In another thread Sean a.k.a MrLuigi wrote:
“"Poverty" is kind of too vague a word for the multiple layers of social dysfunction that plague our city and feed into the cycle of violence. If it were simply "poverty" you could just write everyone a big check and they would stop shooting at each other over petty beefs. The young men shooting each other in this city are almost never killing each other because they literally can't afford to eat. Its a way more nefarious web of broken family structures, broken schools, chronic unemployment, drug enforcement that says "its OK to push this illicit economy into those kinds of neighborhoods, and culture of misplaced bravado and shallow materialism. If we dump everything into the word "poverty" without being more specific, its no longer targeted enough to do much good terms of figuring out the "how" of urban violence. Its not just lack of dollars that makes Philly's mean streets mean, its a very particular system of failure of the social fabric. That said there are million and one things we can do to direct people away from crime and the underground activity before they feel that their only choice. There are a million and two things to make sure they have other options once they do get caught up in it and, as eventually happens, they get busted.”
Sean, I may be reading you wrong but I find the distinction you draw between poverty and “social dysfunction” a bit too elegant.
We define poverty in terms of an income that falls below a certain threshold level. Such a narrow view of course doesn’t really capture the many dimensions of poverty. On average a person in India or Africa will have an income that falls well below an American definition of a poverty income. But to the extent that some (certainly not all) Indians and Africans more fully participate in community decisions or live without the fear of becoming a victim of violence they might in certain dimensions actually stand head and shoulders above a poor person in an American city in terms of their quality of life.
Which Sean, brings me to this statement you made:
“If it were simply "poverty" you could just write everyone a big check and they would stop shooting at each other over petty beefs. The young men shooting each other in this city are almost never killing each other because they literally can't afford to eat.”
More than in any other developed country income in the United States shapes access to essential goods and services: direct care by your mother or high quality pre-k, access to health care, access to high quality elementary and secondary education, access to post-secondary education or training, access to safe housing and neighborhoods. My goodness even the kinds of food people have access to is shaped by income. High fat, corn sweetened, and prepared foods are easier to access and cheaper than healthier alternatives. Poorer populations who also are less likely to have health care have a higher risk of developing diabetes. It is no surprise then that we are seeing a growing spread between the life expectancy of high and low income groups in our society.
So High Fructose Corn Syrup Made Me Do It?
Does poverty and its accompanying deprivation excuse an act of violence?
No!
No!
No!
But neither does that act of violence excuse us from recognizing that if a “big check” had been written 20 years ago to provide access to health care, pre-k, quality schools, good housing and training for a career as opposed to string of dead end jobs Philadelphia today would have a smaller prison, a lower murder rate and a higher standard of living for all of its citizens.
Individual choices have consequence and so do social choices. The consequences of poor choices accumulate over long periods of time and often fall upon a wider range of people than the decision makers themselves. We can not undo what has been done but we shouldn’t assume we share no responsibility for what the future will look like.
People seem increasingly to get this point when it comes to the environment but not on social policy.
So now I will make an odd sounding reading recommendation. The book is The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game by Michael Lewis. It is ultimately about the changing physical dimensions of defensive ends and the effort to recruit bigger and faster offensive tackles as a countermeasure. But in telling that story it follows the early life of one prototype football player and in that journey touches on issues of class, race and violence. It’s a good read and good for you.
--Mark Price
To speak up for Sean
I think this is the meat of his comment:
I don't think Sean's saying poverty has nothing or little to do with it. Rather, there's two points being made: 1) rather than using poverty as a catchall, we should identify specific institutions that have failed and specific aspects of poverty that contribute to specific problems. For example, low working wages contributes to poor choices for food, housing, and education; but it's specifically chronic unemployment, especially for young men, that helps to create a criminal underclass. Obviously the two problems are interrelated but they are not prima facie the same problem.
2) We have to recognize that "social dysfunction" in Philadelphia is not limited to the "social dysfunction of people who live in poverty." Again, it's the social dysfunction of political and legal and other institutions, in which many people of many social classes are complicit.
So, on the one hand, a finer analysis is required; and on the other, an even bigger picture of what's gone wrong in our city and our nation.
I want to underscore this
One of the most absurd turns of speech you hear all the time is "Well what do you expect that's a bad neighborhood" like the neighborhood itself, the layout of the streets, the architecture somehow makes people behave in one way or another, make jobs and schools spontaneously appear or disappear from one area or another. No the economic stratification of our cities and suburbs is intentional policy, even if the players don't really percieve themselves as part of playing out that policy going about their daily lives. Its policy that everyone at every level of the economy is in part complicit in if they realize it or not. "Bad neighborhoods" and "good neighborhoods" don't just happen - in America they are made and unmade - sometimes by deliberate choices and often by historic processes. There is nothing "natural" about urban poverty and abandonment. Its fabricated by processes that intentionally or unintentionally play people against each other.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
all interesting points
Tcarmody, all interesting points.
I would emphasize that the problem of chronic unemployment is not like a change in the weather it is a symptom larger long term problem.
With respect to 2, I think you (and by extension Sean) make an excellent point.
"Poor choices" doesn't really hit it either
I think most people rich, poor, white, black and other shape their vision of whats possible from folks they know first hand. So poor people in this country don't just "choose" substandard educational opportunities, etc.. I think that in many ways geographic stratification on racial and economic lines effectively shuts down a lot of people's ability to perceive the range of life choices available to them. To be clear, there are also plenty of times where the old-fashioned straight-up open discrimination rears its ugly head, but I would argue that increasingly its a combination of geographic and economic isolation that plays into shutting down the "universe" of whats perceived as cognitively possible for young men growing up in a lot of Philly's neighborhoods.
I know this starts to sound a bit "pop-psychology" but I really think just saying "its poverty" doesn't really describe the traps that far too many young men in this city fall into, while others don't. I would say its a nasty combination of um stunted self-expectations confounded with a social system that all-too-happily uses geography to turn racial and economic stratification into the "natural order of things".
Anyway, I'll agree this is likely a far more interesting and potentially productive discussion that then other one, even if it is sort of spun out of turning me into a bit of a linguistic "whipping boy".
Uggh. I just noticed this thread was in the "PA BlogWire" column. Why does it have to be the one referring to some of my comments in a thread where I clearly blew my top a little a few times? Why couldn't be the one about Dan U-A rowing in Poland or the Helen Gym's thread about the SRC casually putting 70 Philly schools out for takeover?
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
I should clarify -- by "poor
I should clarify -- by "poor choices" I mean lack of a range of options, not bad decisions. I.e. to have poor choices, not to make poor choices.
Is there a disagreement in the house?
I’m not sure I’m following the strands in this discussion because you all seem to be saying the same thing, something that I’ve believed for a long time—the poverty is not primarily an individual problem but a communal problem. (See http://blog.stier.net/2006/10/09/community-based-economic-development-st...)
It is not primarily about lacking income but about lacking opportunities, connections, and the role models that come from good schools, stores, jobs, recreation facilities and so forth.
Of course, to say that poverty is a communal not an individual problem is not to excuse or make excuses for individuals who screw up their lives, or worse, the lives of others. In a world in which we can’t make it in any respect unless we learn to take responsibility for our actions, we don’t do people any favors by doing that. But it is to say that if we want to reduce “poverty” and the social ills of poor communities, we have to design public policies that are holistic not individualistic in nature. And it is also to say that we are what we are today because we grew up in strong communities have to recognize the responsibility we have to fix the intentional or unintentional public policies that create weak communities.
Am I wrong that everyone posting here agrees with this?
Well, I think some of the
Well, I think some of the disagreements are based on misunderstandings in reading/lack of clarity in writing. But -- and this is going back to the discussion from which Sean D aka Mr Luigi's comment came -- part of the issue here is the role of "poverty" as a signal in political and policy discussions.
Say Commissioner Johnson argues that his police force ultimately has little control over murders in the city, because the root cause of these crimes is poverty. In the sense of "ultimate causes," this is true, or at least half true, but in another sense, he's using the insolubility of poverty to pass the buck, both to apologize for his own lack of ideas and the dysfunction of the police force, and to avoid criticizing or calling out any of the other underachieving institutions/leaders: the D.A., the Mayor, etc. He's appealing to a nebulous cause to explain something for which a more concrete explanation is both possible and necessary.
I'll add something else. It's worthwhile to distinguish between failures of the market and failures of government. Lack of access to inexpensive, nutritious groceries in your neighborhood is a market problem. That doesn't mean that government can't act in conjunction with private actors to ameliorate it, but ultimately, you need a market solution, with a private actor providing the service. Lack of access to nutritious food in schools is a government problem -- as are poor city services, policing, roads and infrastructure, etc. For my part, I think the latter is more outrageous because government exists outside the market exactly to provide universal services, and to serve and protect everyone regardless of income or status. Liberal-democratic government is formed by and serves the people.
This is not to deny that there are contested areas of overlap: e.g., health care, where I think both its inherent qualities and the market's failure show that it should be a universal, public-provided good (like education) rather than a very strange quasi-market good, which is what it is now.
"Social Dysfunction" is the issue ... but it cuts both ways.
It's not just about how certain groups function in society ... but also about how society functions.
Mentoring is key to combatting "social dysfunction" but the goal of mentoring must allow for mentors being transformed by the mentee.
It's time to get in the face of the "dysfunctional" - in a constructive way.
Every dollar invested in face-to-face mentoring of at-risk youth improves both how society functions and how those young people will eventually function in a new society.
That's one of the untold stories of this city budget cycle - an investment in mentoring was one of my top 3 priorities (from my wish list) - along with full-funding of prisoner reentry efforts beyond employer tax credits.
The other policy priority was a local Small Business Loan Guarantee Fund which may not have to come from operating budget revenue.
WWGjr
I think we all agree yes
In response to Marc Stier. Of course the "post-modernists" would argue that our words have a life of their own discursively after they leave us. But who needs those stinky "post-modernists" anyway?
And leaving the field of the "discursive" and going back to actual policy let me just echo Council Goode and say these are exactly the programs we should be investing in.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
Talking solutions: Cohen wage credit
I'm curious about whether folks have been following the demise of the Cohen wage credit, a city-level EITC that would give some $$ back to low-wage workers. The credit was delayed and minimized in this budget round and it would be interesting to hear how folks think wage credits sell/work/function.
Poverty is a massive problem in Philadelphia, with the numbers growing rather than shrinking. A quarter of Philadelphians live in poverty, an increase of seven percent since 2000. There's no doubt that's due to failures of major institutions, but while we wait for those to be "fixed," isn't a EITC of some sort a common element of an anti-poverty initiative? Especially now when transportation and food prices have spiked dramatically?
Yes.
That's why I voted against the delay and/or reduction in the credit in committee - and I will do the same on final passage.
But it's actually not a FY09 issue - it was only an issue of whether the program would start in FY13 as part of a 5YR plan. It still can ...
up until FY13, it hasn't been eliminated from the FY13 budget which is years from now.
WWGjr
Councilman, what do we do in the meantime?
Any implementations of any form of the Cohen wage credit is as you said years away, but the larger concern is how the city is dealing with and addressing poverty in a concrete manner and whether there's a cohesive articulated anti-poverty plan or vision in place in this new administration/council.
Cohen wage tax is not an EITC
A small correction: the Cohen wage tax is a rebate, not an EITC.
The federal EITC (there is not state EITC in PA) is more of a credit that actually refunds more than qualified tax-payers actually pay in taxes, or would owe based on the normal rate schedule (this offsets payroll tax and is what makes the EITC so cool--it really does get at poverty substantively by basically redistributing wages).
The wage tax rebate would basically give back city taxpayers who earn below a certain amount everything they paid in wage tax, and nothing more. So for a family that earns $30 k a year, we're talking $800 back a year.
silver linings are nice...
The Cohen wage tax rebate was basically the consolation prize that Jon Stein and others got after the Tax Reform Commission of 200--1? 2? and Council came up with little else concrete besides business tax cuts. It was the silver lining in that debate. It was an ok idea at the time, and it's great folks tried to make it happen again in this year's budget, but it's totally a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Helen says:
Yes, an EITC is an important tool at the federal level in fighting poverty. But a city-level EITC is hard to imagine, since it'd require the city to give back even more money to workers of a certain income level than they contribute. And we're already in a rocky revenue position. Which is why a city is not going to address poverty in any significant way via tax structure.
I think the city'd be much better off identifying some key poverty reduction programs it could help fund, but also draw down federal or state dollars as an offset. I am a huge fan of universal, quality child care and after school programs. Quality child care is hard to find and even harder to pay for--especially for low-wage workers. I think there'd be more bang for the buck if Council took the money from the Cohen wage tax rebate and instead of refunding it to individuals, put it into a dedicated trust fund for afterschool/childcare.
You've got to go with what's out there
There might be better things to do with the money that's programmed for the Cohen wage tax rebate -- that is if it ever actually gets into a budget. But that doesn't mean the money would go to those things as opposed to, say, deeper BPT cuts or general wage tax cuts. The Cohen rebate exists only because there's a coalition of groups, aligned with One Philadelphia, that's been loud and strong enough to preserve it. And even then, as has been pointed out in previous posts, whether it will ever come into effect, and how strongly, is still in doubt. So if our coalition remains intact, and grows stronger, it may be in a position to suggest moving the money into something else. But that remains to be seen. It also means there would have to be a consensus on what else to do with the money. That also remains to be seen.
Job 1 is to build a coalition that feels its time is well spent working on a common agenda. Right now the common agenda that is holding groups together is the Cohen rebate. It would put real money in the hands of people who need it, so it's much better than nothing. And it's a much better alternative than the wage tax status quo. If a coalition develops a consensus to move to something else, and it has the political strength to make that something else actually happen, then I'm sure we'll move on. But in the meanwhile, I don't think we want to minimize the significance of $800 in a working stiff's pocket.
that's true
but I'd posit that you'd see even more groups--including SEIU and AFCSME's child care organizing campaigns--invest more time and energy in a coalition effort that has an immediate impact on families who struggle to balance work and childcare. That's not to denigrate the work you've done on OnePhilly Stan. It has been very effective, but I'm a big believer in throwing more and more stuff at the wall all the time to see what sticks.
And a good afterschool program, that teens really want to be a part of--will have a real and immediate impact on crime in the city, an issue that I'd say a supermajority of folks are really worried about.
We've actually thrown a lot of stuff
against the wall. And the Cohen tax rebate is what's stuck so far. But we'll see what happens.
Let's build an alternative agenda
that goes beyond the Cohen wage tax because if, as people have said on this thread, poverty is about communities as much as it is about individuals, then giving individuals more money is probably not an effective means of reducing poverty.
Lots of people on YPP have put forward progressive ideas about economic development that look at poverty in this holistic way. Ray has written interesting posts in the past about creating a high wage economy. Marc Stier gave us a link above to some of his ideas about community based economic development. In other posts, both Ray and Marc have talked about the importance of transit to economic development. Price, Tim and others have contributed thought provoking posts on the subject.
And, in government, Wilson Goode has done a fine job of pointing to the difficulties that minorities and women have in gaining access to capital as well as to the importance of mentoring Congressman Fattah's campaign focused on new ideas to improve education.
But ninety percent of the time, we talk about taxes when we talk about economic development and creating jobs. We know why Michael Nutter does this: nothing is more politically popular than cutting taxes, especially among the class of political contributors. But why are we progressives constantly fighting on the turf of the business class instead of developing our own ideas? The fact is that a majority of people in this city do not believe that cutting taxes is the best way forward. But we can't defeat that tax cutting agenda without an alternative. And without an alternative, all we talk about is stopping the tax cutters.
Or, to put the point another way, Stan Shapiro's obsession about taxes is not just a individual problem, but a communal one. Unless we we come up with an alternative agenda, Stan and One Philadelphia will never move on.
No coalition like One Philadelphia is going to develop this agenda unless it has a research staff that focuses on the task. But One Philadelphia has no capacity to create such a staff and doesn't seem interested in raising the money to create such a capacity.
There are a lot of progressive policy wonks in this city who could contribute to this effort and take an agenda to a coalition like One Philadelphia.
Anyone interested?
Never Underestimate the Importance of a Good Defense
On a national scale think about the difference between the debate over the invasion of Iraq and the debate over the privatization of social security. On the invasion progressives lost, on social security we won. There is tremendous value in preventing poorly conceived ideas from becoming policy. So go Stan go!
That said having an offense is a great idea. The balance of power is about to shift in DC. By the time power does shift wouldn’t it be nice to be armed with a coherent strategy to boost economic development in the city that produces significant long term benefits for the people most in need. Wouldn’t it be nice to move away from the idea that the way to cope with poverty is to lure wealthy people and hope the chronically unemployed get a few of the resulting barista positions.
I’m as always with Ray, child care and after school programs are critical. Of course the heavy lifting is targeting the adult population with a lengthy history of unemployment/underemployment. That group needs direct attention and investment. They need to be the focus of policy not the secondary beneficiaries of policy.
--Mark Price
The Benefit Bank
In the meantime, we support programs like the Benefit Bank and try to ensure that low income households are taking advantage of EITCs, and other tax credits and public benefit programs that they are entitled to - as well as money that is needed within the local economy
The total amount of UNUSED tax credits and benefits for low income houeholds in Philadelphia far outweigh the potential value of the Cohen tax credit alone. Of course, low income households need it all.
Consequently, Council's Commerce & Economic Development Committee has already held a hearing on this subject with favorable testimony from the Nutter Administration. Councilwoman Reynolds Brown and Councilman Jones have taken the lead on this issue with strong support from other committee members - especially the Chair. :)
WWGjr
It's not just been delayed
It's been stunted. The existing Cohen legislation would take the wage tax for low wage workers down to 1.5% after a series of annual rate cuts. The legislation approved in Committee would leave the low wage rate at no more than 1% lower than the regular wage tax rate. Thus, the regular tax rate is scheduled to go to 3.6% in 2013. If the regular rate never goes lower than 3.6%, then those eligible for the truncated Cohen rebate will have their rate stuck at 2.6%. It will never get down to 1.5%. Also, getting that rate will require filing for a refund. Many low wage workers will forego filing for a rebate of only 1%.
Should I vote against it TWICE?
Once for the delay and ... then for its modification.
nay. nay.
We will elect a Mayor and City Council in 2011 before the delay or modification take effect.
Get it?
WWGjr
Counting on your knowledge of the rules, Wilson
I'd be concerned that nays become a yea. But I'm sure you know what you are doing.