Letter 2 America for July 25, 2014

Dear America,

Today's political news is yesterday's release of a new plan for federal participation in the fight against the rampant poverty that afflicts millions in this country.  With a new document that is as much an exercise in political rehabilitation as anything else, Paul Ryan, the erstwhile Republican vice-presidential candidate and running mate of Mitt Romney, has proposed a familiar variation on a perennial Republican theme in that he wants to fund anti-poverty programs federally, but give the money to the states in the form of block grants to allow them to administer several extant programs and invent new ones.  Of course, the problem with such plans always emerges in the same way.  Conservative governors and legislators do all in their power to undermine the programs they don't like because the cost too much or they help the wrong people in their political schemes of things, and such would be the case with this new alternative to the "War on Poverty" institutionalized by Lyndon Johnson in the sixties.  Ryan's claim is that his proposed changes wouldn't increase the federal deficit...that is the amount by which the U.S. Treasury's collections are less than the amount it pays out for federal programs...while the reality is that he is already spending the savings reaped by the parsimony of the aforesaid conservative state governments through their retrenching of the social safety net as we know it.  It's the same old dance with a slightly different tune being played by the band.

So, why is Ryan going to all this trouble to look more receptive to the needs of the poor?  The year 2016 comes to mind.  The Republican Party is in the news daily, constantly trying to be noticed by the voters without offering them anything new, just retreading the same old worn out ideas, much the same as Paul Ryan has done with his "new" proposal for discussion of welfare reform.  But as in the case of Ryan's plan, which will meet with some Democratic acceptance for the few kernels of sense in it, will also be confronted with the reality that some of his proposals will have dire consequences for the very people they purport to serve by realigning their attitudes and acclimating them to working.  For example, in states where programs like the programs Ryan is proposing are already in effect, certain paradoxes have emerged.  There have been reports about welfare in states with work requirements that demonstrate the flaw in any plan to give states authority to administer them.  In one case, in order to get a minimal benefit to supplement food stamps and rent subsidies a claimant has to do job searches, and many of the applicants live in areas in which public transportation is not available.  In addition, many of them have children who must be cared for while the parent looks for work.  Thus, in some cases the cost of qualifying for the program is near equal to, if not in excess of, the benefit to be received.  And then there is the question of the kind of work that is available to people with high school diplomas and nothing more.  Placing such a person in a dishwashing job does not represent a step toward self-sufficiency, much less can it be claimed to constitute an advance toward a prosperous life.  My guess is that to a state governor like Rick Perry in Texas, that would be alright, but in reality, it is nothing but lip service to the goal of lifting people out of poverty and respecting them, even the poorest of them, for their potential to be self-sufficient if they can just get the help they need to find the right path.

I confess that I am somewhat suspicious of any plan that includes a concept like "workfare," which I used to favor as a younger man, but which I now see as an impracticable method of raising the standard of living of the participants in such programs.  The jobs that are available to those who start out their lives disadvantaged educationally, socially or otherwise don't facilitate the kind of changes that the programs themselves profess to pursue.  The idea that you can become an entrepreneurial star without a high school diploma is a pipe-dream, even though someone can surely point to one somewhere.  And that, like the emphasis on training young people in community colleges with skills that business, but mostly industry needs flouts the reality that as a nation, we have moved away from the cultural norm that works the best.  There was a time when people went to work for companies that trained them.  Those companies, having invested in the preparation of their workers for careers in their employ, rewarded them for their loyalty year after year, which allowed them to pay taxes, buy houses and cars, and prime our economic pump constantly.  Today, despite the fact that American enterprise has something on the order of $2.5 trillion in idle cash sitting around--which, by the way, would be trickling down on us all if supply side economics actually were a valid idea--business and industry pule about the lack of qualified workers by want government to train them...an nobody seems to want to point out that if we are going to give welfare to anyone, it shouldn't be a business community with hundreds of billions in the bank.  In fact, if the Republicans were not hypocrites about who the drivers of capitalism are, they would have already pointed out that American business has no business coming to government for a hand out when it comes to training the workers they want.

A couple of years ago, I was speaking to a mid-level manager at a software company and he bemoaned the fact that there was no lack of applicants for jobs in his department, but there was a dearth of applicants with experience.  It never occurred to him that such applicants could get their experience with his company, nor was he rueful about his search for experienced workers abroad when there were unemployed people, some of them even possessed of Ph.D's he said, with resumes on his desk right then.  For a program about lifting people out of work to succeed, that kind of self-sustaining spiral of dissatisfaction with the American workforce has to be addressed.  And if we want to get people started working without worrying about their educational qualifications, we have to do more to support their efforts.  At any rate, Ryan's proposal is too little of the wrong things, and in the end, it won't lead to any reconciliation of the principles of the two camps in our nations' politics.  Poor Mr. Ryan is doomed to be an also-ran again if this is the best he can do.

Your friend,

Mike