America’s Social Policies and School Funding Levels Fail Our Poorest Children
President Donald Trump has been at Davos this week exalting the United States’ soaring economy. While Trump brags about more people working, however, he neglects to mention the ongoing collapse of manufacturing and its replacement—gig and temporary employment—along with the paltry wages of many workers. Last week Paul Krugman more accurately described how many families are faring in greater Cleveland, Ohio, where I live. Krugman writes: “The other day a correspondent asked me a good question: What important issue aren’t we talking about? My answer, after some reflection, is the state of America’s children.”
The problem starts with today’s jobs and today’s low minimum wage, but Krugman explores a range of other ways the fraying social safety fails to support the poorest children: “What’s especially striking is the contrast between the way we treat our children and the way we treat our senior citizens. Social Security isn’t all that generous… but it doesn’t compare too badly with other countries’ retirement systems. Medicare actually spends lavishly compared with single-payer systems elsewhere. So America’s refusal to help children isn’t part of a broad opposition to government programs; we single out children for especially harsh treatment… The answer, I’d suggest, goes beyond the fact that children can’t vote; while seniors can and do. There has also been a poisonous interaction between racial antagonism and bad social analysis.” Krugman describes all the myths about social programs causing “a culture of dependency” among the poor, and he continues: “At this point, however, we know that cultural explanations of social collapse were all wrong. The sociologist William Julius Wilson argued long ago that social dysfunction in big cities was caused, not by culture, but by the disappearance of good jobs. And he has been vindicated by what happened to much of the American heartland, which suffered a… disappearance of good jobs and a similar surge in social dysfunction… Multiple studies have found that safety net programs for children have big long-term consequences. Children who receive adequate nutrition and health care grow up to become healthier, more productive adults.”
Here are just some of the issues that have emerged in recent articles in my clipping file about the plight of America’s children.
At the top of the list is the persistence of family homelessness in America’s cities. At the end of October, New York City’s Advocates for Children reported that for the fourth year in a row: CONTINUE READING: America’s Social Policies and School Funding Levels Fail Our Poorest Children | janresseger