Latest Pursue

http://www.pursueaction.org/back-to-school-one-down-five-to-go/

Way Cool

The Sketchbook Project. http://www.arthousecoop.com/projects/sketchbookproject

Aesthetica

See my friend Julia Vogl’s art on the cover of Aesthetica Magazine.  (The one on the left).  Congrats Julia!

The Miseducation of All Our Kids

Thought-provoking article on sex ed: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/magazine/teaching-good-sex.html?pagewanted=1&sq=sex%20ed&st=cse&scp=1

Favorite quote: “Porn is the model for today’s middle-school and high-school students…and none of us [sex educators] is offering an alternative that’s even remotely appealing.”

Jack Abramoff tells us how he would reform Washington…

We should listen!

http://www.npr.org/programs/tell-me-more/ (November 18, 2011 show)

Strong Beautiful Barnard Women

A few weeks ago, I attended part of the Barnard Center for Research on Women’s 40th Anniversary Conference entitled Activism and the Academy.  The session I went to was “Building and Rebuilding Societies in Africa.”  Among the panelists was Rabab El Mahdi who spoke about the frustrations of being held up as the face of the Egyptian Revolution.  You can watch it here and be sure to check out other cool events at the BCRW.

 

Don’t Shoot

Sounds good.  Ryan will tell us if it really is.  http://www.npr.org/2011/11/01/141803766/interrupting-violence-with-the-message-dont-shoot

Hello 1800s. You look surprisingly familiar.

This is another installment in which you get a Columbia education for free.  Let me know what you think.

What is the fundamental question underlying the deadlock in politics these days?

Got it?  Hold it in your head.

Now, how about this: do you think this is the same question that was circulating in the 19th Century?

I do.

We’ve made a lot progress since the 1800s.  I find this heartening because a symptom of my general pessimism is the belief that things don’t get better and humanity is continually trapped in the same cycle, we just don’t live long enough to realize it.  And we doze off in 3rd period history.  However, we’ve made some gargantuan strides, people.

(I read that people who make lists of things they’re grateful for are happier.  Here goes.)

1. Penicillin!  I love you.

2. Zoning laws.  Apparently the Lower East Side used to look a lot like parts of Nairobi, Lagos, and Rio.

3. The FDA!  Not what Upton Sinclair was aiming for, but so happy they can’t put sawdust in our sausage and chalk and ammonia in our milk anymore.

4. Child labor laws.

5. Health insurance.

6. Unemployment insurance.

7. Workman’s comp.

8. Social security.

Foolish, those who want to take away our unions.  They’ll mainly be left with penicillin.

So, yes, we’ve come far.  We’re still having the same arguments though.  And printing the same headlines.

I think the fundamental question in our political debate today (and I may have gotten some hints from one Professor Robertson on this one) is: What causes poverty?

There are several different schools.

Some believe poverty is the fault of the poor who fall into two categories: 1) lazy and stupid or 2) sick, injured, excessively old or young, and disabled.  The later might be deserving of our help, but their families should probably take care of them.  The former, the majority of poor people, should be run out of town on a rail.

Another faction believes that people are poor because government is big.  Starve the beast.

A third group holds the opinion–popular in the 20th Century–that poverty is a result of lack of opportunity.  Create better schools and more jobs, employ affirmative action, and the legacy of the past 300 years as well as the inherent instability and inequity of a capitalist labor market will be washed away in a rising tide that lifts all boats.  Or something.

Last, and these are the social work folks for sure, some people think poverty is due to the powerful using their power to exploit others, maintaining their wealth through systemic oppression.

In the 19th Century, as in the 20th and 21st thus far, politicians spent a lot of time trying to figure out who were the worthy poor.  The idea was that if we weeded out the undeserving, we could cut our budget.  It didn’t work then and it’s not going to work this time around either.

For more, check out Michael Katz’s In the Shadow of the Poorhouse.  And of course, The Jungle.

Cost of Living

Continuing my quiz on poverty in the U.S…

2. Do you know what the current poverty rate is?  What about the child poverty rate?

3. Do you know how we measure poverty?

4. What is the least amount you think that a family of one adult and two children could reasonably be asked to live on in New York City?

Answers:

2. The current poverty rate is over 14% but under 15% of Americans.  The current poverty rate among American children is close to 22%.

3. There are many different ways to measure poverty.  Absolute poverty refers to living below the poverty level at an income that does not allow you to meet nutritional needs.  Relative poverty refers to those who live on less than half the median income for the U.S. population.  The median income is currently $49,000.  The U.N. and World Bank define the poverty line as $2 per day.

Currently, the poverty line in America is determined by the federal government using a standard developed in the 1950s.  This standard calculates the cost of a “market basket” of food sufficient to feed the number of individuals in a family for a year and multiplies it by three.  This is problematic because food no longer represents a third of household costs.  Today, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, food is 13.2% of the average family’s expenditures.  Housing is 31.7% and transportation is 18.5%.  Childcare also represents a major expense.

4. A family of one parent and two children living in New York City is considered above the poverty line (according to the federal standard) if their income is above $18,000 per year.  This represents the cost of the “market basket,” $6000 per year, multiplied by three.  The average rent for a two bedroom apartment in New York City is $15,816 per year or $1318 per month.  One adult working full time at minimum wage in New York City makes $15,080 per year, working 40 hours per week for 52 weeks.

Getting Schooled

Apologies to my stalwart readers for the radio silence.  Grad school is surprisingly time consuming, but I’m going to try to post more often from now on.  If I can’t do it, I’ll let you know, and we’ll put this thing on hiatus.  But for now I’d like to share some of what I’ve learned in the past month through a quiz.  Since the answers to the questions are rather lengthy, I’m going to stretch it out over several days.

It has been an eye-opening and somewhat troubling experience to hit the books and realize that I have held a lot of false assumptions about U.S. spending in the area of social welfare and that even as someone who purports to care, I am pretty fuzzy when it comes to a picture of poverty in the U.S.  On the other hand, it seems like a lot of people, including our legislators, are pretty fuzzy as well.

OK, Question 1. True or false: The U.S. is far behind other industrialized nations in the percentage of GDP we spend on social welfare.

1. FALSE.  Ish.  Like everything else, ranking the U.S. in terms of social welfare spending depends on your definition of social welfare spending.  Or the definition of what is is.  In their book Wealth and Welfare States: Is America a Laggard or a Leader? authors Garfinkel, Rainwater, and Smeeding provide a thorough and insightful, if somewhat dry, explanation of the categories of social welfare spending.  Many of us think of social welfare as money given directly to the poor.  In the U.S. today, this is TANF: Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.  However, this is a small percentage of social welfare spending.  We also have the Earned Income Tax Credit for low-income folks as well as programs that don’t involve cash transfers such as public housing, Medicaid, and food stamps.  Furthermore, social welfare spending isn’t necessarily just for the poor, it can also include social insurance programs such as workmen’s compensation, unemployment insurance, and the biggies Medicare and Social Security.  Garfinkel, Rainwater, and Smeeding (gotta love the names) also argue that public education should be counted in the bundle of programs that contribute to our social welfare.

The hinge that determines whether the U.S. spends about the same per capita as other wealthy, industrialized nations is whether or not we count government-subsidized, employer-provided benefits.  These would include pensions and health insurance.  If you do count these expenditures, we spend more than Australia Canada, Ireland and Spain on social welfare and about the same as Finland and Italy.  If you don’t count government-subsidized, employer-provided benefits we spend the second least, only Ireland spends less among 14 wealthy, industrialized, Western nations.

Surprisingly as well, if you include government-subsidized, employer-provided health insurance, the U.S. currently spends MORE ON HEALTH CARE THAN ANY OTHER NATION.  Do we have better health care?  I’ve certainly heard people argue that the best available medicine is American medicine.  But the question is to how many Americans is American medicine really available?  Even if you concede that we spend about the same as everyone else on social welfare, and more in the area of health care, we also have the greatest inequity.  Our social welfare system does little redistribution and we give more of our benefits to the people who need them the least.  Our poverty rate after the distribution of public benefits is more than three times that of Denmark and more than twice that of France or Germany.  In fact, one of our closest peers is Mexico.

More to come, but check out this handy budget chart.  Turns out conservatives weren’t lying about how unwieldy our Medicare and Social Security spending has become.  See if you have a better plan.  http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/13/weekinreview/deficits-graphic.html  (Thanks Howie).