(00:00:00) I do want to spend the next several minutes thinking with you about the issues of poverty in America poor families in particular. Nothing a good a place as any to start might be with that one major program that that we have for addressing poverty that may Lodge of relief job training and long-term care taking that is the American welfare system. It's by now a national consensus that the prison system is all but fatally flawed. We hardly anybody thinks otherwise now. But are you limiting that welfare is improperly disastrously structured is by no means to suggest that that we have arrived at a consensus of what to do to set it (00:00:53) right (00:00:55) indeed the very question of welfare reform. What do we do about welfare reform finds US basically into warring camps. One Camp argues that the government is not doing enough. That government neglect has eroded families. Increased dependency and spawned the conditions. We now described as the quote feminization of poverty. What is needed this Camp argues is to raise the living standards of female-headed households, whether by increasing their welfare grants or by enacting children's allowances by some way get money into their hands because the poverty It's devastating to their families. The other counter is that government is already tried to do too much. That the increase in mother only families is a direct result of the 1960s expansion of social programs. At least one influential Observer Charles Murray whom you know, and love has contended that the best thing you could do for poor people is to get rid of welfare all together. The argument between us is not merely a liberal conservative content on them and it's not Marion nearly planned ambiguity. It involves real dilemmas. Take this on the one hand. Nothing is clearer than that. Most of the problems that beset female-headed households are a result of their abysmally low income. There can be no doubt that we could if we chose to raise the income levels of these families and thereby alleviate many of the problems that you'll be talking about this week. But it's also clear that increasing the welfare subsidies to those female-headed households will not only increase their dependency on government. But also increase the number of such families by making single parenting more attractive. You set out to cure the thing with one way you want up sucking more people into the need for the Cure. It leads us to the fundamental question that that Urban garfinkel at the University of Wisconsin discussed in a recent paper of his and it is this question should government policy give priority to reducing the economic insecurity of mothers only families. (00:03:44) Or (00:03:45) to reducing their prevalence and dependents. Both options and tail cost to society increasing the incomes of such families would certainly reduce short-term suffering but might create suffering for more people in the long term. Reducing incomes might reduce prevalence and dependence but at the expense of the people who currently live in those families. resolving the Dilemma involves making hard choices on the basis of incomplete knowledge The choices also are inherently difficult because they involve conflicts among values that are fundamental to Americans. Compassion and self-reliance and self-interest, these are all important values to us and they are on this question in direct conflict with each other. The Dilemma exists not just because of competition among groups with conflicting values, but because of conflicts within individuals over which value to maximize and that's precisely the nature of a problem as I see it. Most of us who thought seriously about welfare believe both things. That welfare stinginess exacerbates short-term suffering and that welfare generosity increases suffering in the long term. The argument is not only with our political adversaries, but within ourselves. We are simultaneously niggardly and generous. and for the selfsame reasons I'm reminded of Scott Fitzgerald's dictum in his book The Crack up that the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to (00:05:53) function. (00:05:56) I think most of us who think carefully and deeply and with considered feeling about most of the social problems that confront us really do find ourselves thinking quite contradictory things holding quite contradictory beliefs. We learn to cope by pushing one or the other of those beliefs forward depending on our circumstances and environment. I don't propose that the proposed do to resolve this dilemma of raised for you this afternoon I could but Marion said that looks too much like a product and she doesn't want you to leave here with anything. So I'm going to leave the questions hanging in the air. I will go if you don't mind Marian suggest. Suggest a way of thinking about the (00:06:50) problem. it begins (00:06:54) with perhaps the most fundamental the most basic of psychological Concepts. You get more of what you reward less of what you punished. Everybody knows that. And we practice it with. Unfailing faithfulness in virtually everything we do. We want academic exertion in the schools. We find ways to honor academic achievement. We want safer streets and highways we look for ways to punish dangerous drivers. We know you get more of what you reward and less of what you punished and we act on that valuable information except when it comes to dealing with the (00:07:44) poor. (00:07:50) I suggested the first step in doing something useful about the problems of poverty. Is to get rid of the topsy-turvy policies that have stood the normal reward and Punishment system on its head. Who in his right mind for instance with with with devise a system that distributes a scarce and costly commodity on the sole basis of failure? And yet that's precisely how we distribute public housing. You have to be an economic value to get in. And you have to keep on being a failure to continue to (00:08:29) qualify for it. (00:08:34) And we wonder why public housing doesn't serve to to bring families up to speed somehow. In the real world you get your larger apartment. By working harder and reducing your expenditures for instance by deciding to postpone having any more children for a while so you can save some money. That's how you get a bigger apartment in the real world. In the topsy-turvy land of welfare policy you get your bigger apartment by having more children. improvidence pays and Prudence goes (00:09:10) unrewarded (00:09:13) in the real world supplementing and scribbling gets you a little bit ahead of the game. And topsy-turvy land supplementing and scripts crimping reduces your welfare check. In the real world marrying the father of your baby usually makes solid economic (00:09:34) sense. (00:09:38) To prospective renters clearly being better than one in topsy-turvy land marriages at best and economic wash. And may even be an economic negative. It can make more economic sense for young mother to marry not the guy who's the father of her children, but Mary the welfare department it works out better. We do these things and to our continuing astonishment. They work out just as any idiot would assume they would work out. We keep rewarding the things that dismay us. and punishing the things that we say we want more of and we profess to be surprised at the negative outcomes. That's the first step the second step in thinking about thinking effectively about some of these problems that surround the question of poverty. Is to question our automatic assumption that the problem or the problems? race specific Advocates on behalf of the Blackpool a quick to see racism as a major contributor to Black poverty. It may be but isn't it a question worth examining at least a little bit? Well, it has been examined by of all people that Infamous Charles Murray. a year ago Smart 66 in the National Review. He had an article that got nowhere near there is the attention. In fact, I don't think I saw it mentioned any place sells the attention that has got his losing Ground God. but his findings are worth some serious consideration this points include these That it is a mistake to discuss the problem of family breakdown in terms of black families black values black leadership and black solutions that it is misleading to seek explanations in terms of some national plunge into immorality. The poverty is more result than cause of the phenomenon phenomena. We associate with the underclass. For Murray, the essential element is class. That's why he calls his piece white welfare families white trash. the reason we've been drawn to the racional racial analysis he says Is that nobody? Including the Census Bureau looks at the data in terms of class. Well almost nobody. Marie found out that the state of Ohio does keep records by socioeconomics almost alone among the states and doing that on a consistent basis. So Murray turned to Ohio for his analysis. Here's what he found. Look at the contrast between affluent Shaker Heights with a median family income is $30,000 a year. And we're half the white adults are college educated. And on the other hand economically depressed Portsmouth down on the Ohio River where whites have a median income of 14700 a year. And a 1 in 10 college attendance rate. The illegitimate see rate in Shaker Heights is one percent of all live births. In Portsmouth, it's 25% Are you think about 25% when Pat Moynihan 20 years back wrote that that that report on the deterioration of the black family? It got him in so much trouble when he had us all yelling at each other. The illegitimate see rate among black families that year was 20% roughly in Portsmouth among white families. It's 25% today. The numbers he found in Ohio, which Murray says a typical of communities across the state tend to shoot down to Major explanations of what has caused. The illegitimately problem we spend so much time talking about. first the special race impacted circumstances of blacks And what Marie calls the Farrah Fawcett hypothesis? The race specific part of it seems to be shot down by what's happened in Portsmouth among white families. As for the other thing Marie has the same movie stars, like like Farrah Fawcett and Jessica Lanes have have children without husbands and no one Minds. It is socially acceptable in a way that it wasn't 30 years ago Ergo more illegitimate births, right? Wrong. Look at Shaker Heights It doesn't follow that middle-class solid families have more illegitimate birth. No matter if they may talk more freely and more and more liberated fashion about what a Farrah Fawcett Farrah Fawcett is doing No, very dusty this. He's talking about family structure. Not not morality. Perhaps affluent families in Ohio have as much promiscuity and divorce as anyone. I did not investigate that question. He says but they do not have much problem with single parent families. And they generally have a negligible problem with a legitimacy. Yes, there is a Whitey legitimacy problem in Ohio. No, it does not suffuse the population. It strikes quite (00:16:19) selectively. (00:16:24) Marie found two factors taken by themselves the percentage of the population in poverty and the percentage of the adult population with four more years of college explain about 54 percent of the variance in the illegitimate see rates in Ohio towns are five thousand population and up and in the bigger towns, 25,000 up and explains 67% of a variance. He says he's known social scientist to buy each other around the drinks for any hypothesis that it's that that accounted for half that variance. Moreover he found that the same factors explain both white and black illegitimately although blacks begin with a higher Baseline. since Marie the American poor have always been divided into two groups the people who cope And the people who don't or can't. Some poor people work hard support their families educate their children and somehow get along even when times are bad. The children generally do better financially than their parents. Other poor people are chronically unemployed unable to care for their children or oversee their development and perhaps perpetually in need of someone to rescue them from disaster. He adds that possible the only observers who have ever doubted. The reality of this distinction have been modern social scientists. I don't mean to suggest that Marie with whom I have argued and print on a number of his disease has supplied the whole answer. In fact, he doesn't even lay claim to having answered the question at all. Only to having helped us to get the question, right? My point is that that Maurice that he should help us focus in our search for Solutions. I want to propose one more step and thinking about the questions you'll be addressing this week. Let's make sure. That we study the right (00:18:44) thing. (00:18:47) If you wanted to learn how to succeed in business. Would You Begin by going to the federal bankruptcy courts the study that case histories No, you study successful businesses. If you wanted your child to learn to play the piano would you spend your time observing musically incompetent children? Trying to discern just what it is. They're doing wrong. In order that your child might learn to play the know you'd go to a successful pianist and say tell me how you do it. But let us decide to learn how to overcome poverty and what do we do we go straight to the poorest families. We can find in the poorest neighborhoods. We can locate. And try to learn what modes of thinking what inappropriate behaviors what personal and systemic shortcomings have produced their plight. Well, it's my simple-minded notion that all you can learn by studying bankruptcy cases is how to go broke. The only thing you can learn from watching musically untrained children banging away at a piano keyboard is how to make ungodly noise. The only thing you can learn by studying failure is how to fail. Why do we keep doing it? A colleague of mine Leon - undertook a year-long study of an underclass Washington neighborhood chosen precisely because of its unusually high rates of welfare dependency and Adolescent parenting. It's a heck of a study. I mean the whole town and much of the country was buzzing about that study. I was in a participant of several seminars and forums talking about it talk with Leon at length about the finest. They were fascinating. He went down to this neighborhood. At first to spend a couple of months. He wanted to start it take that long to really get into it and find out what was clicking. It took an apartment there and moved right into the neighborhood and didn't let on that. He was a reporter for the Washington Post. He just was just a guy in the neighborhood he wound up staying there a full year. Interviewing and re-interviewing a small group of teenage mothers. His reports on these findings produced a prize-winning series. One which I confess I read with with consuming interest. And yet when I talk to Leon about about his Soldier and and that Anacostia neighborhood he told me about some other families have come across but didn't have time to really do anything with That is some families in this hopeless and depressing (00:21:49) neighborhood. We're doing quite all right, (00:21:53) they didn't have much money else. They would have moved away, but they were raising decent ambitious. Children are doing well in school. And these children weren't having babies or dropping out or going to jail. So why does it Leon why doesn't someone undertake a major study of these families and find out why they are succeeding against the odds. I really do believe that we that such a study would give us more useful information as to what we might do about the culture of poverty than a dozen studies on those who succumb to poverty. I don't mean to blame my colleague. He was committed to one kind of study. That's what the post that agreed to and that's what he had set out to do and it probably wouldn't have made much sense for him to try to switch in midstream. My point is that the second sort of study desperately needs to be made and we seldom make it. We do occasionally look in the other direction which is why some of you may have heard the name Kimmy gray if you heard Cicero will from I'm sure you heard the name coming gra understand. She has even been here and it's that's good. That's extraordinarily good for those of you who don't know Kimmy gray or don't recall the name. She is the resident manager of a huge public housing complex in Washington called, Kenilworth Parkside. Before she took over that complex. Eighty-five percent of the households their relied on some form of fans for a payment to some extent to survive 85 percent thirty percent were totally dependent on welfare for income. And now welfare dependency and teenage pregnancy have been reduced by half. Crime is down by two-thirds rent collections are up by some 130 percent. To the point of the project which used to be a drain on the city now generates enough income to pay all of its $440,000 operating expense and accrual surplus of $150,000 at the city's been trying to get its hands on. There's more the year before Kimmy gray started her College here. We come program and average of two young people to young people a year from those 464 households in Kenilworth Parkside. We're going to college (00:24:41) To a year (00:24:42) in the seven years since she started the program 580 kids have gone on to (00:24:47) post-secondary Ed. (00:24:51) How does committee grade do it? Well, Mike her counterpart Bertha guilty in St.Louis. Kimmy draws on the psychological truism I referred to earlier you get more of what you reward and less of what you punished. Instead of treating the residents identically based solely on their need. She found ways of distinguishing among them. And to reward those whose Behavior she wanted to see duplicated. Residents who took exemplary care of their units were given First Choice when units in a more desirable section of the complex opened up. Residents whose children broke windows or littered the common areas found themselves in the bottom of the list for repairs and new appliances. Probably illegal, but she did it and it worked when the Housing Authority gave her a load of new refrigerators for instance. (00:25:50) What did he do? (00:25:52) No, she didn't give the refrigerator. So those whose whose refrigerators were broken. She gave the new refrigerators to those exemplary families who had been following the rules and behaving themselves and set an example. She gave him the new refrigerators. It took their old refrigerators and gave them to the nonconformist whose refrigerators were broken. I won't argue with her success. She found jobs for people who wanted them and even helped set up some commercial operations right there in the complex beauty parlor a screen door repair shop some painting and fixing things that that put a heck of a lot of people to work, which is one of the reasons why dependency rates went down so much. Her prescription was the same one. You would follow if you were dealing with anybody but the poor. Play the game right and you get rewarded screw up and you get punished it (00:26:56) works. But what of what (00:27:01) of Charles Murray's notion that? That class plays an important part in determining Behavior. I mean if he's right, is it fair to reward or punish people for actions that are essentially beyond their control? well, it does if It's fair. If you also by Maurice view, that class is not immutable. There are he concedes some people who seem congenitally unable to cope and others who seem congenitally incapable of not coping. But most of us could go either way. Depending on how we are raised and the environment around us and that's the point. It is especially true. in use that that young people Could go either way depending on the influences around us during that time. When our values are most plastic and the time Horizon of our plans is likely to be measured in days not in years or a lifetime. A middle-class youth who tips the wrong way become somewhat less successful than he otherwise would have been a poor youth who tips the wrong way can easily end up in the underclass. Somehow Marie concludes. We have manufactured large numbers of people who behave in the same ways as people are grandparents used to call trash. I guess the question is how do we stop manufacturing? Such social and economic failures? That really is the question that this conference is about and is that told you at the outset? I I won't answer it because Marianne asked me not to but the ways I have suggested for sharpening. Our Focus may also begin to point the way to some solutions. The first is that we must stop disconnecting poor people from The Real (00:29:12) World. (00:29:15) It is simply foolish to expect people to behave and socially acceptable ways when we persist in rewarding their inappropriate behavior. I'm not among those who believe that lots of poor people have babies in order to get a bigger welfare check. I don't believe that checks. Not that big. The real problem is not that we induce people into having babies. The real problem is that we obviate the necessity for careful planning. I don't think they plan to have babies for the check. We take away any requirement that they plan anything. It'll have to think about it very much. That's disconnection from The Real World and I don't suggest that we need to punish poor people for their in Providence. I do though think it makes sense to reward the behavior. We reckon as appropriate. and to allow inappropriate behavior to punish itself as it most assuredly will The second point is that we should stop wasting our time studying poverty and invest some time and money in studying unlikely success. We might find ourselves developing a cottage industry by hiring successful families to teach their unsuccessful neighbors the tricks of the parenting trade. In every neighborhood virtually every neighborhood. I know there are some people and the local neighbors know who they are who just do it. Well who do it, right? And I think they could be enlisted in helping other helping their neighbors learn to do it, (00:31:07) right? (00:31:12) One of the things we need to learn to do. Is to (00:31:16) reconnect (00:31:18) boys. I'm thinking now black Reuben teenage (00:31:24) boys, too. The world (00:31:29) because their disconnection is creating an exacerbating so many of the problems we've been talking about. one of the reasons (00:31:39) for that (00:31:42) dismaying growth in the number of female-headed households. Is the unavailability of young men for these women to marry? If they're not dead. They are unmarriageable in that they (00:32:02) are. incarcerated for unemployed He's not working. (00:32:11) He's not only not worth (00:32:12) marrying, but (00:32:14) you are better off not marrying him because he stands between you and their income from the welfare department. We need to find ways to reconnect these youngsters and we don't we can't do it simply by yelling racism at employers who won't hire them. some of us who are doing the yelling are afraid of these youngsters ourselves and we have to acknowledge that Black teenage boys in our big cities can be a very administering Prospect. What we need to do though is to find ways to connect those who aren't yet menacing who are still salvageable who who can be sold a set of values if we take the time to do it. And be and and who can be rescued and then lean on employers to take a chance on them. The kid is already making nine hundred dollars a week selling crack or some other poison cannot in my opinion be saved. He's (00:33:22) gone. the (00:33:29) Third and final thing is that we should (00:33:35) stop (00:33:36) blaming racism for everything that goes wrong in our communities. Racism surely exist and surely it must be exposed and opposed. But we must take care that it not become an excuse for non exertion. What Murray found among the white underclass in Ohio is no less true for the black underclass. That's been the focus of so much of our attention. I quote from Murray it is no use he says it is no use saying there are no jobs because often jobs can be found. It's no use saying with the jobs have gone to the suburbs where many of the White underclass live. There are no suburbs. It's no use saying the jobs are too complex often, they consist of simple and not very strenuous labor. It's no use saying that employers prefer white applicants. This underclass is white. It's no use saying that people are trapped in a destructive social milieu. Often the underclass will be a minority scared of around town living on block where most of the neighbors are coping. The thing we have to do and I mean this most especially for black youngsters is to help them to understand the degree of influence. They can exert over their own future. We have spent too much time drilling black Julian to our black youngsters heads. The Bleak statistics that they confront actually we didn't we didn't set out to do it to our children we set out to do it to you we set out to do it to white people to make you feel guilty. So you would lean on your legislators and enact some laws that we thought were worth in acting and it worked it got us a Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act in a number of things but we are beyond the point now where legislation helps Very much because most of the problem is not in the law, but in some other areas including Behavior. And the time we spent convincing you that it was the fault of racism and these these these dreary statistics. We also have brainwashed our children into thinking that maybe there wasn't anything they could do about it. And I think we have to learn to teach our children that there's a difference between statistics and individuals. It may be a while before the society in general can bring itself to do what is necessary. To reduce the joblessness of black teenagers to manageable levels and it's an appalling rate. It's no question of that. But in the meantime, there's a great deal that we can do to help individual youngsters see to it that they are in the 50% that's working and not the 50% that's unemployed. We hop too much on the statistics of teenage pregnancy and too many of our children hearing us have concluded that teenage pregnancy is all but inevitable. We must teach them the simple truth that nobody ever got impregnated by a statistic. We have to teach them that pregnancy is not something that just happens. It doesn't just happen to young women who take charge of their own lives who refused to fall into the Trap of believing that they have no future and so might as well have a baby. We must learn to teach our children what we know in our own lives to be a fact. That they can make something of themselves if they only decide to do it. That they really can make it if they try. We must teach our young (00:37:39) people (00:37:42) that success is composed of a little luck a little natural ability. And a lot of making good decisions. They may not be able to control their luck or their gifts, but they can sure as hell all control the decisions. They make starting right now. (00:38:03) before I park (00:38:05) a social and business organizations as government agencies foundations grantmakers and does individuals. We have to make it clear to those over whom we have some measure of influence that while the initial (00:38:23) decision (00:38:25) to lick. This thing called poverty must be theirs. We will be there when they need us. We will be there not because we feel sorry for them wasted too much time and effort and pity already. But because we understand. That their own future. Is inextricably linked to ours. Thank you very much. Do I see do I see you are sleep black teenage boys as being more unconnected than than white teenage boys are Hispanic teenage boys or Native American teenage boys. I don't know. It wouldn't surprise me to discover that they are more unconnected for a lot of reasons. One of which is their tendency to be concentrated in big cities and concentrations of problems tend to change even the quality of the phenomenon. so that wouldn't surprise me at all to see that the problem is greater, but you get you get people who Succumb to what has been called a Poverty of culture and I think it happens more with boys than with anybody else. And I think it's fairly easy to understand some of the reasons why. The young boy who is born to a 15 year old mother who grows up in a home with his mother and her mother? and no man around who then leaves the house that is first official leave-taking and goes to the school where a woman is principal and where a woman is almost assuredly his teacher the first three or four five years. Maybe loved may be valued may he may have every effort made by these women to get them off to a good start. The one thing these women cannot do for him is to teach him how to be a man children growing up boys growing up need to learn how to be men just as girls growing up need to learn how to be women girls can learn it from their mothers the boys having no responsible Leo figures to learn it from learn it from the next available teacher which is the street and is a disastrous lesson because the lessons of manhood become associated with Macho Behavior. With getting away with defying Authority getting over maybe even going to jail gets to be sort of a badge a rite of passage. These are disastrous things. It locks the black boys in the big cities into a social class that their sisters are able to escape quite frequently. Yes, it is absolutely important to prove to work tirelessly to level the playing field and and certainly certainly to to increase the amount of opportunity to democratize opportunity so to speak. I don't want to be missed. Let's read on that score. What I insist on though is that to blame every failure and every shortcoming on the unevenness of the playing field. It's not merely misleading. But leads to a withdrawal from playing the game it is vital that we played the game. I mean I try to find ways to say it. So people understand what I'm talking about. And what I see sometimes it's this that if the playing field were exactly level. Which is to say that if racism did not exist at all in America just went away right now. Black Americans would on average find themselves in precisely the same position that poor white people. No occupied. That is not much to ask for that's not much to do to demand see what we what what gets us confused. I think is that when we insist on leveling the playing field and it's an important thing to do but we get we find ourselves talking about it in such a way that we think when we get the fairness introduced into the system that the fight is over. The prize is 1 no, sir. You just got to the starting line. That's all and it's so so difficult to get people to keep that in mind and what I also say when occasion is that Being the case. That to introduce their daughters into the system will simply get us to The Starting Line Get Us in position to compete. What is the thing we will do next after the field is level that the racism has been conquered. What are those things that we would do next? And whatever they are, why don't we start doing them (00:44:09) now? Yes, (00:44:14) what kind of intervention do I propose for young black Inner City used as an alternative to the street? (00:44:22) In a word me. (00:44:25) and people similarly situated successful achieving black men in our cities must find ways. To to connect up with at least some of these boys. and show them That what they see isn't all there is no we we think I think unclearly sometimes about these youngsters. We what I we think that if we can yell at them loud enough shake them up enough select them with deal now, they will straighten up and do right to yell at these boys and expect a good behavior. Appropriate behavior that we would consider appropriate is like yelling at me and expecting me to use the Right Fork when I'm dining with a queen of England. I don't use the wrong Fork because I'm contrary or obstinate. I just don't know. I've never seen that done. We're talking about boys who have who may grow up and never have seen a functioning father in a family if they don't watch Cosby on Thursday (00:45:46) nights. and (00:45:50) one thing that helps is to get these boys in situations where they can see a family function. There's nobody to teach him how to be a father. How did I learn how to be a decent father reasonably decent because I had a reasonably decent dad that's and everything virtually everything. I know about bothering being a father I learned from him. That's it. I don't know any other way to teach it. That's the most natural way to teach that I should say when but when that primary teacher isn't there we have to substitute ourselves and I think there are ways to do (00:46:23) it (00:46:25) but we we have to get cracking on that one and we have to do one other thing. It's what it does amaze people when I talk about it because it seems so unfair Skipping is the word I use. It seems so reasonable to say that we should provide the most help for those whose need is greatest. So logical and it's so wrong. When help is scarce, we have to provide the most help for those for whom that help could make the permanent difference. And what I say as a conclusion is that when children and these circumstances we've been talking about. Present themselves for help and by presenting I mean simply that they bubble to the surface of whatever pool are in whether it's by perfect attendance by helping out at the local playground in some kind of volunteer work whether it's making a sand in school. Whatever they do to show that they have done some of the things we would like to see them do. We got to learn to grab them and give them virtually forced me time. Give them all the help we can get so that they They climb out and as soon as they are skimmed off, I promise you some others will bubble to the surface right behind them. It always happens. But if he's try to dig down to the bottom to save people you exhaust your resources and don't get anybody saved either. Yeah, the the question the question that if I may paraphrase it again (00:48:14) is (00:48:17) why do we insist on looking at at putting women to work as a solution to the problem of single parent households? Why don't we learn to Value the role of mother? And and let and and an honor people in effect, but also pay them I gather by implication for being good mothers. I think there are a couple of reasons for that. We there was a time when we did honor people who are being mothers would be in good Mothers. It's sort of it's sort of apple pie in America. And what happened is that the one-income family has become increasingly untenable mom went to work not because home making was not honored but because homemaking didn't produce any income. (00:49:19) No. (00:49:21) When you have got growing numbers large and growing numbers of middle class. wives going to work while having to make arrangements for the care of their children, you are not going to get anybody in this country to enact a law that allows our low-income mother to stay home. Do nothing except raise her children, which her middle class is for also wants to do. You you tended to have the argument that child rearing is an important function and therefore ought to be considered full time work you had that argument made on behalf of welfare families. During the days when it was the norm for middle-class women to stay home when middle-class women went to work that line of thinking went right out the window and it's going to stay there. Of course the other pragmatic part of it is that Families need the money. Family simply need the money. the question the question is is it is it legal to do what makes sense which is it's common sense to treat people differently based on their behavior and not simply based on their statistical based on themselves as a statistical abstraction. It's common sense to do it. But is it legal don't you run into all kinds of problems? You can run into all manner of problems. There's no question of it. Is it legal? I think it can be legal to do a good deal more than we're doing. I mean, it becomes legal we pass a law allowing it I have have a A baseline test that I find myself using more and more. It's this I will not propose a support any public (00:51:28) policy. (00:51:31) That I would not apply. two people in my family (00:51:38) and people I care about (00:51:42) I would not for instance. Give my children and allowance. Without requiring some contribution household contribution from them. And it's not because I would hope to get something for my (00:51:59) money. (00:52:02) It's not because I don't want my children to have fun. It's simply that I believe that to give my children an allowance based solely on the fact that they want and need it. Will do them great harm. If I think that kind of functioning would be home with my children. I can't possibly advocated for other people's children or for other other families. Again, and again I come back to the question. Is it something I would advocate in my house and not household or in my immediate family? What I make distinctions among my brothers-in-law. As to which one gets a loan from me the one who who may or may not pay the money back after a year or so or the one who struggles to pay me a little bit now and then and meanwhile comes by to cut the grass on Saturday a much question in my mind about who will get that scarce resource of mine. Now you can't be quite so arbitrary in government, but you can certainly established rules that allow people see I think the wrong thing is to think in terms of acquiring things. You can certainly establish rules that allow people to improve their eligibility for help and I think for instance of of Permitting families in public housing complexes, They don't have money. They can't buy things that you and I buy but they can earn brownie points. You get so many points for keeping the common area clean. You've got every Thursday is your day on the Long Hall on the second floor and if the whole goes dirty for 2/3 days in a row, you get gigged and if it's if it's cleaned up wonderfully. Well you get you get some some plus points. If you if you if you paint your place checking the paint out of the common Storehouse and don't have to call on, you know, General services to do it. You get some brownie points you get a chance to earn your way into a better situation. See, I think there's a there's another psychological point that I haven't mentioned and that is I think people human beings I'll forever striving for ways to set themselves apart from others in positive ways. It's what makes us happen. The way we deal with poor people takes away tends to take away their opportunity to set themselves apart and any positive way. We have to re-establish that that's part of what I mean by reconnecting them to the real world.