jersey, Legal Services of New Jersey, 2008.

Appendix 3:

The Percent below the Real Cost of Living, New Jersey-2008

Source: Legal Services of New Jersey Poverty Research Institute, Poverty Benchmarks 2009: Assessing New Jersey’s Advances, Declines, and Growing Challenges in Addressing Problems of Inadequate Income, 2008.

Appendix 4:

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2005-2007 American Community Survey 3-Year Estimates

Appendix 5:

Home Owners Paying Over 35% of HousehouLd. Income to Housing

Renters Paying Over 35% of Household Income to Housing

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2005-2007 American Community Survey 3-Year Estimates

Note: Readers should keep in mind that New Jersey has more renters total renter occupied units (1,023,806) and owner occupied units (2,119,602) than Virginia (882,270; 2,026,953).

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2005-2007 American Community Survey 3-Year Estimates

Appendix 7:

The Self-Sufficiency Wage for Jersey

City, NJ Compared to Other U.S. Cities, 2008*

One Adult: with One Preschooler and One Schoolage Child

Hourly Self-Sufficiency Wage

*Wages are updated to December 2007 utin? the Consumer Price Index. "Wage calculated assuming family uses public transportation.

Legal Services of New Jersey-Poverty Research Institute. Poverty Benchmarks 2009: Assessing New Jersey’s Advances, Declines, and Growing Challenges in Addressing Problems of Inadequate Income. 2008.

Appendix 8:

Source: The Center For Women’s Welfare. The Self-Sufficiency Standard: http://www.selfsufficiencystandard.org/pubs.html

Footnotes

1. Thanks to Diana Pearce of the University of Washington School of Social Work and Serena Rice of the New Jersey Poverty Research Institute who provided very helpful feedback and criticism.

2. Cityratings.com

3. Pearce, Diana. Re: Cost of Living. Email to Jarrett Chapin. 09 Mar. 2009.

4. Burdick, Clark and Lynn Fisher. Social Security Cost-of-Living Adjustments and the Consumer Price Index. Social Security Bulletin, 67.3 (2007): 73-88.

5. Ibid. The consumer price index was, however, called a cost-of-living index until 1945.

6. Barnett, George E. Index Numbers of the Total Cost of Living The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 35, No. 2. 1921, 240-263

7. National Research Council. At What Price?: Conceptualizing and Measuring Cost-of-Living and Price Indexes, Ed. Schultze, Charles; Christopher Mackie. National Academies Press. Washington DC: Hardback, 2003

8. The Advisory Commission to Study the Consumer Price Index. Toward A More Accurate Measure of the Cost of Living. Washington DC: Commission, 1996

9. Ibid.

10. Diana Pearce, Note Enough to Live On: Characteristics of Households Below the Real Cost of Living, Legal Services of New Jersey Poverty Research Institute, 2008; cited from Legal Services of New Jersey Poverty Research Institute, Poverty Benchmarks 2009: Assessing New Jersey’s Advances, Declines, and Growing Challenges in Addressing Problems of Inadequate Income.

11. Diana Pearce, The Real Cost of Living in 2008: The Self-Sufficiency Standard for New Jersey, Legal Services of New Jersey Poverty Research Institute, 2008.

12. One such program, for renters, called SRAP (State Rental Assistance Program) distributes $25 million in housing vouchers to needy New Jersey renters. According to Homes for New Jersey, 75 percent of voucher recipients make less than 30% of HUD’s median household income: http://www.homesfornj.org/ srap_facts.html Public Housing Agency’s may also participate in a Homeownership Voucher Program or allow residents to apply their rental vouchers to a monthly mortgage. Serena Rice of the Poverty Research Institute has provided the following criticism to the first portion of this footnote and the above passage: I strongly disagree with the characterization of housing assistance levels in New Jersey as high. The State-Rental Assistance Program you cite, which is actually now funded at $52.5 million, is able to provide affordable housing for only a few thousand families, compared with the hundreds of thousands in need. (Rice, Serena. RE: Draft Sources. Email to Jarrett Chapin. 11 Mar. 2009)

13. Pearce, Diana. Re: Cost of Living. Email to Jarrett Chapin. 09 Mar. 2009. http://www. Selfsufficiency standard.org/pubs.html

CHAPTER TWO

Dancing on Ice Floes:

Survival Strategies for Artists in the

Atlas Shrugged Era of Public Arts Funding

By

Lawrence E. McCullough

In May, 2011, by direction of Republican Governor Sam Brownback, the State of Kansas eliminated its state Arts commission. Eliminated totally and completely. The first state ever to refuse to allocate a single cent of its taxpayers’ revenue to supporting its taxpayers’ desire for having Arts in their state.[14]

As a highly touted cost-saving measure in these austere times, the commission’s de-funding shaved 0.005 percent from the state’s budget.

A week before the Kansas arts funding termination, South Carolina Republican Governor Nikki Haley similarly tried to eliminate her state’s Arts commission, but the legislature restored the commission’s funding—$1.9 million in taxpayer funds to an agency that supports an arts sector of more than 78,000 jobs contributing $9.2 billion annually to the South Carolina economy.[15]

Also this past summer, the State of New Jersey under Republican Governor Chris Christie unsuccessfully attempted to jigger its Arts funding formulas to bring about a draconian 27% reduction in the state council’s competitive grant pool.[16]

In a highbrow version of the WWE Steel Cage Death Match, big and small Jersey Arts groups would have been crammed into the same funding category to compete for ever-diminishing dollars...final amounts determined by the soubrette decimating the ballerina with a crossbody stinger splash?

Throughout 2011, the dismal Dump-State-Arts-Funding parade dragged on across the nation.

The Republican-led Pennsylvania House of Representatives proposed a 70% reduction to the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.[17] In Wisconsin, Republican Governor Scott Walker moved to cut state arts funding by 73 percent and eliminate the state percent for art programs. Arizona Republican Governor Jan Brewer eliminated general fund appropriations for the Arizona Commission for the Arts. Florida Republican Governor Rick Scott proposed no funding for his state’s Division of Cultural Affairs.[18]

It would appear to be an indisputable fact of Arts Life in These United States: Republican-dominated state houses across the U.S. are diligently working to eliminate all public funding for Arts, mirroring the decades-long effort by conservatives to systematically cut Arts programs from public and even private schools throughout America. despite thousands of classroom studies demonstrating the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of Arts in helping students excel in character development and in every academic field.

And it won’t be long before Democratic governors throughout the country find themselves faced with the same choice of throwing out the Arts to save some budget bathwater.

Meanwhile, in Day-to-Day America:

. the Arts enjoy a stratospheric profile in mainstream media and American popular culture.

According to the Nielsen ratings for the week of Sept. 12, 2011 (a typical, non-sweeps viewing week), five of the 10 top-rated U.S. television shows on broadcast networks involved the Arts.a score of competitive talent shows featuring music, dance, food, fashion are watched by tens of millions of people every week, topped by the Glee phenomenon—a fictional choral music show dramatizing young Arts dreamers that has spawned its own reality talent search program for aspiring singers.[19]

There’s also a nationwide resurgence of traditional ethnic-based Arts among immigrants and native Americans pursuing an ever-expanding panorama of globally-rooted artistic expression from Riverdance and Bollywood dancercise to bluegrass festivals, cowboy poetry and quilting. Youtube.com is filled with tens of thousands of Americans—especially Americans between ages 12 and 30—proudly documenting their Arts achievements for the world to see.

What a curious contradiction: growing numbers of America’s government and school officials declaring Arts are a waste of time (and public money) vs. legions of savvy corporate advertisers and millions of eager consumers/creators who utilize and reference the Arts continuously.

Add into the mix 30-plus years’ worth of thousands of economic studies across the U.S. that have affirmed over and over and over that the Arts represent the best possible investment of public tax dollars for rebuilding and stabilizing communities, developing numerous and meaningful jobs, enhancing our children’s education and transforming America into the cultured, enlightened, progressive country we like to think we are.

But the politicians seeking to end Arts funding in America have made it crystal clear they are not interested in rebuilding, developing, enhancing, etc. And the societal harm caused by re-appropriating the shrinking pool of public Arts funding that does exist pales into statistical insignificance when compared to assaults on Medicare/Medicaid, Social Security, unemployment insurance, environmental protection, public safety, job training, education, tax credits for the poor and middle class, aid to struggling cities and so on.

Clearly, our role as professional Artists and Arts educators, Arts producers and Arts administrators in the second decade of the 21st century is changing. HAS changed irreversibly. It will change further still.

Observe the Bear. While You Can.

You’ve probably seen the now-iconic photograph of the bewildered polar bear stranded on a small, shrinking patch of sea ice, a collateral casualty of Arctic ice cap melt.

Take a closer look, Artists, cause that’s us. We’re that polar bear, metaphorically.

Which almost certainly drowned or starved to death (non-metaphorically) a few hours or days after the photo was snapped.

We don’t have to share the same fate. Unlike the bear, we know what’s happening to our disintegrating cultural ecosystem. The question is, can the Arts in America transition to and survive in the new Atlas Shrugged world order of vanishing public Arts funding?

Possibly. Let’s follow an alluring hypothesis trail and see if it leads to the rosy-fingered dawn of enlightenment.

Who Gets Public Arts Money Now? And Why?

The current competitive Arts funding process is an outdated paradigm. It is skewed to reward the best-organized and best-represented Artists, not necessarily the most talented or inspired or socially relevant or useful.

It is a paradigm that fails to address the Bigger Picture of the Bigger Role Arts can play in making our world a safer, saner, more self-fulfilled place to be a human being.

Examine the last few years of funding allotments from the NEA, state and county arts councils. Aside from a few big grants to established, name-brand institutions, the majority of federal/state/local arts council money goes to fund small grants to small groups for small projects. And those small group/small grant projects are concentrated in three areas of activity:

1) commissioning/presenting Art innovation (new compositions, plays, dances, films, writing, visual work)

2) delivering Art to underserved audiences (youth, seniors, disabled, rural, poor)

3) preserving and propagating individual Art forms through teaching

Innovation... Service ...Teaching. That’s the core of what the Arts do. Aren’t those also the core functions of Business in a capitalist economic system?

Ponder this Output-Core Function chart:

In the mercantile milieu, Innovation creates product.Service supplies product to customers.Teaching (linked with Research) develops new product applications that generate new Innovation and reaffirm the glorious Circle of Artistic and Business Life.

With that parallel foundation, what might happen if non-profit Arts and for-profit Business were to become true partners?

True partners—not the historic exploitive partnership whereby Business uses Arts to disguise or downplay unethical corporate behavior, i.e. a tobacco company sponsoring a teen opera singer camp, a water-fouling polluter underwriting museum exhibits on marine life and hundreds of other egregious examples of cynical (and to be truthful, ineffective) Arts-washing.

No, this is a different support model altogether. Arts and Business should be equal partners in the mission to solve Social Needs.

Why? Because it makes solid economic sense for both Arts and Business. The creative resources of Arts and the logistical resources of Business should buttress each other’s Innovation-Service-Teaching matrix by undertaking artistic and entrepreneurial collaborations larger than the sum of their individual parts.

Here’s a New Equation:

(Arts Benefit + Business Benefit) x (Arts Resources + Business Resources) = Societal Benefit

Let’s clarify this Societal Benefit result.

At base, we’re talking about Individual Human Benefits that impact the larger society of which we are all a connected part. Considered as a whole, these individual benefits elevate to the status of Societal Benefits affecting us all. Societal Benefits such as fewer people starving or suffering from disease, ignorance, violence, pollution or other destructive social pathologies afflicting so many of the seven billion human lives on our planet.

Here’s an Example:

A local bank gives $50,000 a year to a volunteer-run food pantry at a local church. The $50,000 goes entirely to buying food for seriously poor and hungry people in the community. What happens when Art is incorporated into the service?

1) The bank kicks in an extra $150 per day to pay an Artist (videographer) to record short interviews with food pantry recipients who wish to tell their story to their community, or just talk