Updated 5/6/2015
World-famous poverty expert David Brooks:
Also, you can say Samuelson is an idiot in some respects, but it is not likely that he would regard the 2013 equivalent of $36,000 as "roughly twice" the 2013 equivalent of $23,000. Finally, as Samuelson would certainly agree, you can't say that antipoverty spending has "exploded" since 1980 by quoting numbers from 2013 unless you quote numbers from 1980 as well, which Brooks fails to do.
Moreover, if you do look at the long-term changes in antipoverty spending per person, you find that any "explosion" consists of money not given to poor people but to medical care providers, and to a lesser extent landlords and college bursars; it's almost all to be accounted for by inflation in health care, housing prices, and tuition (which the rise in Pell grants doesn't come close to covering):
(Food prices have also been rising quite a bit faster than core inflation, so that the rise in SNAP benefits doesn't buy as much either. SSI payments appear to have gone up substantially, but that's a very misleading number, since the payments don't go to poor people in general, but just to the 2-point-something percent of the population with disabilities that prevent them from working.)
Getting from over 20% at the end of the Eisenhower presidency to below 11% at the end of Johnson's, rising again under Reagan to 15%, sinking back to 11% under Clinton and rising back to 15% under Bush and after (with the failure under Obama, which I blame on Congress, to perform the usual Democratic magic). The reason we can't get poverty under 10% is that every time we get close we elect some damn fool Republican.
Brooks does use Samuelson as evidence of something, though, along with some random facts about Freddie Gray—his neighborhood had a significantly lower poverty rate in 2000 than it did in the 1980s, and yet it still doesn't have any grocery stores or restaurants, and Freddie himself had poor reading skills.
And, somehow, the attack by The Wire screenwriter David Simon on Giuliani-style policing in Baltimore (as practiced by Mayor Martin O'Malley, now presenting himself as a presidential candidate of the "left" but a vicious law-and-order freak back in the day), which Brooks manages, incredibly, to read as a statement about the poor community's loss of the "informal guardrails of life":
Bonus: Unspeakable greatness from Mark Liberman at Language Log, vintage 2008, on Brooks's mastery of social psychology. You really have to read this. Among our own crowd, Steve M gives a detailed report on Brooks's reading disability with reference to the Simon interview. Driftglass runs a list of lots more, in which people like Dean Baker (!!!) rub shoulders with your correspondent (I'd indeed be humbled if I were not so humble already—no, really, thanks, Drifters!). Jezebel introduced me to this, which could be the best thing ever written about DFB.
Redhand notes in the comments that according to our sage,
Lemieux catches Krugman joining in, under the Times rules of never openly criticizing a fellow denizen of their op-ed page, but still unmistakable.
Update:
A new study from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (via Nancy Le Tourneau) gives some better calculated numbers than we've had before on the effect of government programs on poverty in a single year, 2012, when CBPP found that the poverty rate of 13.8% would have been 39.1% without them; put another way, government lifted 48 million people out of poverty. The effect on deep poverty—incomes below half the poverty line—was especially striking:
Somehow I just don't think hectoring people on their need to practice future-oriented thinking and show more practical ambition would do that. These kinds of benefits do, however, give recipients a little cognitive and economic space in which they could think about the future, though. The conservative idea that the more deprived you are the more you'll work to get out of the situation doesn't strike me as realistic:
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| Marion Davies and William Haines in King Vidor's 1928 Show People. Via MoviesSilently. |
Since 1980 federal antipoverty spending has exploded. As Robert Samuelson of The Washington Post has pointed out, in 2013 the federal government spent nearly $14,000 per poor person. If you simply took that money and handed it to the poor, a family of four would have a household income roughly twice the poverty rate.At least if by 2013 you mean 2011, and some other details. Robert Samuelson, at the cited link:
To those who think that Washington mainly serves “fat cats,” Ron Haskins of the Brookings Institution says: Look at the numbers. In 2011, he estimates, federal spending dedicated to the poor averaged $13,000 for every person below the federal poverty line, now $23,000 for a family of four.It's possible that Brooks is quoting some actual numbers from some publication by Samuelson, but it isn't this one (from January 2014, when the 2013 numbers hadn't been published yet); I haven't been able to find the correct one, supposing it does exist.
Also, you can say Samuelson is an idiot in some respects, but it is not likely that he would regard the 2013 equivalent of $36,000 as "roughly twice" the 2013 equivalent of $23,000. Finally, as Samuelson would certainly agree, you can't say that antipoverty spending has "exploded" since 1980 by quoting numbers from 2013 unless you quote numbers from 1980 as well, which Brooks fails to do.
Moreover, if you do look at the long-term changes in antipoverty spending per person, you find that any "explosion" consists of money not given to poor people but to medical care providers, and to a lesser extent landlords and college bursars; it's almost all to be accounted for by inflation in health care, housing prices, and tuition (which the rise in Pell grants doesn't come close to covering):
(Food prices have also been rising quite a bit faster than core inflation, so that the rise in SNAP benefits doesn't buy as much either. SSI payments appear to have gone up substantially, but that's a very misleading number, since the payments don't go to poor people in general, but just to the 2-point-something percent of the population with disabilities that prevent them from working.)
Yet over the last 30 years the poverty rate has scarcely changed.Oh, and if you really are quoting that Samuelson column, you should note that when he says the poverty rate has remained the same, at 15%, he adds that he doesn't think it is calculated properly, and if you add all the non-cash transfer benefits into the mix, along with some other revisions, you can say the poverty rate has been lowered over the period in question to 5%. Which I would dispute, but then I don't use Samuelson as evidence of anything, except of how conservative precepts tend to lower the core IQ. I'd rather focus on how the poverty rate has fluctuated, in crude terms, if you like, of who was president:
Getting from over 20% at the end of the Eisenhower presidency to below 11% at the end of Johnson's, rising again under Reagan to 15%, sinking back to 11% under Clinton and rising back to 15% under Bush and after (with the failure under Obama, which I blame on Congress, to perform the usual Democratic magic). The reason we can't get poverty under 10% is that every time we get close we elect some damn fool Republican.
Brooks does use Samuelson as evidence of something, though, along with some random facts about Freddie Gray—his neighborhood had a significantly lower poverty rate in 2000 than it did in the 1980s, and yet it still doesn't have any grocery stores or restaurants, and Freddie himself had poor reading skills.
And, somehow, the attack by The Wire screenwriter David Simon on Giuliani-style policing in Baltimore (as practiced by Mayor Martin O'Malley, now presenting himself as a presidential candidate of the "left" but a vicious law-and-order freak back in the day), which Brooks manages, incredibly, to read as a statement about the poor community's loss of the "informal guardrails of life":
Individuals are left without the norms that middle-class people take for granted. It is phenomenally hard for young people in such circumstances to guide themselves.Really! And evidence of what, pray tell, is provided by these apparently unrelated and misreported bits of information? If you have to ask, you don't know your Brooksy. It's that poverty isn't the condition of not having enough money, but something more metaphysical, so that government can't take care of it by spending money, though it can by lecturing the victims, and an academic discipline he may not understand as well as he thinks he does:
the real barriers to mobility are matters of social psychology, the quality of relationships in a home and a neighborhood that either encourage or discourage responsibility, future-oriented thinking, and practical ambition.I can't even, as they say. I know social psychology, social psychology is a good friend of mine (well, not a close friend, but I love to hang out with it when I get a chance), and you, Brooksy, are no social psychology.
Bonus: Unspeakable greatness from Mark Liberman at Language Log, vintage 2008, on Brooks's mastery of social psychology. You really have to read this. Among our own crowd, Steve M gives a detailed report on Brooks's reading disability with reference to the Simon interview. Driftglass runs a list of lots more, in which people like Dean Baker (!!!) rub shoulders with your correspondent (I'd indeed be humbled if I were not so humble already—no, really, thanks, Drifters!). Jezebel introduced me to this, which could be the best thing ever written about DFB.
Redhand notes in the comments that according to our sage,
Lately it seems as though every few months there’s another urban riotBy all means, if you have to call it a "riot" (I really wish you wouldn't), and if by "every few months" you mean once in August 2014 (Ferguson) and once in April 2015 (Baltimore). Most social psychologists, fussy bastards, don't like to say it's a pattern until you get more than two cases.
Lemieux catches Krugman joining in, under the Times rules of never openly criticizing a fellow denizen of their op-ed page, but still unmistakable.
Update:
A new study from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (via Nancy Le Tourneau) gives some better calculated numbers than we've had before on the effect of government programs on poverty in a single year, 2012, when CBPP found that the poverty rate of 13.8% would have been 39.1% without them; put another way, government lifted 48 million people out of poverty. The effect on deep poverty—incomes below half the poverty line—was especially striking:
Somehow I just don't think hectoring people on their need to practice future-oriented thinking and show more practical ambition would do that. These kinds of benefits do, however, give recipients a little cognitive and economic space in which they could think about the future, though. The conservative idea that the more deprived you are the more you'll work to get out of the situation doesn't strike me as realistic:
When a community experiences uniform and deep poverty, with most streets characterized by dilapidated housing, failing schools, teenage pregnancy and heavy unemployment, it appears to create a culture of despair that can permanently blight a young person’s future.Update March 29 2016: Thornton Hall's take: "David Brooks does not exist."
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