I have to cut to the chase because I have a lot of non-computer-related work to get done (from 1 pm to 3 pm) today.
But before it fades to a hazy memory, I thought I should share with you good people a column I read last night in the February 28th Chronicle Review, an insert of The Chronicle of Higher Education: Four Myths About Poverty (p. B11-B14) by David B. Grusky, Director of the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality.
I urge you to read the full article linked above, as he succinctly debunks all four myths, a feat that could come in handy for those of us who attempt to advocate for economic or political reform of our safety net and/or other related policies.
For this diary, I will list the four myths and then quote a brief passage from his debunking of Myth #4.
Myth 1 - Poverty is Immutable
Myth 2 - Poverty is the Natural Outcome of a Competitive Economy
Myth 3 - Full-employment Policy is Too Costly to Consider
Myth 4 - Poverty is Complicated
In his discussion of Myth #4, that poverty is too complicated an issue, he uses the metaphor of addressing toxic river pollution by either a downstream approach or an upstream approach:
How to address this health disaster? The downstream approach entails taking on the problem by hiring (a) epidemiologists to establish a statistical relationship between exposure and health, (b) clinicians to train the affected families in practices to minimize exposure and identify early symptoms, (c) special-education teachers to provide compensatory training to those with cognitive dysfunction, (d) physicians to diagnose and treat those who have been exposed and taken ill, (e) social workers to dispense disability payments and other benefits, and (f) police officers and prison guards to deal with the fraying social fabric.
The downstream approach is indeed complicated and costly. The alternative, of course, is the upstream solution. If we’d rather not hire workers to repair all the harm and remediate all the effects, we always have the far cheaper option of reducing or eliminating the pollution itself.
A contrived example? Hardly. The vast antipoverty apparatus that we’ve built up is not unlike the downstream approach to remediating pollution. We have social scientists teasing out the multifarious effects of poverty; clinicians, social workers, and child-care workers providing compensatory care to poor children; special-education teachers addressing learning disabilities caused by poverty; social workers dispensing payments and benefits to the poor; and police and prison guards regulating and warehousing the poor.
He makes the excellent point that most of the time, we've bought into the myths so thoroughly that we can be blind to other, simpler solutions. If we want to have a reinvigorated movement to address poverty, I think we could well use the ideas of this author. But of course Ideas are only step one. The next step is Action.
But on a side note, is your bedside table stacked too high with things to read? It's just a fluke that I managed to read this yesterday (before it became terribly dated) because I happened to have it with me when I was stuck waiting for a friend. I was irritated that I was waiting on him, and irritated that I had forgotten to bring the book about Thomas Paine that I've been reading. I never go anywhere without having something to read. And yesterday, I thought, Oh well, I'll just have to read this for now because I can't sit here and not read anything. If I'd had my book with me, there's no telling how long this insert from The Chronicle would have languished on the bottom shelf of my bedside table not being read, like several of its siblings from weeks and months past - in all likelihood getting thrown into the recycling six months hence because I never did find time to read it. And that's not even taking into account all the worthwhile things to read online. I could read 80 hours a week and not get everything read. What an amazing job that would be.