TAKING A STAND ON

POVERTY By Helen P. Rogers

Taking a Stand On
Poverty

Other Books by Helen P. Rogers

Everyone's Guide to Financial Planning Social Security: An Idea Whose Time Has Passed The Election Process: A Grassroots Call for Reform The American Deficit: Fulfillment of a Prophecy? The Deficit: 12 Steps to Ease The Crisis

Taking A Stand On Poverty

by Helen P. Rogers

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WELLINGTON PUBLICATIONS CARMEL, CALIFORNIA

The author has chosen to use a question-answer format in order to make the often coomplex subject matter, easier and more enjoyable to read. Q and A is not a dialogue between real people-the author has provided the dialogue for both Q, standing for Quaero, which in Latin means "1 search for" and A, Auctor, which in Latin means "person responsible".
Laws, regulations, economic, and social conditions constantly change: therefore, the reader is urged to use this writing as only a beginning to his own investigation. The information presented is believed to be correct at the time of this writing. The ideas presented do not pretend to be original with the author but are gratefully acknowledged as stemming from many publications, audio and visual news sources as well as discussions with colleagues. Although I may be unaware of the origination of many ideas still I would follow the admonitions of the Talmud which says when a scholar acknowledges all his sources he brings the day of redemption a little closer.

First Edition Copyright © 1991 by Wellington Publications

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Inquiries should be addressed to: Wellington Publications, .Box 223159, Carmel. California 93923.

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Library of Congress Catalog Number: 91-067468

ISBN: 0-915915-17-0

Printed in USA

This book is dedicated to our early immigrant forefathers, our pioneer ancestors and those who like Lupe Anguiano, Mader Shepard, Eddie Edwards, Robert Woodson and Jack Kemp, continue to help their fellow Americans prove that economic poverty is no barrier to those who are rich in character, determination and hope.

Taking A Stand On Poverty

Q- Stephen Solarz, a New York congressman, chaired the Joint-Economic
Committee hearing on Poverty in August, 1991. He claimed child poverty had risen by 2.2 million from 1979 to 1989 despite the booming economy. I wonder what you think of the following statement made by the congressman at that hearing: "Clearly no nation that allows so many of its children to live in poverty can be either competitive or compassionate." A- Of course such a statement belies our heritage. Many of the greatest figures in our nation's history grew up in poverty, Abraham Lincoln being the perhaps the most visible. Perhaps it is my own pioneer stock-my family came to California by covered wagon long before the civil war-that prompts me to remind the congressman that those people were spiritually rich; they possessed things like character, honor and fortitude. People who grew up in a poverty that can hardly be imagined today, were the engines in the drive that led to our competitive position as the most powerful nation in the world. Now ifMr. Solarz were referring to poverty of character, values and role models, I would agree. But, if I'm not mistaken he prescribes more dollars and government programs, and that is at best, onI y a poor prescription for material poverty. As for compassion, I defy anybody to show that Americans are not, and have not always been the most compassionate people on this planet. Q- Are you familiar with historian Gertrude Himmelfarb's Poverty and Compassion? recent book,

A- I would highly recommend it, especially to every member of congress. It is a continuation of her earlier history of poverty as it occurred in England in the 19th century, titled The Idea of Poverty. In this latest work the parallel between the poverty in Britain's inner cities one hundred years ago and the poverty in our own inner cities today is striking. Ms. Himmelfarb details the various public policies that Britain wrestled with and reinforces the truth of that old saying that "There's nothing new under the sun". Q- You mean the English had the same problems and proposed the same solutions that are being proposed in America now?

A- I wouldn't say the same, but would you settle for similar? Technology has advanced so much in a hundred years, plus the fact that Britain has always had structured distinct classes, unlike America. The USA strives to be "the classless society" and although that is probably not possible, we have attained a very broad middle class. Q- Also we have mobility among the unstructured classes that do exist in this country. It is possible to go in and out of upper, middle and lower classes several times during a single life time, and quite common for the second or third generation of America's upper class to fall into the large middle class. Also I've heard that Americans emphasize volunteerism and philanthropy to a greater extent than other countries. A- In Poverty and Compassion Ms. Himmelfarb discusses the clashes between private philanthropy and government programs, workfare and welfare, children, the elderly, those incapable of caring for themselves because of physical infirmities, because of economic conditions and because of their own behavioral choices. It seems the English, over a hundred years ago, found that government programs could not change behavior and that underlying most poverty was lack of character and virtue.

Q- I thought socialism was prevalent in Britain at that time?

A- Not during the 19th century. Although I suppose you could say socialism had its beginnings in the mid 1880s with the founding of the Fabian Society. Q- What is the Fabian Society? A- It was an organization that took its name from the delaying tactics of the Roman general Fabius Cunctator, who harassed Hanibal and his Carthaginians but avoided pitch battle until Rome had gathered its strength. The society's goal was to "delay" violent revolution by seeking, via government programs, to change society gradually. The socialist state was their ideal and the British Labour Party, founded in 1906, was largely due to their efforts. George Bernard Shaw and Sidney Webb and Beatrice Potter Webb were perhaps its most famous founders. The Fabians tried, and pretty well succeeded, in replacing Herbert Spencer whose thought had prevailed in Britain and America, even after his death in 1903. Q- Spencer was a philosopher, if I recall correctly, who emphasized

individualism and social Darwinism, which held that society evolved on Darwin's biological model. He explained social inequalities by evoking the law of "survival-of-the-fittest". A- Exactly. Spencer opposed anyfonn of state intervention in the economy. The socialists blamed Britain's poverty and other social ills on Spencer's philosophy. They decided that private schemes cannot work and that only government is capable of eradicating poverty in society. Q- That does parallel the debate that started during the Great Depression in this country and continues today. "What is the proper role of government?" A- The welfare state got a good foothold in England about twenty years before it caught on here with Franklin Delano Roosevelt' sN ew Deal. Ittook Margaret Thatcher about eight years to subdue it in England, although the Labour Party is still a very strong influence.

Q- The Reagan Revolution was suppose to trim the welfare state in this country with it's cry of "Government is the problem, not the solution." The media has been claiming for quite some time now that the Reagan Revolution is dead- and thank goodness. Do you agree?
A- Not only do I not agree, but I believe the challenge facing us now is to complete the revolution. The Reagan Revolution barely got started and never really progressed beyond rhetoric. Q- But do the majority of citizens want that? A- I have a very real contempt for people who go around proclaiming what the American people want, but I guess I have to put myself in that category if I'm going to answer your question. Let me preface my opinion by admitting it is an opinion. I believe the American people are sick of paying more taxes with less results, but on the other hand they want a return to compassion and caring, which means an effective and efficient form of aid for the unfortunate. Q- Programs like what? A- Programs that save money while saving people, which means market oriented programs. Programs that are flexible and give folks choice and a sense of control.

There are countless alternatives to the old way of doing things and we must find those alternatives and put them into practice. It is extremely important to bring power closer and closer to the individual by transferring it whenever possible to a lower rung, as from the federal government to the state, to the county, to the town, to the neighborhood to the family and finally to the individual. Let me share an interesting program with you. In August 1991 CSPAN invited viewers to call-in and discuss poverty with a panel consisting of John Tucker, an attorney and author; Kent Amos, a community volunteer and George de Vincent, a renowned photographer of people living in poverty. One caller told of her personal experience community settlement homes in Honolulu.

Q- What is a community settlement home?

A- A type of community center for the whole family. Mothers learned how to cook, attended classes, and care was provided for their young children. A swimming pool and athletic field was available as well as a dental and well-baby clinics. Doctors and dentists gave their day offs, maybe once a month. Then the government came in with their rules and regulations. Now, she sighed, it is different. What had thrived under neighborhood control, languished and became inefficient under government funding and heavy regulation. Q- Sounds like a bit of nostalgia. A- Exactly John Tucker's response. He answered the caller:
We kind of have to resist the idea that we can go back to the good '01days when everyone took care of his neighbor. It would be wonderful if that were true butwe now have sections in the major cities of the USA that are essentially abandoned by the middle class and the working people. /' m not sure that there is any way that the old-fashioned settlement house can solve thatproblem. Butwhat is true, is that whole idea-s-the wholistic approach is exactly what the old settlement did.

Kent Amos said the role of government is to support the community efforts instead of heaping bureaucracies upon them. He had no desire to go back in time but wanted to go forward in a productive way. He favored having churches, with family-life centers dispensing government services.

Q- Doesn't Mr. Amos belong to an organization called One to One where wealthy corporate executives try to connect with the economically deprived who need help?
A- That's right. A caller said we (taxpayers) now provide free lunches, free books, subsidized housing-where does it end-it does no good. Mr. Tucker answered that recipients are without hope. He wanted to bring ordinary citizens back into contact with ghetto residents. George de Vincent agreed that the country needs hope. He spent a few minutes bashing President Bush and praising Lyndon Johnson. Then Mr. Amos said real vision doesn't come from government. He questioned how role models are created and pointed out that in 1958 the family was the number one influence in a child's life, the number two influence was education and number three was church, with peers bringing up the number four space. "Today TV is number one for all Americans!" He believed we should focus on positive role models-many people have been able to wind their way through the drugs and crime and have become successful citizens. Actually, he reminded us, few Americans, no matter where they live, are drug dealers. George de Vincent told the story of a mother with two girls and a boy living in a one room basement apartment in Chicago. The boy had a collection of books lined up on the wall-he took the books from the library and kept them-his dream was to be a writer. Q- Was that suppose to be admirable? Vincent's idea of a role model! I wouldn't like to see Mr. de

A- An irate caller from West Virginia said she was ninth of seventeen children and the eight above her could read and write and the eight below could not. Her point was the deterioration of our educational system. Her father had a sense of responsibility-the family ate beans and rice and paid for their own broken bones, tonsillectomies, pregnancies and her dad had money set aside to bury his wife, himself and three children. (He died in 1979.) Now people won't even pay $30 or $40 dollar for a health plan sponsored by the government. Kent Amos agreed with the caller that responsibility is the keyonly he twisted it to mean "government must meet its responsibility." He was interested in how the government delivers resources back to us. Q- I'm sure there must have been some callers in sympathy with the views of the panel members, but I was struck by the-anti government attitude of

those you mentioned and the failure of any panel members to talk about meaningful reform. If you had been a panel member what would you have said? A- I can think of all kinds of reforms. The key is to empower people. The medicaid program, all by itself, provides an incentive to remain in poverty. How about requiring modest payments in all but catastrophic cases? As for housing subsidies, why doesn't the government pay rents directly to landlords who are easier to supervise than hundreds of thou sands of welfare clients, many of whom get the government money but/orget to pay their rent. This would cut down on evictions. Many people make a practice of leaving one apartment after another in shambles, always one step ahead of the landlord and the sheriff. The members of the welfare culture tend to consume more housing in terms of its financial value and depreciation than does the middle class.

Q- What do you think of the idea that poverty doesn't cause crime but crime causes poverty?
A- I buy it! Businesses don't want to operate in the ghettos because of the high risks; people are prevented from attending schools because of fear and so forth. The entire community may be held hostage to criminals. Q- In September, 1991 San Francisco was held hostage. This is speculation on my part, but the city may have been so afraid of the costly law suits frequently filed by people arrested in demonstrations, that this accounted for the orders the San Francisco police had to let the destruction occur and video tape the offenders who were to be arrested after the fact. A- You must be talking about the riots that occurred in San Francisco after California's governor vetoed legislation expanding gay rights. Approximately $250,000 worth of damage occurred to public property and no arrests were made. This is a very unsettling tum of affairs, but I don't see how it can cause poverty.

Q- We were speaking of ghettos. A Chicago neighborhood group asked its low-income residents about their skills rather than inquiring as to their needs in a variation of the quotation JFK made famous: "Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country." In this case the idea was to get "your country" out of the picture entirely by emphasizing the potentially profit-making skills of the residents rather than the services
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they might need. It was found that the most common work. experience of residents was in the area of health care. With that bit of information the organization was successful in placing fifty of the unemployed in jobs within a few blocks of their homes. A-In Rhode Island, Opportunities Industrialization Center had been working with federal money since 1967 in an attempt to find jobs for disadvantaged people. When funds dried up in 1980, in order to achieve selfsufficiency, OIC decided to train clients to work in its own industries. It was able to gain ownership of half a machine-metal company and a firm to produce high-protein fish products. These ventures are vehicles which provide skills, and jobs and generate taxes instead of absorb them. OIC's director, Michael Van Leesten is a firm believer that the only way to gain economic power is through your own efforts.

Q- In his highly recommended 1988 book When Government Goes Private, Randall Fitzgerald hits the nail on the head:
Profit motives can be merged with moral imperatives to produce quality services for the disadvantaged. With government agencies continuing to assess needs, set contract standards, and monitor performance, humanservice entrepreneurs can relieve government of many of its provider burdens. A- Most people believe government spending and incentives will be needed. Head Start, housing vouchers, tax credits for the working poor are on the top of their agenda. They seek to find a proper balance at each step of the way between security and risk taking. Their goal is to encourage nurturing and caring values as opposed to competitive, individualistic and selfish ones. They emphasize community and are fond of declaring "We're all in this together." Q- And you? A- My top priority is to encourage the poor to help themselves. Thank goodness we have made progress since the judgmental 19th century, as evidenced by the many individuals and organizations in the field that incorporate nurturing and caring values in their ministries. The job is to get on with the work of building a society that is open, diverse, and free. To me that means equal opportunity and allowing results to depend on individual responses to those opportunities.

Q- Robert Kuttner, the antithesis of Randall Fitzgerald whom I know you admire, believes those who think as you do are living in the past. His recipe for reversing the decline of the middle class is a more progressive tax policy and stronger unions. He would love to discourage speculation and its chance of "unearned overnight fortunes". Mr. Kuttner wants tax policy to redistribute income and to do away with windfall gains and speculators. He points to S & L speculation to back up his point He urges "strategies" (central planning) to improve quality of workers and the types of available jobs. He is a strong advocate for more policies that include things like Head Start, a full employment economy, wage subsidies and on-the-job-training. Mr. Kuttner claims there are no hard-core poor in Western Europe because there is no free market. A century ago America, in the so-called "robberbaron" era, was more unequal than now.
A- You've got that right when you suggest that Robert Kuttner is one person I have disagreed with-pretty near always, in everything!

Q- Mr. Kuttner blamed the increasing gap between rich and poor on cheap foreign labor, the poor! y paid service economy, demographic changes in the work force, deregulation, anti-unionism and shifts in tax and spending by the federal government. Robert Kuttner says no one wants to believe in a declining middle class, because if it were true it would be an indictment against capitalism.
A- Ronald Reagan is Mr. Kuttner's whipping boy. Mr. Kuttner thinks RR stands for Reverse Robinhood. Mr. Kuttner characterizes the 1986 tax reform that was steered through the congress by Dan Rostenkowski and many, many Democrats, as a system that gives special breaks to the very rich and withdraws subsidies from the poor. He believes deregulation provides new opportunities for speculation and makes the rich, richer. He conveniently ignores all the jobs opened up by deregulation.

Q- He doesn't exactly ignore those new jobs. Low wage jobs were created for the bottom half of the labor force, isolating the underclass even more, according to Robert Kuttner.
A- I believe rapid economic growth is the best way to eliminate poverty. Government programs have made many Americans immune to economic growth. So much is done in the name of helping the poor, but it is evident that more harm than good is done in providing incentives which encourage dependency. Like tough love, rather than trying so hard to lighten the

burden of poverty, perhaps poverty should be recognized for what it is; rather than making poverty more palatable, people should be helped to escape from it. Poor people are not as stupid as policymakers suppose.

Q- Steven Wineman falls somewhere between Randall Fitzgerald and Robert Kuttner, and rna y be someone you would like to encourage. He has been described as a "radical leftist social worker and critic of the centralized welfare state." He would like to see urban neighborhoods treated as the primary social units. He believes cooperatively organizing nonprofit health-insurance plans among workers would eliminate the need for public funding of medical care. Another unlikely ally might be found in Ted Koderie of the Hubert Humphrey Institute. He claims the debate is not community versus individualism and wonders that anything can be accomplished in a society where more than half of its members have their incomes determined politically. He believes the status-quo human services bureaucracy champions laws and regulations that virtually deprive the private sector of the right to care for themselves and each other.
A- "Laws and regulations that virtually deprive the private sector of the right to care for themselves and each other." You're saying that because of what I wrote in my book dealing with the social security system-right?

Q- You've lost me-what

do you mean?

A- During the interview recorded at the back of Social Security: An Idea Whose Time Has Passed, first published in 1985, Loren Dunton asked me why I studied law and I replied: I was confused by a system which prevented me and othersfrom responding to social need without first checking in with an attorney! My heritage is Berkeley, California=four generations-s-and l'mfiercely proud of the intellectual stimulation and tolerancefostered by that environment. I used to shop at the Co-op grocery store on Shattuck Avenue and one day 1saw an 18 month old baby girl "advertised" on the bulletin board. A San Francisco mother was trying desperately to give her away_ There were two pre-adolescent children in the family and this baby was the result of the mother's extra-marital activities and had become the lightning-rodfor discord within the family, The presence of another man's child was a constant affront to the husband and he took his hurt out on the rest of the family. The poor woman had tried to give the child to the state buifelt she could not ask her husband to contribute to the child's welfare on an on-

going basis (a state requirement) so she had tried to lose the child,' abandoning her first in a department store and then in a bus station, but the police traced her both times. She had tried giving the child away before, but each time the baby was brought back. The child had a slight physical deformity, and as one might expect, some emotional problems. The situation almost repeated itself a year later. This time I was contacted because I had volunteered to take the children of young couples so they could get away on a special weekend or in an emergency. However, on one occasion the mother wanted more than help for a day or twofor her baby=-she believed she was unfit to care for the child and that she was in the midst of mental breakdown. The baby could no longer be left with a mother-in-law who was too frail and old to care for him. She felt she had nowhere to turn. Of course we suggested government agencies andfoster care, but the mother was deathly afraid that once she gave her child up to the state she would never meet their standards for getting him back. She was afraid, and I believe justifiably, of government interference and control over their lives. In all this human suffering, misguided laws were prohibiting a human solution to the problems. If those aren 'texamples of what Ted Koderie means by "laws and regulations that virtually deprive the private sector of the right to care for themselves and each other", then I don't know what he is saying. Q- I never read your social security book, but I do think those are the types of human problems to which Mr. Koderie was referring. Other experts favor private delivery of publicly funded socialwelfare services and prefer to see non-profit, rather than for-profit entities involved. A- Why? Q- They say that for-profit entities need well defined goals in order to estimate a return on any investment. An opposing view is represented by the Alpha Center in Minneapolis. Although it is itself a nonprofit group, it wants to speed up the privatization of human services by fostering the expansion or creation of for-profit businesses in roles traditionally played by government or nonprofit organizations. The organization has a lot of corporate backers who have contributed $50,000 a year for a minimum of four years as seed money to help create profit-making service providers. A- I'll buy that, and let me show you why. A short case history should

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illustrate that government is not the solution-it can't be depended on for a rainy day. A 64 year old disabled cook in our area had been getting $417 a month from social security and working three days a week and making $10,000 a year. Social security rules limit outside earnings to $6,000 a year. His social security payments were stopped, Medicare coverage cancelled and the Social Security Administration even tried to get the man to refund $11,000. His $600 a month take-home pay doesn't begin to cover the $550 he pays for a studio apartment, utilities, car and health expenses. He overcharged his credit card and had payments to make to the bank which he thought he could handle when the mess with social security was straightened out. He imagined the stopped payments were only a clerical error. Q- More people are beginning to see that government has overreached its area of competence. Mario Cuomo once said, "It is not government's obligation to provide services, but to see that they're provided." A- Even one of Ralph Nader's right hand men has advocated privatization claiming "the private sector can be held more accountable to the public for clean water than can government. " (Larry Silverman, anti-pollution lobbyist) Instead of an era of greed, as opponents of Reagan's presidency often refer to the eighties, both President Reagan and now President Bush, with his "points of light" agenda, have awakened a sense of individual responsibility in people that hasn't been apparent since the Kennedy era.

Q- I think you're right. The Great Society program and the elevation of the welfare state made most people think government had the welfare of the poor and unfortunate under control. All government seemed to want during the late sixties and through the seventies, was our dollars, and they got that with a huge expansion in government spending and entitlement programs.
A- I've got examples to prove the correctness of your assertion that a variety of activists are searching for alternatives to government dependency. Lupe Anguiano, former nun, migrant worker and labor organizer for Caesar Chavez, became disillusioned with the possibility of transforming an unresponsive welfare system from within. She created a private-sector group to rescue mothers from welfare. She established residence in a public housing project in San Antonio, Texas and organized many of the women there. She and a 100 of the women stormed a local welfare office and demanded jobs in exchange for their welfare checks.

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Q- I wouldn't agency?

think you'd favor demanding jobs from a government

A-Hold on a minute. The media had a hey day and the business community, within six months, found jobs for 500 former welfare recipients. goes to show that people are anxious to help those who show they are willing to put forth some effort to help themselves. A-Ms. Anguiano had screened and trained these women in basic job skills using local colleges and volunteers from the participating businesses. Her program, National Women's Employment and Education, Inc., was able to train a participant for $671 in private funds, compared to the $3,000 to $15,000 costs per trainee for the local public-sector programs. Her followup-once-a-week-monitoring lasted a year instead of the three month follow up provided by the government programs. The extensive and sensitive support system which distinguishes Lupe Anguiano's methods, many believe is responsible for the ninety percent job placement and eighty-eight percent job retention rate achieved the first year. Ms. Anguiano accepts no government funding because she is unwilling to abide by government rules. Even when unemployment was twenty-three percent in Tacoma, Washington, her group had no difficulty in finding jobs for clients. Q- Why don't others adopt her methods if they are so successful? A- In 1978 her program was used as a model in eight communities in five states, using a combination of federal, state and private funds. Surprisingly the groups that took state and federal money ended up with worse results than the privately funded groups, even though they all used the identical program. Q- That's something to publicize. Why haven't I heard this before? It is a terrific example for anyone who is attempting to show government funds are not needed to solve society's ills. A- Better than that, Lupe Anguiano attributed this phenomenon to the strings attached to government funds in the form of regulations that diverted too much management and program time to compliance, diluting the program mission. Ms. Anguiano claimed that if her program was spread nationwide, she could liberate eighty-five percent of the poor from welfare within five years. 12

Q- That's more like it-and

Q- As if the government human-service bureaucracy and welfare "rights" organizations would simply step aside.
A- That's the obstacle, all right. And it's easy to understand that people aren't anxious to sacrifice their own agendas and desert the already established delivery systems even though there is proof that those systems patronize and degrade the poor. This is another case of conflict of interest where the elimination of poverty would mean the elimination of the welfare professional's job. And then there's opposition from a good segment of the uniformed public that still cling to the mystique ofLBJ's Great Society. Q- Have you heard of Macler Shepard? A- Wasn't MacIer Shepard the upholstery shop owner in St. Louis who organized residents of an economically disadvantaged neighborhood when their homes were threatened with urban renewal? Q- Right. After getting no response from an application addressed to the Office of Economic Opportunity he decided to take matters into his own hands. His rallying cry was, "Renewal means our removal!" Together with a handful oflike minded residents he formed a non-profit entity named JeffVander-Lou, or JVL, after three of the streets bordering the neighborhood. The purpose of JVL was restoring the neighborhood and keeping government do-gooders at bay. A- I remember he had some initial help from a local Mennonite church organization which gave JVL a $30,000 interest-free loan and volunteer craftsmen to help renovate abandoned buildings.

Q- And after awhile a successful businessman, and one-time resident of the old neighborhood, formed a nonprofit foundation which injected a million dollars in grants and more interest- free loans into renovating JVL. The next job was to lure job-creating businesses back into the community.
A- Didn't they purchase some land at a bargain price and offer it to a private firm, hoping the firm would agree to build a plant on the site, which would, they hoped, provide jobs for local residents?

Q- The Brown Shoe Company took JVL up on its offer and in less than two years trained and employed 150 JVL residents. Over the next twenty years JVL rehabilitated 800 housing units and 80 houses were renovated and sold. 13

A-That's right. Mr. Shepard was honored as the instigator of one of the most amazing inner-city success stories. Q- He wasn't deterred by lack of money, power or influence and his project prospered without the help of any government entity or official. A- Robert Woodson, president of the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, calls people like Mader Shepard and Lupe Anguiano, antibodies-those who "precipitate or advance that healing process by magnetizing the creative strengths and productive energies of those around them." Woodson's group is trying to energize hundreds of other communities. He believes that occupational licensing promotes monopolies at the expense of consumers, even though the stated motivation may be to protect public health and safety. He blames social-service professionals for having encouraged government to legislate strict standards and certifications that prevent voluntary organizations from being effective.

Q- I've always wondered what the difference is between charity and philanthropy?
A-As I see it, charity is aid to the needy whereas philanthropy could be defined as an attempt to improve the quality of life and culture of all mankind. And speaking of philanthropy, a survey of315large corporations found that their philanthropic contributions leaped twenty-six percent to $1.2 billion between 1984 and 1985. Contributions to the United Way totaled $2.3 billion in 1985, a ten percent rise over 1984 and a 130 percent increase over the decade.

Q- Most Americans have come to regard aid to the poor as a proper role of government.
A- I think it is not only an improper role for government, but itis a role that government cannot perform well. It promotes a certain hardness throughout society, as ordinary citizens are relieved from the necessity to feel compassion or responsibility for the fate of strangers in need.

Q- What do you think about the motives of a clothing manufacturer in New York who offered a $20 credit at his factory outlet for trade-ins of old but clean suits? The trade-ins were then given to the Salvation Army and Bowery Mission, providing homeless men with clothes appropriate for a job interview.

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A- That's great. He combined his own marketing interests with the interests of the homeless. I believe private individuals are really creatively trying to help and that it doesn't have to hurt the giver in order to benefit the recipient.

Q- What do you think would happen if each of the tens of thousands of churches in America adopted just one welfare family?
A- Public-assistance rolls would diminish. Instead of a burden on government, helping the less fortunate could become a privilege for the millions of people in the private sector with an intense desire to be useful and make a difference in the life of their fellows. America is the land of perpetual-potential-do-gooders. Besides religious institutions, they can be found in service clubs and other civic groups and among individual citizens on the local level.

Q- With women as well as men working to make ends meet, you may be overestimating the supply of willing volunteers and contributors out there. Why not require some form of public service?
A- National service is an idea that is being actively debated throughout the country. In fact in a recent book (Taking A Stand 0 n U.S. Competitiveness) I discussed the idea at great length. Let me say briefly here that I am categorically against national service.

Q- But already hospitals are required to care for a minimum percentage of what used to be called "charity patients" in order to maintain their tax exemption. The Texas legislature proposed laws in 1991 that would force all members of the Texas Bar to satisfy the "unmet legal needs" of the poor by offering free services. The New York State Chief Judge surveyed 3,500 attorneys to determine whether to require that all lawyers licensed in that state be forced to provide free legal service on behalf of the poor and notfor-profit organizations.
A-These proposals are based on the false premise that the rich have a moral obligation to provide for the poor.

Q- Well, at least, doesn't the government have that obligation?

A- In my opinion, no. Not in a capitalist country such as the United States of America. Government here was meant, I believe, to have a very limited role in the lives of citizens. No matter how loud the denial, it is nevertheless

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true that this country was built on a Judaic-Christian foundation. The separation of church and state meant, and still means, I believe, that the state with its police power and the church with its impulse to encourage good work and charity among all people, should each playa separate, but distinct and equal role in the lives of the inhabitants of the nation. In the America that I envision, the nurturing, compassionate side of society would have equal billing with the police state-church and state balancing one another. That, I believe, is the way it was meant to be- that is the only way capitalism could work. There was to be no favored "state" religion, all religions were to be tolerated, even those without a deity, such as humanism. "Church" is a symbol of the good and noble impulses in all mankind. A catal yst to bring out man's better nature and appeal to his higher self was essential to balance the laissez- faire and caveat emptor aspects of capitalism. That's why obligation is out-obligation and duty can be enforced and belong to the sphere of the police state. Over the years government has usurped the good impulses in society signified by "the church". Government-the police power- has known no boundaries in its growth, and the country has suffered as a consequence. Character, courage, morals, responsibility, discipline. loyalty, honesty, perseverance, integrity-all have been stunted as the jurisdiction of "the church" has been forcibly stifled and curtailed. Q- Don't you think that's just a mite out of touch with reality? A- I suppose you mean it's an outdated ideal-not at the moment "politically correct". I would remind you that religion enjoyed the full scale support of the population onl y a hundred years ago in this country. It wasn't until 1947 that religion was outlawed in public schools by a supreme court ruling. I can even play some of those "every other country does ... " games that I despise so much. Q- What are you trying to say? That the United States is the only industrialized country in the world that doesn't support religion? A- Sweden is the only other majorindustrial country that doesn't subsidize religious schools-the governments of other countries underwrite these establishments. They believe that underwriting is a way to guarantee religious freedom, to protect, preserve and extend religious freedoms. Maybe it's time for us to reconsider. Where would we be as a nation, as a people--without our ideals?

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Q- Not in this nation, at least not in the rest of this century!! A- Values and character are pivotal to the health and success of all people and essential to our understanding of poverty. Attitudes, beliefs and actions are far more important that policies and programs when it comes to escaping poverty. As columnist William Raspberry put it, "What people do matters more than what is done to them."

Q- That may be, but I still think if hospitals are required to engage in public
service in order to hold on to their tax exemptions, then other tax exempt organizations should be required to offer some kind of service for their tax exemptions also. A- Most do so without being required. No matter what anyone says, Americans are the most generous and charitable people in the worldwithout being forced! Take New York City-more than $1 billion in charitable donations is given annually by the private sector and about 2,500 nongovernment agencies in that city provide health and human-resource services, enlisting hundreds of thousands of volunteers. I once wrote a column about Malcolm Forbes' 70th birthday bash which was celebrated in a style reminiscent of the late Shah of Iran. When accused of extravagance Forbes protested that the eats were a bargain at close to $750,000 and the real expense lie with jetting his 1,000 guests round trip from the United States to Morocco. The over $3 million party tab left Forbes, capitalist extrodinaire, with neither guilt nor shame. But even though I count myself among the staunchest defenders of capitalism, I could not escape, if not guilt, then embarrassment. Perhaps because the capitalist birthday bash shared headlines with the success of Giant pitcher Dave Draveky, that warrior against cancer, in his efforts to raise $250,000 to buy a new lease on life for a little boy in his fight against leukemia. How proud I would have been if Malcolm Forbes, to the glory of capitalists everywhere and in honor of his 70th birthday, had donated $2 million dollars to help leukemia victims and spent only $1 million on his bash.

Q- Do you think he should have made a donation?

A- No, of course not. G-d knows he gave more to charitable causes than any million of us ordinary capitalists, but I only wish he wanted to do so. To

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publicize his success and happiness in such a manner would have won converts, to what I consider the most honest and benevolent system in the world-capitalism.

Q- I see what you mean. By throwing an ostentatious party for his friends, he played into the hands of the enemies of capitalism.
A- Altruists perpetuate the myth that wealth is the culmination of some undifferentiated, collective activity that somehow we are all responsible for and therefore some sort of egalitarian distribution is justified. Wealth doesn't just happen! The truth is, ordinary men, often through extraordinary effort and deprivation, are responsible for the creation of wealth. Only daydreamers view wealth as a free gift of nature, never grasping the fact that capital is created and increased by saving, innovation and investment on the part of individual human beings. Q- It is difficult to sustain the claim that capitalism is benevolent when Forbes' press coverage portrayed the capitalist as self-centered and indulgent. A- Under capitalism all who participate in society benefit, but those on the bottom rung benefit most from the creativity and hard work of those on top. Professor Jonathan Wiener of the University of California at Irvine suggests that those that work the hardest and are most creative are not the most wealthy in America. A-However he offers no figures or other statistics which can be refuted but only what appears to be a hunch that the wealthy were merely lucky or had wealthy parents.

Q- Not everyone would agree with that assessment.

Q- I admit there are different kinds of wealth, just as there are different
kinds of spending. Some are productive and some are draining. The worst type of wealth is the wealth created by legislated privilege. A- Capitalism is the onl y system of government which can protect individual rights. All other forms of government place society and society's rulers above moral law. Past governments derived power by appealing to the Divine Right of Kings, as did the Pharaohs of Egypt. Others, like the Greeks, succumbed to majority rule. Ancient forms of government regarded society as an end in itself and individual man as only a means to that end. It was therefore easily accepted that society could dispose of man, his

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talents, his labor, his property, the fruits of his labor and his very life and that what an individual man had, was his by the generosity of society as a whole. America broke away from this kind of thinking and experimented with a bold idea; capitalism. Q- But the idea was never perfected in practice. A-I admit it has been sidetracked over the past fifty or sixty years. Today in the USA, at the drop of a hat, politicians speak of what man owes his country, what it costs the government to allow an individual or group to keep some of what they have earned in the form of a deduction or credit on their tax bill; as if all dollars were the government's by right.

Q- Many politicians claim that to reward people commensurate with their

efforts is to revert to the uncivilized concept of the survival of the fittest. A- Our leaders sometimes forget that government has no purpose other than to protect the rights of each individual and these rights are not to be sacrificed involuntarily for the good of the whole. Q- Not long ago the Catholic Bishops took their concerns about human greed to the media. They were incensed that corporations seemed more intent on maximizing profits than on meeting human needs. A- Whoa! The desire and opportunity for profits is the best way to satisfy human needs. When the public wants meat and potatoes those needs are met by Idahoans and Texans intent on profit. The tragedy and human suffering of socialism is visible all over the world. Look back-the horrors of the second world war were an outgrowth of socialism. Hitler emphasized the importance of putting the common good before the private good. Why can't we learn?!

Q- Americans accept, even embrace the concept that income inequality is essentially fair. Somehow they link equality with communism and failure. However eighty-one percent in a recent gallup poll said the wealthy don't pay their fair share of taxes. They may not believe in each according to his need, but they do believe in each according to his ability to pay. Kevin Phillips book, The Politics of Rich and Poor has data showing the increase in the gap between rich and poorincreased dramatically during the 1980s. He looks for an anti-wealth backlash in the 1990s. The Democrats try their hardest to claim the Republican party 19

really stands for, not the average guy, but the wealthy and the Wall Street speculators. While Americans may admire entrepreneurs, there must be a tangible product involved, as in manufacturing. It is easy to hate money manipulators and speculators and Senator Robert Byrd, and other Democrats have been cashing in on that fact. A- I'm not going to attack or defend Kevin Phillips-I think I'll ignore him and tackle the issue from a slightly different angle. Government began measuring the distribution of income in 1967. Average real income of the bottom twenty percent increased eleven percent in the eighties even though the gap increased between the bottom and the top. Reaganomics was not the culprit; there were many reasons. Demographics, fewer young people entering the work force from college, was responsible for some of the gap. Earlier there had been so many college graduates that supply often outstripped demand and wages were lower for white collar workers. This meant the ratio between these higher paid college graduates, relative to their lower paid high-school-only graduates, was narrower. Not because the lower got more, but because the higher got less in the seventies. In the eighties, the education level of new workers continued to rise, but there weren't as many new workers-supply and demand meant their wages rose. Unions lost power because manual labor was not in demandthere was too much supply. As world competition becomes more keen and there is less demand on physical labor, brain power will become even more of a premium. Competition forces companies to offer higher pay for top talent. Also there is a disparity within professions. For instance the salaries of new lawyers range from $42,000 to $110,000. Electrical engineers start on average at $40,000 and go to $65,000.

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

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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 oIds, both white and black, had median incomes approximately $5,000 dollars less than families headed by 33 year oIds. 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 earn almost two and a half times what blacks make in

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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 got to be rare! "comparable family background and credentials" has

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

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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 injobs 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. Deferring to George Gilder once again:
The equal-rightseJforts merely accelerated their advance and cast shadows offavoritism 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 otherwise 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.

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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 'reright 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. ambition, for a were somehow similar barriers In the past it was possible to make up, by dint of effort and lack of finances and educational qualifications--if one inspired to do so. Other ethnic groups have overcome by entering business, studying at night, working at more

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than one job and fmding 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 labormarket 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 projectsand 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

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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 econom y. 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

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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 predate Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and all of the relatively modem 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/or Policy Studies who in a December 1986 interview on C-SP AN, 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

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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 tum, 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 percentpartly 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.

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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 itis not uncommon to receive large sums of money one year and then nothing for two or three years. If net worth, rather than income was considered, the poverty statistics would change. 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 gave it their own brand of objectivity. 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 "qualified".

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Q- That's the type of subjective information I was referring I heard that in 1974. children became the poorest population-whatever in the world that is supposed to mean have never had any money. Isn't money the thing that determining poverty statistics?

to earlier. group in our since children is counted in

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. 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 formula, the1989 poverty level would be $15,000. She criticized the current formula 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- Her method wouldn' 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-

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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- The income of every group declined under Jimmy Carter. Rememberthe 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). 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- ButMs. Ruggles is not alone. RebeccaBlack of Northwest em 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

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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- Interesting how her analysis of the same facts differs from Mr. Gilder's

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 crisis 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 direct! y 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.

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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 manufacturingjobs and blamed themalquiladoras (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 Black and Mead and Gilder. I must admit it's sometimes hard to believe we're talking about the same set of facts. 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 offederal 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

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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 superseded the Gramm-Rudman legislation. one that

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

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or 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 unfortunate people to consensus seemed to essential to encourage of the country. 1960s and 1970s it was considered cruel to require work in order to receive help. But in the 1980s the be that a combination of education and work were sound habits of self-reliance and bolster the morality

A- You're right, some people considered workfare to be a form of slavelabor. 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 tum 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 heap more expenses onto the states.

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 ofliving 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,

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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 Massachusetts. 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 I'll 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-rightsadvocate 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. There was a confusion of the judiciary and legislative roles. Q- Harking back to 1987 again, in March of that year the Senate Labor and Human Resource Committee proposed legislation that would have given

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$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 savedifsuch 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 orlshe 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 allover 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 thought 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

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spoiled citizens? No back-bone, no self-motivation, no evidence of selfworth 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 worldfrom 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.

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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 a 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- Priorto 1984 identification was needed to obtain 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, Eisenhetm 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 California judiciary is overstepping its boundaries and, as in Massachusetts, 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 representation without taxation? 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,

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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 or 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 amanhas 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 oj Selfishness. Ms. Rand didn't disguise the meaning of words, even though it might have been advantageous to give her book a more saleable title like The True Meaning ojCompassion 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 ACLU's accomplishments, their efforts overall, in my opinion, hinder more than they further their stated goals. Many of their battles, again in my opinion, lead to a greater restriction of civi1liberties.

Q- In other words, you think they may do more harm than good?

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A- I do, and I share the professed goals of the American Civil Liberties Union. But that's another story. 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 suggestthat 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 wantto tum 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?

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A- The truth is people are afraid they will not get the money if they askso they take. Perhaps what they would get if they didn't take is something from local communities more valuable than money-concem, 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 ofjobs , so it created work. Congress thought hunger was solely attributable to lackoffood, so it made foodfreely 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-like 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

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victims, Good Samaritan laws were instituted holding a doctor blameless from the results of such emergency administrations.

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 'tmake enough with 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

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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 disorders 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.

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A- That is also a judgment call. The AP A insists that adherence to its proposal would result in only the most ill and most likely to be helped ever being confmed. 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 nondangerous 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 tom, 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 December 8, 1986 the Donahue Show focused Joseph Mowry, a gentleman who had gone to publicity for the homeless (and was subsequently was a guest, along with Soviet newsman Iona found it hard to understand how "the richest 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." some of both groups. On on the homeless issue. Mr the Soviet Union to obtain used for Soviet propaganda) Andronov. Mr. Andronov and greatest county in the

Q- That's a real joke compared to what has since been revealed about the
state of the Soviet econom y!

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A- A representative homeless person admitted that through his own mism anagement 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---and you are the big critic of owe! 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 markerin 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.

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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-paid-distasteful work underterrible 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).) 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-nonfiction. 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 .. .itfollows 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. Ifwe 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.

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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- BenjaminPage, 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: Ifwe 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

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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 officiall y 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. richer".

Counting Medicaid could mean that "the sicker the

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,

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"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, apartmentfires and inadequate nutrition. This logic would imply that birth control would also be murder-look at all the children that are preventedfrom life by omission of unrestricted sexual intercourse; something that couldjust 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 ail, then we must educate and third,find a way to keep the poor ... fromfeeling like an island apart, broken offfrom 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 50

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 oflegislation 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 lobbiedfor "equal pay" laws for black workers because they knew the laws would protect white employeesfrom competition by relatively less skilled black workers. Since most blacks were less experienced.forcing employers to pay them wages

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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 it 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 especiall y. 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.

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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 countryapparently 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 thirtyeight 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 parentthat 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 women-have the highest divorce rates.

career

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-

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spouse family canbe 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 bean 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 thatlow-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." Most men benefit from the motivation of a dependent family and where there is a good woman next to him, from her support. 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

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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 rna y 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?

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A-Actually onl ytwo-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.

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Q- You mean AIDs and crack babies.

A- Exactly. The Commission agreed that the message of the last twenty years, that "famil y 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. Hom, 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. Hom 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 oftoday'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

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in poverty before their tenth birthdays compared to seventy-three percent of children under age ten in single parent homes. Mr. Hom 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's report said "material needs met". Mr. Hom 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.

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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 easier 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. Hom 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.

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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 encourages responsibility? act we talked about earlier,

A- I would say thatis 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. Hom happen to mention whether the Commission took a stand on health care for children? A- I'm not sure if Mr. Hom was speaking for the Commission on ChildrenY outh and F amily, 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. Hom 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.

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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 fmal 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 them.

thought you said the Commission endorsed

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 a/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.

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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 oflessthan $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. Q- So can we tell, despite all the differing statistics, if poverty has been increasing or decreasing over the years? A- Large trends can be recognized even if actual figures are disputed from time to time. Almost half our population was poor in the 1930s, using the poverty line deflated for 1930s dollars. By 1950 the poverty rate had fallen to thirty percent; totwenty percent by 1964 and to twelve percent by 1969. In the 1960s, under the spell of Camelot, we Americans believed anything and everything was possible. This country was considered rich enough to withstand any damage to the nation's productive or financial capacity that might result from a government directed redistribution of wealth. The elite

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in Washington counted on two things to keep the federal coffers full: steady, strong economic growth and inflation which would automatically push taxpayers into higher and higher brackets.

Q- I guess no one foresaw the tax revolts of the 1980s .

A- Nor slow economic growth. Unfortunately the decrease in revenue was not accompanied by a decrease in the zeal for a redistribution of wealth. Our elected officials tried to soften the impact of slow growth and its by-product, an increase in unemployment, by expanding the safety-netof social programs. As these entitlement programs grew, their true cost was masked by inflation. Q- A few years ago California's Senator Cranston did some figuring. He claimed if we put the almost 17 million unemployed to work, based on a salary of $1 O,OOO/year,their taxes would equal approximately $1,343 per person orin the neighborhood of $22.5 billion dollars/year.(At that time and according to then current tax law.) The Senator further stated that for each one million workers who returned to work, the nation would save $30 billion in assistance that would no longer be needed. He claimed a balanced budget could be achieved by just reducing unemployment from 10.5 to 5.5 percent. A- The idea is sound. A lot of things, including a freeze-keeping government spending down to the rate of inflation-would have cured our deficit problem a few years ago. Our national debt and our spending habit have now gotten too far out of hand for any simple cure. Higher taxes, expanding government, more borrowing are all part of the problem. Any politician who is not all talk, but is serious about the unemployment problem, will cut, not expand government.

Q- I wish he or she would please step forward!

I've always wondered just when unemployment becomes a problem-I mean we always have some members of society unemployed. A- Unemployment definitely becomes a problem when you are the one unemployed! But I know what you mean. Full employment has been defined as the level of unemployment that would exist when demand was adequate to keep the inflation rate stable. But there are other definitions. We could declare a state of full employment in the nation when all

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unemployment is voluntary, in the sense that anyone who wanted a job would be able to find one by reducing his nominal wage enough to make employing him profitable to someone. Q- Not any more-since the Fair Labor Standards Act and mandatory minimum wage and so on and so forth, individuals no longer have a right to make those kinds of decisions without breaking the law. A- Don't get me started on that again. Ijust wanted to mention the natural rate of unemployment, a term used by economists to get away from the implication that full employment meant zero unemployment. The natural rate changes over time with changes in the age-sex composition of the labor force as well as for other reasons. In the 1940s and 1950s employment was full if no more than three or four percent of the labor force was out of work. By the 1970s the acceptable level was six or seven percent because the babyboom generation was entering the labor market in droves along with an influx of women. Q- That reminds me of New York's Governor Mario Cuomo and his 1986 address to the newspaper publishers who were meeting here in San Francisco.
(The current prosperity) has been purchased at the expense of the wellbeing. the hopes and expectations of a large part of our nation. by the acceptance of such things as a level of unemployment that this nation would have considered a scandal only a decade ago.

George Will astutely pointed out that at the time of Governor Cuomo's speech, unemployment was 7.1 percent and a decade ago it was 7.7 percent. A- And now, in the fall of 1991, it is 6.8 percent and congress is trying to shame the president into declaring an emergency and breaking the 1990 budget agreement. Q- How break it? As I understand it, there is a provision written into the agreement for emergencies. A- Absolutely right, but my point is, if Governor Cuomo has such fond memories of the days of7.7 percent unemployment what makes 6.8 percent such an emergency? (Unless its you or someone you know that is unemployed, of course.) I'm trying to say, that if the President declares an emergency in this instance, what is to protect the budget from equally urgent

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"emergencies"

which will sprout like weeds in a cabbage patch?

Q- I've heard that unemployment statistics are not reliable regarding gains and losses. The Department of Labor conducts a survey based on households which double counts people who have more than one job. No wonder nonfarm job gains were less than half those reported in a payroll survey. Sometimes a job training graduate need merely obtain an interview to be listed by the government as successfully employed. Roughly sixty percent of the 11.6 million unemployed Americans live in a household where someone else is working. A- Approximately four million people reach age 18 every year in this country and many become statistical have-nots even though their minimum or low wage jobs are temporary and for pin-money. Many so-called deadend employers such as fast-food restaurants are luring young workers with scholarship programs. Many of the teenage girls who work in the mall are still living at home while they attend local community colleges and their wages go to pay for school clothes and books.

Q- Professor Frank Levy of the University of Maryland, did a great deal of research into income distribution for his book Dollars and Dreams. He
found that wages increased at an annual rate of 2.5 to 3 percent from the end of the second world war until 1973. Figuring everything in 1985 dollars an average forty year old made $15,300in 1947, $28,300 in 1973 and $24,000 in 1985. The decrease was due to a variety of circumstances, many going back to 1973. A-During the 1973-74 oil crisis, purchasing power was transferred overseas which hurt this nation's productivity record as measured by the Commerce Department. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, between 196585 union wages outpaced cumulative inflation by 1.4 percent. Those in auto assembly lines were paid more and thanks to union pressures, $30,000 was not an unheard of wage for sweeping floors! It wasn't until 1984 that union pay hikes fell below the CPI (consumer price index) for the first time. Growth in the labor force was a little over two percent during those years and during the seventies alone, approximately twenty million net new jobs were created. The projection for labor-force growth between 1988 and 1990 was 1.6 percent annually and only one percent a year between 199095, with fewerteenagers included before 1992. Between 1972-78 real aftertax income per capita was flat but since then it has risen dramatically. However it's true that many new jobs don't pay as well as old ones did, but

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it varies from industry to industry. domestic industries made $16,000-in The new high-tech industries seem assembly line skills or high salaries for no middle ground.

In 1983 the average employee in export industries he made $19,000. to pay either minimum wage for technical knowledge and training-

Q- So what we've got on the one hand is the loss of $28,000 /year jobs and the increase of jobs paying under $7,000, or so Professor Levy claimed. He said that more adult males than females were unemployed for the first time in history in 1987. According to the good professor, the middle class is decreasing and the wealth-poverty pockets are shifting. During the 1970s the Census Bureau used a consumer price index which overstated inflation and included high interest mortgages, all effectively exaggerating the poverty rate. If food, housing, medicaid benefits and the vagaries of the consumer price index had been considered, the number of poor Americans would have been far less than the official count. Mistakes were made in computing social security benefits back in 1972 (tying benefits to CPI at a time when wages were about to decline) which resulted in large windfalls to social security recipients. The elderly are no longer at the bottom of the poverty heap, but women and children have taken their place.
A- As we keep noting, statistics can be skewed to show anything you'd like. For example, zero was the median income of individual Americans not long ago (half above and half below) simply because housewives and children didn't show any income at all. In the 1970s the GNP supposedly rose, but if one looks closely at the rapidly increasing income, one can see that its cause is nothing to celebrate. What is hidden beneath the healthy looking GNP is the disruption of American families. Unfortunate happenings in society translated to praiseworthy events statistically. More housing, more fast food sales, more use of day-care centers and domestic help, psychiatric and social services of every kind and more job holders are often due to divorce and staying single longer. Q- The example ofthe man who marries his housekeeper is often used to show how GNP can be diminished. In marriage, the money that was previously paid to the housekeeper is now voluntarily shared but is not reportable income and does not show up in GNP statistics as before. A- It is generally believed that there has been an increase in the birth rates of young black unmarried women since 1970. Misunderstood statistics again! Instead of arise in the birth rates of illegitimate black babies, such

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births have actually declined by thirteen percent since 1970. Q- That's contrary to anything I've read or seen. A- The misconception occurs because married black women's childbearing rates have dropped sharply, (over 38%) so the statistics show an increase in the proportion of total births to unwed mothers. Examples like these should put us on guard and make us aware of the illusions that surround us. Q- A lot of people have been using statistics to prove a widening gap between rich and poor and that the middle class, so essential to America as we know it, is fast disappearing. How do you know what to believe? Let me give you some examples: A report released by the Census Bureau in 1986 claimed the top twelve percent, defined as white, well-educated, owning their own business or employed in a white-collar job with an income of over $48,000 a year and with a median net- worth of $123,474 controlled forty percent of household wealth. Forty-eight percent of these people had college degrees and twenty-one percent had some college. The typical American family supposedly had anet-worthof$32,667 in 1984 with forty-one percent of it accounted for by equity in a home. Twothirds of all Americans owned their own homes, with the typical equity being $40,600. The typical white family had a median net-worth of$39,135 in 1984, but married couples had a median net worth even higher$50, 120-whereas the median net -worth of a female headed household was a mere $13,890. A- That is mountain of numbers to throw at anybody. Remember that definitions are the key! You might ask questions like these: 1) How was the top 12% determined? 2) What is it to control? 3) What is meant by wealth? 4) How does household wealth differ from wealth? 5) What is meant by typical? 6) Make sure you know the definition of net-worth. 7) Is wealth or income being discussed and what is the difference? 8) Are individuals or families being discussed? 9) Are the figures adjusted for inflation?

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10) Know something about the time periods being comparedsome years are chosen because of their unique ability to distort. 11) If employment is mentioned, are the workers full or part-time? 12) Are pensions, profit sharing plans and other benefits included in the wage comparisons? 13) Are income or wage comparisons before or after taxes? The Ways & Means committee study released July 1989 blamed the Reagan administration for the increase in poverty rates. It counted 1979 and 1980 as Reagan's years (really Carter's) that's how poverty increased between 1979 and 1987. The Republicans fought back. They showed between 1982-1987 real income for the poorest fifth of the nation increased 4.1 percent and that during the Carter years the poor got poorer. Q- A July 27, 1989 Wall Street Journal editorial argued against using statistics to explain poverty. It advised concentrating on behavior. The article pointed out that after the second world war, poverty declined until about 1973-then leveled and didn't really start getting better until 1984. A- Did they mention any reason for the increase in poverty after 1973? Q- Actually a variety of reasons were offered including the Great Society programs and the cultural revolution of the 1960s. Since it started way before Ronald Reagan took office, there was no rational way the increase in poverty could be blamed on Reaganomics. A- The idea that the "rich get richer and the poor get poorer" has always appealed to envy, but not common sense. Even if true, it doesn't necessarily follow that the first is the cause of the second. But there are those who always jump at any chance to interject the class struggle of Marxism.

Q- Well, my point about the editorial was the fmding that it is no longer
acceptable to define poverty by picking an income level and lumping everybody that fallslunder that level as "the poor". For instance, in 1989, using that tactic, 41 percent of the poor owned their own homes, 11 percent had college degrees, 40 percent of poor families had two parents in the home. On the behavioral side of the statistics we find that many home owners lived on-the-street and many college graduates had no marketable skills and were drug and alcohol abusers.

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A- Just as poverty can be described by statistics and behavior, so can wealth. I've heard wealth described as an incident of life cycles. The young accumulate debt, the middle-aged accumulate houses and cars and the older people have assets without mortgages and loans while accumulating medical expenses. In 1987 this translated to a median net-worth of $5,760 for those under age 35, $73,660 for those age 55 to 64 and $55,180 for those over age 75 as they begin to sell off some assets in order to meet expenses and maintain their standard of living. Statistics concerning wealth are tricky as it is not always clear what is and is not included. Therefore most researchers feel it is more accurate to talk about income. As I mentioned earlier, that is inaccurate for those who get income in lump sums irregularly. There is little evidence of any substantial change in the concentration of income over the past twenty-five years. According to the Census Bureau, the range has remained forty to forty-three percent for the top twenty percent of earners; in the 15 to 16 percent range for those in the top five percent and those in the bottom twenty percent have shared in 4.5 to 5.5 percent consistently over those same years. All Americans have seen their real (after inflation) income double since 1950 and despite constant rhetoric to the contrary, citizens have benefited with amazing consistency.

Q- Why?
A- Some economists explain the phenomenon by pointing to the theory of the decreasing marginal utility of money. When a certain degree of wealth is reached, each additional dollar becomes increasingly less important; some people find they would prefer more leisure time. Of course this so called saturation point varies from society to society, but it is certain that low tax rates tend to encourage people in all societies and in all income classes to earn more than they might otherwise, for the simple reason that they will be able to keep more. Q- One of the most blatant distortions of the statistics regarding poverty, is the fact that so many unmarried teenagers intentionally have children they cannot support. It may well be true that in 1988 twenty-five percent of all births were to unmarried teens, but to blame those kinds of statistics on the economy is ridiculous. A- You must admit teenage promiscuity is a real problem. Those particular statistics translate to one million illegitimate babies born in 1988. Even

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more troubling is the fact that the rise in the birth rate of unmarried teens correlates with higher rates of sexual activity at younger ages, fertility at younger ages and declining marriage rates. Children as young as ten years old are sexually active in New York City, and one has even been on record as giving birth. Q- But this is not necessarily a sign of the times. A- I agree. Back in 1959 when I was in college, 97 of every 1,000 girls aged 15 to 19 gave birth, compared to 52 of every 1,000 in 1983. It wasn't so much that teenagers in my day said "no", they just got married. Today early marriage is less viable and the same activities translate to more single mothers.

Q- I've got a good example of skewed statistics. Consumer advocate Ralph Nader held a press conference on October 19, 1986 on the eve of the 1986 elections in which he presented a lot of questionable information including a map showing twenty-seven states in recession and three on the borderline. The Sindlinger poll surveyed thirty-two persons (out of five million) in order to call Missouri in "deep recession". It sampled eleven of Utah's 1.6 million citizens, seventeen Oregonians and twenty-eight citizens of the great northwestern state of Washington. It only took the responses of three people to plunge Wyoming into "deep recession". Mr. Nader talked about the widening gap between the rich and the poor, declaring a healthy debate was needed and the President's words should not simply be accepted per se. He said we now have distortion, deception and fantasy spewed to us regarding the economy.
A- I'll second that last statement!

Q- Mr. Nader spoke of a decline in family income, real hourly wages of workers, higher insurance premiums, higher rents, higher unemployment, increasing hunger and an overall general decline in the standard of living.
A-Did he ever mention the cause of and the cure for these ills or was it just another litany of complaints?

Q- Ronald Reagan was the cause and replacing him was the cure. In a burst of pre-election zeal Mr. N aderquipped, "Happy talk and Miller time politics along with money to televise it, is a winning Republican tactic."

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A- Just as if ideas, philosophical outlooks and programs had nothing to do with it. I get so angry at elitists, who while knowing better themselves, assume the rest of us are idiots who can be duped by smiles, jingles and one minute sound bytes. You know, I was thinking maybe in Mr. Nader's case the tables were turned. What if Ralph Nader was influenced by an article in the August 15,1986 Wall Street Journal featuring a study reportedly showing that the share of national family net-worth held by the top one-half of one percent of the nation's wealthiest families had gone from 25.4 percent to 35.1 percent over a twenty year period (1963-1983)? On August 21, 1986 the Joint Economic Committee press office admitted the Federal Reserve Board had made an error in its data. The corrected data showed that over the twenty years mentioned, the wealthiest one half of one percent had increased its share of the wealth only 1.5 percent which is an amount considered within normal statistical sampling error and therefore was statistically no change at all. The error was caught by the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for economic policy, Michael Darby. A similar study a little later by the Federal Reserve, found that the top ten percent (income over $50,OOO/year)controlled 34 percent of total assets in the country. Those aged 35-44 in this highearner group had median net-worths of $122,000, those over age 65 in this group had median net-worths of $866,000 and the average or mean for the older families in this group was $2.5 million. Q- You're not attempting to deny that there is a widening gap in 1991 between incomes in this country, are you? A-That is not my intention, nor is it my concern. I look for trends and if the trends are foreboding I look to reverse the policy responsible and to work to institute policy that will take the country in the direction of my vision for America. But that is beside the point here. The country is being run on inaccurate numbers. I'm taking a good deal of time to point this out, precisely because I believe it is so important to understand. Q- I'm convinced that statistics are tricky-and boring!

A- Bear with me, please. In May 1987, the Harvard Institute for Learning and Retirement had members of an illustrious panel voice their opinion concerning The Disappearing Middle Class. Alan Reynolds ofPolyconomics in Morristown New Jersey told the audience that the Federal Reserve study

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in March 1987, that Iljust referred to, had found that 54 percent of the family heads earning over $150,OOO/year had graduate school educations compared to ten percent of the population as a whole. Only one percent of the high income families were headed by someone younger than age 35 compared to 31 percent of the entire population. In fact 31 percent of all famil y heads didn't work at all, whereas in the high income group 56 percent had two spouses working. Q- Give me a break! A- Mr. Reynolds concluded that the educated older families with two earners are likely to earn more than the uneducated younger families with one worker or less. If this is shocking or unfair, he joked, one might consider passing out a Harvard MBA to everyone in order to equalize things. Mr. Reynolds went on to needle the other members of the panel, all in good humor. He expressed amazement that Professor Barry Bluestone of the University of Massachusetts was concerned that manufacturing's decline had forced people into mediocre service jobs on Wall Street and Madison Avenue. He claimed not to share Professor Frank Levy 's (University of Maryland) dismay that young people are not doing as well as their parents when due to computer skills and new technology, thirty year olds are constantly making more than forty year olds in today's market place. He quipped that Lester Thurow (MIT) thought that there weren't enough high paying jobs, but toojmany people are getting high pay; and regarding the venerable John Kenneth Galbraith (Harvard) Mr. Reynolds reminded the audience that even in 1948 Professor Galbraith thought everyone was too affluent! As for himself, Mr. Reynolds had to admit that he had twice disappeared from the middle class-once in his struggling youth (dropped below) and now in his high-earning middle years (too high). Q- That's amazing! I He can really scout his way around figures. A- Mr. Reynolds cautioned the audience about being mislead and offered the following as examples of distortion: Measuring incomes of households may be appropriate where everyone owns their own home, or at least sets up housekeeping on their own, but when things gettough households merge; younger or older people move in with eitherlparents or children. Statistics would show a smaller number of households with higher incomes thereby making a bad situation look like an improvement.

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Q- You said something like that earlier. A- If I did, I learned it from Alan Reynolds. He took on Professor Levy's charts which showed the top twenty percent of the population controlled forty-three percent of total incomebut there was no accounting for taxes. In Sweden, for instance, the top twenty percent control 41.7 percent but with their high tax rates the top actually receive a lot less. An intelligent analysis of these statistics shows that the situation of the highest income group in this capitalist country is not that different than in socialist Sweden and the two-fifths is lowered when taxes are taken into the equation in both countries. What is often overlooked, or simply not mentioned, is that one-fifth of the population is responsible for producing a lot more than their income share. In fact the top one percent of the population is responsible for the production of wealth vastly disproportionate to their income share. That is because capital produces more than labor in today's society. Included in that one percent are entrepreneurs who provide plants and equipment which support thousands of jobs which directly and indirectly contribute to the productivity of millions of citizens. Then Mr. Reynolds directed his attention to Lester Thurow's paper which compared 1969, the ninth year of a boom with 1982, the trough of a three year recession. Mr. Reynolds confided to his Harvard audience that 1969, 1973 and 1979 are favorite years for those who wish to skew the facts as all three years "were inflationary blow-offs followed by immediate declines." Q- I've heard that. 1973 was the year of price controls and so it is often chosen as a base year whereas 1984 is favored by those who can make use of the high unemployment which occurred as the nation emerged from a recession. A- There are many things to be aware of when comparing the United States with other countries. Other countries pay more cash but the United States pays more "in-kind" which is often not included in welfare statistics. Between 1984-1988 industrial production grew 5.8 percent a year in this country-faster than in Germany or Japan, with manufacturing productivity up more than thirty percent from the 1981-82 recession and twenty percent from the previous peak. Since seventy-five percent of our productivity comes from services, if such activity could be measured properly, American productivity would probably be higher than the numbers indicate.

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Q- In 1981 Canada unemployment; 7.5 percent in 1988, E From 1981-88,allo four percent a yea tripled. A- Not to mention taxes and the regio compensation per h single entry bookke highlighted and ass Q- I guess it's safe t as poverty, you ch Rowan on May 27, Task Force On H problem of hunger i than at any time in James J. Kilpatric scintilla of valid evi problem in the Uni A- Americans have the last fifty years. turkey and regain i can be done gradua San Francisco base though why that understand) has co other organizations

the United States and Europe all had the same rate of percent to 8 percent, but Canada's rate climbed to 9 ope's to 11 percent and ours dropped to 6.5 percent. ing for compounding, GNP in this country increased interest rates were cut in half and the stock market

r soaring federal debt! But I just want to point out that al cost of living must be considered when evaluating ur over a period of time and people should realize that ping often makes things look bad because liabilities are ts ignored. say when it comes to something as arbitrarily defmed se whomever you prefer to believe. Columnist Carl 986 quoted heavily from the questionable Physician' s ger In America which purportedly found that "the the United States is now more widespread and serious e last ten to fifteen years." And here is columnisat s offering a few days later (6/2/86) "There is not a ence to prove that serious malnutrition is a widespread d States today." een led into dependency on and by government over would be irresponsible to call for the nation to go cold independence and integrity in one fell swoop, but it y over time by educating the younger generation. The National Center for Financial Education (non-profitould be a virtue and a selling point I will never rses for use in secondary education as do numerous

Q- In March 1987 Phil Donahue show featured a discussion concerning the need for fmanci education and the audience expressed a desire to see it required in publi schools to ensure the country's economic viability in the competitive fut reo A- Meanwhile we needy receive the h It may be s welfare recipients h st target our programs more carefully so that the truly lp they have been taught to depend upon. nificant that states which offer the lowest benefits to ve made the most progress in eliminating poverty. Or,

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on the other hand, it may simply mean the poor are not stupid and have moved to states which offer better benefits! Q- In February 1986, the National Center for Policy Analysis in Dallas presented a report that attempted to show the more we pay people to be poor, the more poor people we get. The report said that at least 5.7 million people are living in poverty by choice as a result of the generosity of public welfare. Each additional $1 billion in welfare spending increases the poverty population by 250,000. A- In the July 26, 1989 issue of the Wall Street Journal, economists Barry Bluestone of the University of Massachusetts, Frank Levy, of the University of Maryland, Fabian Linden, Executive Director of the Consumer Research Center of the Conference Board and Richard Vedder of Ohio University, discussed whether the USA was becoming more unequal. They agreed that the average earnings per hour did not improve during the eighties, earnings inequality among men had increased, there were fewer elderly and workingpoor among the poor and poverty had increased among female-headed families. They agreed that the inequality of male earnings was more dramatic than the inequality of family income. They could not agree whether this was due to the age structure of the population or the changing nature of the American economy's demand for labor. Q- Did they attempt explanations? A- That was the purpose of the article. These experts determined that family incomes grew moderately more equal after the second world war into the mid-sixties; it was during the eighties that the inequalities increased. From 1947-1967 economic growth reduced poverty, but there was little decline in poverty between 1967-1987. Per-capita disposable income rose by a total of 82 percent between 1960-1987, but growth in earnings from work slowed down in the mid-1970s. Looking at the statistics over a shorter and more recent time period, 1980-1987, we see that per-capita disposable income rose only about 13 percent or at an annual rate of 1.8 percent between 1980 and 1987. Q- Yeah, but everyone's income increased during the eighties so I would think any inequality would have less meaning. A- Exactly. When the poor are getting richer they don't seem to resent the rich getting richer even faster, as long as everybody's better off. 75

Q- Even today workers expect to do better than parents. On averag today' s young workers have incomes in real terms 50 percent higher an their parents' at the same age. A- As these economists pointed out, that's because we now have twoincome families with one child, instead of one-income families w th three children. Without two incomes, we'd have more, not less, inequ ity,

Q- You mean the most wealthy families don't rely on two incom s?
A- Let me put it this way: in 1970 half of the families in the top 2 of the population had working wives and in 1987 that number had to 66 percent of those families. At the upper end when the margina went from 70 percent to 28 percent there was an incentive to work would get to keep so much more of what they earned-and workforce participation increased for this generally hard workin percent limbed tax rate people erefore group.

Q- What about the lower end of the population?

A- From about 1967 to about 1974, the number of cases on the we doubled. As Professor Levy put it:
You'd be afool not to attribute a good part of that doubling to t e raising of benefits and the attachment of food stamps and Medicaid t welfare .. .In real terms, payments to individuals by the United States government went upfrom $152 billion 1982 dollars in 1970 to $4 5 billion in 1988.

It was suggested that the increase in unemployment among bla males related to a large degree to family structure and things that aff ct work effort, like public assistance. Inequality for whites has actually f len, but for blacks it has risen. There is a greater disparity among blacks oday.

Q- It seems to me the fact that an increased number of blacks earne college degrees during those years and were set further apart from the large number of black high school drop outs would explain the disparity. Afte all, deindustrialization-the shift from goods to services--puts a pre advanced education.
A- That's true to an extent. No one can deny manufacturing grew eaker. That segment of our econom y is sensitive to recessions. It was also hit hard

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by the high dollar and the decline of unions. At one time as much as fortyfive percent of the labor force belonged to unions. Their decline led to a freer market in wages and therefore greater disparities. Anyway the economists pretty much agreed that public policy distorted the market and added its own incentives and disincentives. Medicaid, food stamps, WIC benefits and so forth had an adverse impact on the participation of low-income Americans in the work force. Most figured inequality would probably reverse itself in the absence of public policy. Q- Some of the findings you just mentioned are hard to reconcile with testimony given in August 1991, at the Joint-Economic Committee hearing on poverty, the one mentioned earlier, chaired by Stephen Solarz, a congressman from New York. Testimony given at that hearing showed that poverty rates for twoparent families or male-headed families increased in the past decade as opposed to the drop in poverty among female-headed families. This was said to be due to the falling real earnings of male workers, even though mothers worked also. A- I'm familiar with that hearing. It illustrates further my point about fallible statistics. If you will remember, Texas Congressman and former economist, Dick Armey criticized the statistics-specifically the use of 1983 as a starting point. He demonstrated that if we compare 1979 instead of 1983 to 1989 we get different results. I closely followed a House debate on this very subject in March, 1987. House Republican leader, Bobt Michel of Illinois, tried his damdest to hold back the tide of government spending. He told House members,
If we believe that a billion dollars is the cure to this social ill. then let's not exacerbate the fiscal ill by making it new money. We should transfer the funds from existing accounts.

Q- What social ill were they talking about?

A-They were trying to add more dollars to the already authorized $6 billion of emergency aid to the Homeless. Q- You must mean the Homeless Person's Survival Act which in June 1986 was the first piece of federallegislation specifically addressing homelessness. A-In March, 1987 Bob Michel wanted to prioritize. He was willing to back

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the Homeless act as long as something else was cut. He insisted that the legislation be revenue neutral. However his amendment was defeated and so was a similar "deficit awareness" amendment introduced by Robert Walker of Pennsylvania. The attitude of the Democratically controlled House was summed up in a stunning performance by Henry Gonzalez of Texas who epitomized the collectivist mentality with these words, " ... the federal government has a legal and moral obligation to feed, clothe and house the homeless of this country." Other members of the opposition argued that such an amendment would mean before they can have a warm bowl of soup or a blanket and a cot the homeless would have to take it from someone else.

Q- Where have these congressmen been? Do they live in a magic kingdom where everything grows on trees and automatically rejuvenates? In the real world every program takes from someone; someone else's priorities are jeopardized anytime congress allocates more money. If not from current taxpayers, then from future generations. The piper must be paid by someone, sometime and we have politicians making sure it happens not only in the future but preferably to voters outside their own districts. But I guess Americans are satisfied-they keep returning incumbents to office.
A- Congressman Stewart McKinney of Connecticut asked, "What kind of America do you want? The question is priorities-what are your priorities? Are you for the people or are you for the budget?" A quote which I thought revealed the fact that he hadn't the foggiest notion what he is doing on Capitol Hill. Q- I guess he doesn't make a connection between the people and the government. Could he really think government is a separate entity like the toothfairy or the godfather? A- Congressman McKinney carried on about our need to take care of the people that are the citizens of this country. He wanted to cut back on defense so we could take care of the people. It never occurred to him that the fairest method of allocating a finite number of resources among an infinite number of wants might be to allow every man to support his own priorities-to keep the fruits of his own labor. To do otherwise. as by compelling a man to use his own product contrary to his own priorities is unjust. Q- But it's not illegal.

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A- It may not be illegal but perhaps a case could be made that such compulsion is immoral. The Republicans tried once again, pointing to the $6 billion already allocated to feed and house the poor. Said Clyde Holloway of Louisiana, This is a ridiculous bill. We have to stop somewhere and have the backbone to stand up and say 'no'. We have to go back to the work ethic. There is going to be the rich, the poor and the middle class. Ifwe don't have that, we're going to be a socialistic country. This was as close as congress ever got to addressing the real issue. The questions that should have been asked and the arguments that should have been made were never uttered. Q- Maybe not in congress, but private citizens are beginning to question among themselves. A- That's true. Christopher Awalt worked for two years at the Salvation Army and at a soup kitchen in Austin, Texas. He mentioned the types of people he had encountered. He told of an educated young man who had gone through a devastating divorce and had lost his equilibrium temporarily, a woman who had left a good job in another community in order to escape from an abusive husband, a single father trying to set a good example for his children and working hard to get his high school equivalency. These were all people who needed help temporarily. With the extra push from charitable organizations they got on their feet and forged ahead-for the betterment of everyone concerned. Q- What was his purpose in relating all this? Was he trying to get more funds and drum up volunteers? A- I believe his reason for relating his own personal experience was to warn the rest of us about wasting our time, money and compassion on those incapable of responding. He found there is a difference between the temporarily homeless and the chronically homeless who prefer a life of no responsibility. Q- You mean he was suggesting we abandon the chronically homeless? A- His message was not directed to what should be done about the recipients of aid, as much as it was directed to the givers of aid. Whether he thought

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the chronically homeless should be left alone or warehoused or whateverI don't know. His advice was that attempts to help them could well be an exercise in futility-not that we shouldn't give it a try, but that we should be forewarned that not all people desire or are capable of benefiting from our help. As an example he told of a man who had spent ten years on the street. Mr. Awalt brought him toiletries, clothes and checked him into a VA hospital. He wrote and visited him and lined up a job for him. After four months of treatment the man was enthusiastic about starting a new life. During the fifth month he began worrying about all the pitfalls in his new life. He checked himself out of the hospital in the sixth month and in the seventh month Mr. Awalt come across him, drunk and back on the streets. Q- I don't blame Mr. Awalt for being discouraged. A- And Mr. Awalt doesn't blame society for the plight of the homeless, as Jonathan Kozol, author of Rachel and Her Children and so many others do. Mr. Awalt says society provided free medical care, counseling and personal attention-no way is society to blame. The economy can't be blamed either, because the man never took ajob. This particular man, and thousands like him, have only themselves to blame! Q- That's a little harsh. A- Not really. The message here is that public policy needs to include the notion of self- reliance and individual responsibility. We can't be expected to just tum over our airports, parks and streets. These are things citizens want and need, and as producing members of society, they paid for these things with their tax-dollars. It doesn't matter how many high quality programs addressing job training, education, drug and alcohol treatment, health clinics and help for the mentally ill we establish. They are of absolutely no value without effort from the homeless themselves. Q- That is the opposite of a statement put out in the fall of 1991 by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. They claim society is not doing enough for the poor. A- There are certainly different points of view, and as we like to say, that's what makes a ball game! Prevention is an alternative to government programs. One way to teach people to avoid poverty is to have them attempt to live by the

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following Anti-Poverty Commandments: 1- Don't do drugs. 2- Don't have children before you can afford them. 3- Finish School. 4- Don't buy things you don't need and can't afford. From there on you can add what I would call The Formula For Wealth which includes advice to acquire extra skills, side-line businesses, investing habits, consistency, establishing credit and so forth. Q- I'm constantly amazed at how many studies and blue ribbon panels it takes to teach people in the 1990s what our ancestors were taught from the cradle. "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink." A- You're right. Old truths never die. I don't know why we try and make things so complicated today. Human nature has not changed. I think it's time to give some heed to what was happening during our nation's most prosperous era.

Q- Maybe modem man with all his technology has become just a little too
smug. Sometimes I think of the nation as an adolescent who believes his parents are old fashioned, stupid and whose advice and example are not nearly as good as the enlightenment achieved by his peers. A- Having had five sons recently go through the phase you are describing, I can only hope the analogy with the nation holds up. For if it does this nation's future will be wondrous! I can tell you once sons are secure in their own abilities and have attained a fair degree of self-know ledge they are able to pick and choose from the experiences of their elders.

Q- You mean mom and dad?

A- Not just mom and dad-in fact it is usually easier to adopt practices of more distant generations or more distant kinship, as less threatening to the self-awareness of an emerging adult child. Q- Didn't you write about the Pastoral Letter published by the catholic bishops on the 40th anniversary of the 1946 Employment Act? A- Actually I discussed a December 22, 1986 meeting in which several of the contributors to that letter testified before a congressional committee. (Joint Economic Committee hearing on Poverty, Ethics & Economics) The

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letter itself addressed the way the economy affects the dignity and opportunity of each person in America. Q- The dignity and opportunity? Those are fine sounding terms!

A- The Reverend Rembert Weakland, Archbishop of Milwaukee testified that in his opinion, government has a duty to intervene where "hurt is apparent and must take its rightful role".

Q- That is rather ambiguous, don't you think?

A- He spoke a great deal about the rights of workers and duties of employers with emphasis on some rather unusual rights which he referred to as economic rights. Q- Such as? A- Such as the right to income ... Q- Sounds good to me! A-The right to food ...

Q- All right!
A- The right to shelter ...

Q- Great! No sense spending income on rent or mortgage payments like

suckers without these nifty rights! A- The right to medical care ... Q- "America is the only industrial nation ... ". A- And the right to employment. We know, we know!

Q- Who is suppose to employ whom, to do what, to be paid by whom, with

what, for what-oh yeah, when and how?

A- Anti-discrimination agencies too often hinder the advance of the minorities and women they are supposed to protect. We spoke earlier of the

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reasons employers have come to rely on credentials even though certain jobs may require nothing more than willingness and dependability. I can't stress strongly enough that credentialed minorities and women would be hired on their merits anyway and so don't need the help of these agencies. It is the poor and unskilled who take the hit. The victims are the folks without documented qualifications who generally get ahead by worldng longer, harder, and more creatively. Q- And as stated earlier, minimum wage and other dictates by government discourages employment of low-skilled workers. A- We didn't say much about quotas earlier, direct or indirect, but no employer wants to take a chance on a discrimination suit over paying lower wages to some workers, even though they may be less skilled than others. Q- I get it. You mean a business locating in a ghetto would be an easy target because all businesses are supposed to hire in proportion to the racial composition of the local work force. It would be stupid to pay lower skilled ghetto employees at the same rate as more skilled employees elsewhere. A- The presumption would be that the lower wages are prima facie evidence of exploitation, based on race or sexual bias, rather than on different skill levels. That's one reason so many companies move to the suburbs and other minority-free communities. Misguided civil rights legislation turns inner cities into disincentive zones! Q- I really like the conclusion George Gilder came to regarding discrimination in the workplace. He maintained that the real problem is not discrimination as much as it is ... an attitude endemic to the affluent society: that wealth can be takenfor granted rather than produced by toil and thrift; that life is supposed to be easy and uncomplex; that its inevitable scarcities, setbacks, andfrustrations are the fault of malevolent others; that good intentions should be worth their weight in gold and good credentials should convert instantly into power and glory without sordid interludes of productive competition and struggle; that the world is only superficially awry and can be made smooth and straight and rational by rulingsfrom on high, ifonly the evil overlords can be removed. A- I think he consider these attitudes to be natural by-products of a society of abundance. And he isn't the only one to blame many of this country's

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social problems on abundance. When too much is given too much is expected and pretty soon people forget that they are responsible for their own lives and own choices. Gary Burtless of the Brookings Institute testified before the committee as to the moral implications of the Pastoral Letter and its emphasis on alms giving and social obligation for economic well being. He declared that most efforts to reduce poverty and unemployment are expensive and may even be counterproductive. Nevertheless he advocated sacrifice on the part of the non-poor and employed. Q- Sounds like a ploy for more taxes! A- As a matter of fact taxes were mentioned. Mr. Burtless suggested that giving up a little economic growth might not be too much to ask in order to help the poor. Q- As an economist he should realize that nothing could help the poor more than economic growth and the jobs and general prosperity that are the byproduct of economic growth. A- Mr. Burtless ridiculed the theory that claims the best way to help those in need is to reduce aid so they will learn to achieve on their own. Q- That reminds me of one of my favorite movies, Fun With Dick and Jane starring Jane Fonda and George Segal. It was a comedy made in the 1970s in which wealthy parents refused the down-on-their-luck couple financial help for their own good in order to build their character. The couple succeeded all right--by turning to crime! It was tongue-in-cheek, intended to show the parents as heartless and cold. But some people, like myself, really believe that what the parents advocated works. Although the movie makes fun of my beliefs it also reminds me that no one should take themselves, or their ideas, too seriously. A- Mr. Burtless would love the parody of the heartless wealthy parents because he already believes those who have already attained financial security should withstand the temptation to take on "too light an obligation." He thinks the non-poor should be required to give more than advice, set examples and offer encouragement to the poor.

Q- If I remember correctly, the Pastoral Letter spoke of the "cost to the

affluent majority", implying perhaps that they should help until it hurts.

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A- It may be that the bishops failed to recognize that many members of the affluent majority made sacrifices, practiced delayed gratification and worked extra long hours and endured significant risks in order to gain affluence. Having paid a cost for their own financial success, one might wonder why these same people should be required (asked is OK) to pay for the security of others who may not have delayed their own gratifications? Q- I have a few questions of my own. What majority? Do you think it is safe to assume class? Delayed gratifications? You're spending; postponing trips and purchases do you think is meant by affluent we are talking about the middle referring to saving, instead of and so forth-right?

A- Exactly. To suggest that middle class taxpayers are getting off too cheaply is nonsense. Those that have managed to become responsible selfsufficient citizens, already contributing to the good of society via taxes, should be congratulated not rewarded with an even larger tax bite. The incentives are all wrong. Professor Lawrence Mead of New York University introduced a semblance of level-headedness into the congressional hearing by claiming that the Pastoral Letter mistook the very nature of poverty by denying the role of the poor in creating poverty. (The same Professor Mead who testified at another hearing we discussed earlier.)

Q- The poor were apparently treated in the Letter as merely passive victims.
A- The Letter, according to Professor Mead, had medieval overtones and ignored the fact that in twentieth century America we enjoy civil liberties, rights and education. Opportunities are available in this country, which it is the responsibility of the poor to use to better their situation. Q- Right on! It is puzzling to me how the bishops, who talk so incessantly about dignity, can then deny the poor any semblance of dignity by making them appear utterly helpless. A- The order of the day appeared to be all show and no substance-truth only if it sounded good.

Q- As the renowned professor of economics, John Kenneth Galbraith has been known to say, when "all inconvenient facts have been ignored."

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A- There has been a disturbing trend in the country in recent years. It is almost considered heresy to be out of the mainstream thought. Q- Political correctness! A- We begin to think as the polls say we should think. It is dangerous when to question or criticize social programs, ideas and laws which permeate every aspect of our lives is considered the wrong thing to do. Itis a precursor of thought police when responsible respected members of society are not expected to analyze existent social policy to determine its worth, even though there may be abundant evidence that the policies may be doing the intended beneficiaries more harm than good. is politically correct to say "economically disadvantaged." After all a wealthy white male who has lost his health or his family may well be poor. A- Those things don't bother me-in fact I am willing to stipulate to the merits of using language in a more sensitive manner.

Q- I have been told never to use the term "poor" or "poverty"-it

Q- I call a lot of this correct terminology doublespeak and I find it very objectionable. I resent being forced to refer to "bums" as non-goal oriented members of society or to poor people as fiscal underachievers.
A- I find those things relatively harmless. During the great depression hobos were the equivalent oftoday's migratory workers; they didn't mind work but they didn't want to be tied down to one place for long. Tramps would work for food but only when necessary and bums wouldn't consider work under any circumstances. Q- I guess every era has its own "politically correct" vocabulary. A- That's right; it's no big deal! I wasn't objecting to changing terminologyI was objecting to something much more insidious. For instance, the bishops spoke as if to claim welfare mothers don't work would show prejudice-the holier than thou kind. So what if statistics show welfare mothers in fact, work about half as much as their counterparts who are not on welfare? And you must understand what is meant by unemployment. It is not simply the inability to find a job, it is the inability to land a good job! Lesser paying and unattractive jobs are plentiful but they wouldn't keep a family out of poverty, as the government

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defines poverty, so let the taxpayers have some pain until the right job comes along. Q- I read that in 1940 FDR was surprised to learn that a neighbor's daughter, a Vassar graduate, was counted among the unemployed because she was after a very special job-she wanted to be an editor of Vogue magazine. As Herbert Stein once said, "We not only do not consider it wrong for her to behave in this way or wrong to count her as unemployed, we are also willing to pay her unemployment compensation if she has been previously employed and now rejects all jobs other than editing Vogue. A- Anyway, in Professor Mead's opinion, the bishops didn't put obligations on the poor, just the non-poor. There is, he said, such a thing as Christian duty, just as there is parental duty. Jesus didn't treat the poor as victims; he held them accountable even though there was far less 'opportunity in Judea 2000 years ago. An indulgent society which insists on taking care of its poor leaves them helpless like an over-indulgent parent who neglects his duty.

Q- There's a bit of Fun With Dick and Jane philosophy for Mr. Burtless to ridicule.
A- Professor Mead maintained that Americans are not against welfare; only against welfare abuse. The Professor believes the public is not seeking relief from responsibility to the poor, but that they want to see the poor reciprocate with responsibility to themselves, their families and society. Q- That reminds me of Ravendale, Michigan on the east -side of Detroit, a violent drug-soaked ghetto by all accounts, where a local minister, Eddie Edwards, is trying self-help. In 1986 he told a neighborhood group they had been operating under a welfare mentality too long and that it was time to help themselves. He got citizens to organize to fight crime, find jobs for the unemployed and clean up the neighborhood. Volunteers surveyed the 4,000 residents and discovered most wanted more good jobs, less crime and somewhere to shop. A used bus was purchased and used to drive the elderly to stores. Little League and block neighborhood watches were formed, a regular community newsletter went out and volunteers announced Saturday meetings through a bullhorn. The city responded to the efforts of the citizens by tearing down abandoned houses, towing wrecked cars, and raiding crack-houses. The neighbors cleared alleyways, planted shrubs and sold security lighting. Habitat for Humanity, renovated three homes in the area. Volunteers painted 32 houses with donated paint, trained the

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unemployed for interviews and found jobs for 150 of them. A health clinic began providing medical services on a payment plan and the police built a mini-station in the neighborhood. A-That sounds like a real success story. Q- Wait, I'm not through. There wasn't the ground swell of support Reverend Edwards had anticipated. There justisn 't much initiative in thirdgeneration welfare families. People would come for the freebies and when the project started they would head on home. Churches and local businesses gave little or no support and there were few contributions from outside the community. Volunteers already had a hard time surviving, caring for their own families under very tough circumstances. In the end there was more talk than anything else and most of the dozen enthusiasts fell away. A- Nothing was accomplished in the end? Q- I wouldn't go that far, but the attitudes weren't right. For instance the volunteers managed to get a job for a 20 year old who said "I'm not going to get my hair cut for any job. I'll get my hair cut when I want to." He's still unemployed. In another case a welfare mother remains in her run-down home, lacking the skills and confidence to fmd a job. She says, "I don't want to scrub floors or do any domestic work. I don't want that." Volunteers agreed to paint her run down house but their morale sank when they found three men-two sons and a nephew--on the couch watching TV and ignoring the workers outside! A- That's exactly what Professor Mead was talking about. Q- Some people believe that comfort and aid to one's fellow man should come voluntarily from the community so that both the giver and the recipient can be nourished by the humaneness of the act. They view charity as a moral obligation which should not be legislated by a handful of men but rather something all men should do voluntarily of their own free will and on a personal level. A- No one wants to face the fact that mandated altruism and capitalism are mutually exclusive. It should be apparent that since economic life does not exist in a moral vacuum, what is done of man's free will is of higher consequences than what is done through coercion. As far as 'm concerned, higher ethical values are a natural by-product of capitalism.

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Going back one last time to the Harvard Institute symposium we were discussing earlier, Professor Galbraith got a round of applause when he professed his belief that "a broad movement to greater equality in income distribution is something which the good society should still value". Admittedly it was the good professor's personal judgment that "equality in income distribution" is an attribute of the "good society", but a judgment which was apparently appreciated and shared by his audience. It was strange, however, that Professor Galbraith, who in 1958 defined poverty as an income of $1,000, the equivalent of $3,800 today, failed to mention that we have come a long way and raised our sights many times in the process. It is hard to commend when one has made a long career of denigrating, but Professor Galbraith is wise enough to know no matter what the productive elements of society do for the non-productive, it will never be enough!

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