> What if, instead of volunteering to clean up roads, the city collected taxes, and paid a living wage with benefits to people cleaning up the streets.
Viewed through the lens of equity concerns, I worry that the result of your hypothetical is a bureaucracy of unionized, mostly white college educated managers overseeing the street cleaners.
My hope is that recent events make us think hard about the nature of need in America and how we address it. Over 90% of white people are above the poverty line. The median income of a white household is $70,000, versus $40,000 for a black household. 60% of all homeless people are black or Hispanic. We talk a lot about middle-class "stagnation." But median wealth for white people has more than doubled, after inflation, since 2000. It hasn't budged at all for black people.
More than ever, we are recognizing today that a huge part of systematically addressing poverty in America is about addressing race disparities. That’s critical: the black-white income gap (at the median, so forget about Jeff Bezos) is proportionally the same size today in 2020 as it was when George Wallace ran for President in a segregationist platform. Meanwhile, we have spent vast sums on the premise that the best way to remedy racial disparities is through government programs for education and creating “good jobs with benefits.” State and local spending per person has therefore doubled since 1977.
But it turns out that much of that spending merely perpetuates those gaps. For example, increased education spending (which has tripled in inflation-adjusted dollars per student since 1970) has overwhelmingly gone to white, college educated teachers and administrators. (Indeed, black people were actively excluded from many of these jobs by unions.) Cities with majority black and Hispanic populations owe hundreds of billions in retirement and health benefits to retired teachers, police, etc., who are overwhelmingly white.
Now, that’s not an argument for saying that we should, for example, renege on those obligations. But we certainly shouldn’t perpetuate the disparities. If we are appalled by say homelessness in American cities (and we should be), we should figure out how to efficiently channel money to homeless people or people likely to suffer homelessness. Not to some government bureaucracy which by its nature is likely to be staffed with people who have various indicators of privilege (white, college educated, from a middle class household—who do you think government agencies tend to hire?)
> we should figure out how to efficiently channel money to homeless people or people likely to suffer homelessness.
Governments entail some degree of bureaucracy, much the same way that corporations require some degree of management. It's a question of balancing that overhead with actual results.
Civil services need to better align with making a meaningful impact. More focus on the actual impact of civil services, and less on aggregate budget allocation.
Viewed through the lens of equity concerns, I worry that the result of your hypothetical is a bureaucracy of unionized, mostly white college educated managers overseeing the street cleaners.
My hope is that recent events make us think hard about the nature of need in America and how we address it. Over 90% of white people are above the poverty line. The median income of a white household is $70,000, versus $40,000 for a black household. 60% of all homeless people are black or Hispanic. We talk a lot about middle-class "stagnation." But median wealth for white people has more than doubled, after inflation, since 2000. It hasn't budged at all for black people.
More than ever, we are recognizing today that a huge part of systematically addressing poverty in America is about addressing race disparities. That’s critical: the black-white income gap (at the median, so forget about Jeff Bezos) is proportionally the same size today in 2020 as it was when George Wallace ran for President in a segregationist platform. Meanwhile, we have spent vast sums on the premise that the best way to remedy racial disparities is through government programs for education and creating “good jobs with benefits.” State and local spending per person has therefore doubled since 1977.
But it turns out that much of that spending merely perpetuates those gaps. For example, increased education spending (which has tripled in inflation-adjusted dollars per student since 1970) has overwhelmingly gone to white, college educated teachers and administrators. (Indeed, black people were actively excluded from many of these jobs by unions.) Cities with majority black and Hispanic populations owe hundreds of billions in retirement and health benefits to retired teachers, police, etc., who are overwhelmingly white.
Now, that’s not an argument for saying that we should, for example, renege on those obligations. But we certainly shouldn’t perpetuate the disparities. If we are appalled by say homelessness in American cities (and we should be), we should figure out how to efficiently channel money to homeless people or people likely to suffer homelessness. Not to some government bureaucracy which by its nature is likely to be staffed with people who have various indicators of privilege (white, college educated, from a middle class household—who do you think government agencies tend to hire?)