Government has only a very few core functions, the new paradigm holds, and the first of them is making sure that citizens are safe. But if you come down hard on the little crimes of disorder, if you police with zero tolerance and make sure that public spaces are orderly, people will be less emboldened to commit the big crimes. The results have been spectacular. When people stopped being afraid to go out at night, moribund Broadway theaters boomed, tourists flocked in, hotels were full. Even before the 1996 national reform, cities were beginning to change their welfare policies.
Welfare reform begins by trying to keep people off the rolls.
That means tight eligibility checks and also having welfare authorities encourage applicants to find a job or to figure out any conceivable way to avoid dependency. If just Medicaid will keep someone off the rolls, or even an interest-free loan from the state, authorities arrange it. But if the applicant signs up, he or she gets workfare. That prods people to get serious about finding better paying private-sector work, since they have to work anyway. In New York, these initiatives have cut the welfare rolls an astonishing 35 percent in four years.