From: yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken)
Newsgroups: sci.econ
Subject: Re: Wage Slavery (Was: BIG LIE about the market)
Date: 14 Apr 92 15:43:19 GMT
Organization: University of Massachusetts, Amherst

In article <9204131555.AA18277@xuucp.ch.apollo.hp.com> nelson_p@APOLLO.HP.COM writes:
>
>>>  These social wounds are self-inflicted!  It's hard enough being poor
>>
>>Keep telling yourself that. It must make you sleep better at night.
> 
>  Sorry, but I just don't see how the choice to do intravenous
>  drugs or for teenagers to have babies cannot be considered 
>  a self-inflicted wound.   In what way are people who choose
>  such things not making their lives *more* wretched?  Homicide

As a former teenager myself, I can safely assure you that at least some
teenagers are not capable of looking at the long-term effects of their
actions. Clearly, babies born to single teenage mothers are not going to grow 
up amid the social  conditioning which is needed to provide some breaks
on teenage behavior. Clearly, children who attend overcrowded,
underfunded schools where the rain pours into the classroom
(as in many inner city schools) are not going to have the same ability to 
find their opportunities in the adult world as children who attend 
nice suburban schools where one has a choice of foreign language
instruction plus working ceilings. Kozol's book on schoolchildren
starts in East St. Louis where children grow up on soil contaminated with
lead, amidst chemical plants spewing out toxins, where the garbage has not
been picked up for years, where the school science lab has no running water,
where the playing field is a marsh of raw sewage, and where schoolbooks are
the tattered retreads from better off districts. Is it really your
contention that if such children fuck up their latter lives, it is just a
matter of "poor choices"? 

>>False and false again. The crime and drug use rates in Irish Five Points and 
>>the Jewish Lower East Side, not to mention the East End of London 
>>have been famous at times.  Of course, Americans do seem to be more into
>>drugs and violence than many other people, but that's not particular to 
>>poor americans.
>
>  True and false.  The Senate Judiciary Committee, in a report last
>  March 13, 1991, found the US to be THE most violent society of
>  any society on Earth which keeps records (based on rates of murder,
>  rape, and robbery).  
>
>  But many of our problems *are* more true of the poor.  Again, I
>  cite the 15% rate of crack babies in at BCH.  Or the HUGE rate 
>  of AIDS among poor.   I mean, I suppose one could argue that 
>  the unwanted teenage pregnancy rate is just as high in Wellesley
>  (affluent community in Mass.) as Roxbury (poor coommunity 12 miles
>  east of Wellesley) but the rich Wellesley girls are just having
>  lots of abortions, but this would be highly speculative and 
>  you can't abort or easily hide a case of AIDS.   

The rich are better educated, they make better decisions because of their
better education. And, having a social/economic cushion enables one to make
mistakes which are fatal to others without paying such a high price. I knew
many yuppies in the early 1980's who developed addictions that would have
put a poor teenage kid without extraordinary self-control into an early
death. Having insurance or family or a job to pay for drug-rehab makes
a real difference.

>>>  something *cultural* going on and it is very unclear WHAT sort of 
>>>  government response might correct it.
>>
>>The same sort that has worked before. Housing, jobs, and education. Nothing
>>very mysterious. 
>
>  If it were that simple you would have to explain why American poor
>  seem to make more self-destructive choices in terms of violence,
>  drugs , and out-of-wedlock children than the poor in other 

First explain why America is the number one importer of drugs and has such
a high rate of violent crime --- in all segments of society. 

>  societies.   The US has tried major public-housing projects 
>  which were complete disasters.  Mission Hill, Pruitt Igoe,

Oh come on. Those housing projects were doomed to failure at the start. 
They were intended as cages not homes. Let's see a housing program for the
poor which matches the housing programs for the middle class -- e.g.
FHA and VA housing.


>  etc.  And the Boston Globe reported earlier this year that
>  the city of Boston spends ** $7000 ** a year per student
>  in their school system.   The town where I live spends about

Is its spending uniform? I know that NYC spends far more per-student
in Riverside than it does in the Lower East Side. Second, older cities
inherit an older school infrastructure which is more expensive to maintain
than newer suburban ones. Finally, it is
well known that the Boston School system is not a model when it comes
to actually delivering that money to the childrens education.

>  Jobs are good.  Jobs are important.  Jobs are scarce.  But 
>  how does it follow that because one is out of work one should 
>  feel compelled to shoot someone, stick a needle in one's 
>  arm, or have a baby?   You can't argue that it's an 
>  emotional escape from the wretchedness of poverty since
>  the poor in other places are just as wretched, if not more
>  so, but don't make these choices to the same extent.  

My sister-in-law, who delivers babies in Appalachia was just telling us
about the woman who took her 10th baby home to the trailer where she lives,
shocked at the suggestion of a tubal ligation -- "I just love babies". 
Is it your contention that there are deep cultural similarities between
the Appalachian poor and those who live in the South Bronx --- other than
poverty.

Let's note a fundamental difference between the current economy and the
ones which could be found in earlier Americas. That is, the semi-skilled and
skilled factory work which provided a bridge from poverty into the middle
class don't exist anymore. The job market for illiterate teenagers did not
used to be limited to mimimum wage, dead-end jobs. 



-- 


yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu