The official government measures of unemployment and poverty disguise the fact that millions of Americans can't make a decent living. A Clinton appointee who resigned in protest over the new welfare law explains why it is so bad and suggests how its worst effects could be mitigated. From Boston to San Franscisco the community-based housing movement is transforming bad neighborhoods.
Most people think of inner-city poverty as a black phenomenon.
An inside look at how personal enmity, political calculation, and policy misjudgments prevented any effective prosecution of the War on Poverty by either Lyndon Johnson or Richard Nixon. Black urban ghettos are poorer and more isolated today than they have ever been. The question remaining is how to reverse the effects of what has become a self-sustaining culture. We simply cannot believe that the universe is so constituted. We much prefer, if a choice has to be made, to have a good opinion of mankind and a poor opinion of our socioeconomic system.