Tuesday, September 13

will and tnr

George Will and The New Republic agree. Count me in, kinda.

A few days ago, I read Noam Scheiber in this week's TNR taking issue with the fairly typical response to the, now, common wisdom--that poverty was the largest cause of the scale of death and destruction in Katrina's wake; that typical response being to throw money at the problem.

Sheiber urges what ought to be common sense to progressives: one easy solution, money, does not a problem fix (much like how one simple solution, force, does not hasten down terrorism). Poverty, its causes, and its results all fit into a contextual and sociological setting. Poverty, like anything else, doesn't pay us the convenience of existing in a vacuum. Thus, the simpleton result of fixing poverty with money does little good. As Sceiber writes, responding to various politicos complaining that the poorer residents simply lacked the funds to get out of town:
Implicit in these arguments is the idea that poor people are pretty much like everyone else, just with less money. From this, it follows that the remedy is primarily financial. Consider Lewis's proposed solution not just for New Orleans but for the problem of urban poverty in general: "[I]n rebuilding, we should see this as an opportunity to rebuild urban America. ... There must be a commitment of billions and billions of dollars."


The problem was not money alone. Describing a middle class family against a poorer family, Sceiber writes:
The matriarch of the middle-class family, a local court clerk, tapped a cousin to secure a low corporate rate at the Lafayette Hilton. She paid for it with her American Express card. The woman then worked connections in local government and churches to land a scarce rental property. She even won a dispensation from local authorities to sneak back into her abandoned house in a quarantined area so she could rescue some televisions and furniture.

Needless to say, the poorer family had no such advantages. The husband had never been out of New Orleans before; the wife had never flown on a plane. Neither appeared to have contacts capable of assimilating them into another community; in any case, the concept of doing so seemed altogether unimaginable to them. And, while the family had $2,000 in savings, they didn't have a bank account. Their money burned up along with their apartment in a fire that followed the flood.


Scheiber ends his discussion with pleas for life-skills training.

George Will, in today's Post, continutes the thought...call it a variation on a theme:
The senator is called a "new kind of Democrat," which often means one with new ways of ignoring evidence discordant with old liberal orthodoxies about using cash -- much of it spent through liberalism's "caring professions" -- to cope with cultural collapse. He might, however, care to note three not-at-all recondite rules for avoiding poverty: Graduate from high school, don't have a baby until you are married, don't marry while you are a teenager. Among people who obey those rules, poverty is minimal.


Progressives, or liberals, or whatever, might reflexively gag at Will's evocation of the family bit...but we oughtn't. One does not have to Qualishly dismiss all single mothers, fathers, or non-traditional families to embrace a general, Willian, taste for healthy and loving families. If we embrace every idea that might eliminate poverty, and the terrible effects thereof, we will necessarily navigate away from simply money and think hard about the living conditions, social structures and civic relationships associated to these families and individuals that are to often ignored in poltical discussion (until, anyway, a flood washes out the blinders).