Investing Wisely

When the issue of government programs, collectively known by the generally reductive and misleading label of "welfare state", is debated, an argument is often made that recipients of such government largess do not really "deserve" it.  There is on one level a principled case to be made for a distinction between the "deserving poor", and the undeserving poor.  Some people made all the right choices and yet were forced by circumstance into requiring help.  Other made very poor choices - often knowing the consequences, and find themselves at the mercy of a society that collectively mights as well be saying, "I told you so.

A problem thus arises in the necessity of having to try and sort out the supposedly deserving from the undeserving.  And it can be expensive.

But maybe this approach has it backwards?  Sure, there will always be the tendency to "mooch" as long as someone is holding out a hand.  But this can in large part be avoided at the start by policies that not only get at the root of what is driving people into the position of even having the option to "mooch" in the first place.  Without proper assessment of need - both at the individual and community level - "safety net" spending can be hugely wasteful.  Assessment-based, evidence-based policy allows use to not only make efficient use of our spending, but actually does something effective.  It does so by operating on what is the underlying driver of social dysfunction: Social Capital.

I've worked in a number of areas of social work and have always been surprised at how little various programs (by and large a patchwork of cobbled-together responses to various needs) work together.  For instance, right now I work with troubled teens at a continuation school.  As we are a public school, the biggest absurdity we face is trying to fit into the larger educational-reform agenda of accountability, standards, etc.  Making sure that Enrique is being taught Standard 2.d (what telescopes tell us about star cycles), takes priority over every other aspect of his life.  This, despite the fact that his dad is in prison, his mom is on meth, and he only goes to school because if he didn't his probation officer would throw him back into juvie.  Now, I would love nothing more than for Enrique to want to know about star cycles.  But there are *more pressing concerns* in his life.

A major need right now for us is to prioritize our responses to need.  We need to take a closer look at how we allocate resources to programs, with the goal in mind of finding out what forms of social capital will grant people the most leverage in their lives. It certainly isn't an easy question.  But it is one that will begin to pay off greatly in terms of social and economic dividends.  For instance, we know that the earlier we intervene in the lives of disadvantaged children, the more likely they will be to succeed as time goes on.  Cases like Enrique represent systemic failure, and a corrective response will likely be not only marginally effective, but a response that should not have had to happen. 

As it stands today, our school has only two counselors, for a population of around 300.  Mind you this is a continuation school and most of the students have severe emotional and/or behavioral problems.  The counselors spend most of their time on academic issues, with no time to realistically spend on the sort of counseling these children need, much less bringing their families into the picture, and attempting any larger corrective interventions.  With no ability to form much trust or bonding with students, the counselors must simply offer ad hoc support, and give parents the number of a local therapist.  They rarely hear back from parents in such cases, with certainly no communication between the mental health professionals and the counselors.

Which is where the teachers come in.  We are often times the only responsible, concerned parents in these children's lives.  We see them daily (well, when they decide to attend class), and form bonds that allow us to begin to have an impact in their lives.  Of course, we aren't trained counselors, nor do we generally have the time required to meet their needs.  A sad irony of our school is that because the student population is in such crisis, attendance is relatively quite low, which does allow us settings for interpersonal communication and guidance that would be unthinkable in a regular classroom.  At the regular high school, from where all of these students have come (after even less intervention), classes routinely reach 50 students.  I am fortunate in that, even though these are the "worst of the worst", I am able to work with them in groups that average 10-20.  Of course, as I say, this setting is far from ideal from the standpoint of intervention.  There is certainly no time for home visits, and no coordination of any other social service agencies that I am aware of.

So, starting early is best.  But as it stands, this rarely means much more than signing a kid up for head start, where the parent drops the kid off before heading to work.  Yet the levels of social capital in which the children are otherwise being raised are abysmally low.  Therefore, a system of intervention ought to be much more robust.  Parents ought to go through a much more intensive assessment process, with programmatic responses to their individual need (ideally starting at birth, with managed follow-ups).  This could be drug or alcohol counseling, job training, parenting classes, home-health visits, etc.  I think one of the most important things we could is literally send in "life coaches" to work with parents - to literally spend large amounts of time at the home, working with the parent to establish a more functional environment.  The amount of social capital we could be creating in the home could be extraordinary.  And in terms of cost, once you factor in the savings down the road, the initial expense would be quite reasonable.

This may sound radical, but in principal, it really isn't.  For the mentally ill or physically disabled, we spend large amounts of money on just this sort of thing.  What we are talking about with disadvantaged communities is not a physical disorder, but a social disorder.  We would be applying the same fundamental concept of intervention to social dysfunction as we do to physical dysfunction.  And the beautiful part is, while there are often no cures for physical disability, there is enormous potential in treating social dysfunction. 

Because in reality what we are doing is contributing to human development.  Social dysfunction is mostly due to a lack of appropriate development.  The process becomes all the more horrific when it is passed on generationally, becoming what we call (somewhat incorrectly) a culture of poverty.  Because, it isn't a "culture" so much as a lack of development in cognitive and emotional skills.  Of course people can't be successful when they lack the skills to leverage into what success means in the modern world.  This would be no different than if a blind person was never taught learned braille, or if an amputee was never given a wheelchair.  What we see over and over in poor communities is the result of this lack of social capital resulting in a lack of the development of human capital, and the subsequent tragic consequences.

Public schools are perhaps no better example of the ham-fisted approach society takes to this problem.  Already having been selected for relatively low levels of social capital by income and property values, poor schools are filled with disadvantaged children.  Yet the model we rely on for their success is fundamentally no different than at the wealthier school across town, where students were selected, again, for higher levels of social capital by income.  Yet the class-sizes are largely the same.  Aside from what title I money (federally mandated money for low-income students) pays for - mostly school lunches and maybe a remedial reading specialist or two, there is really not much of an intervention at all.  In fact, in terms of pure finances, wealthier schools have access to far greater fundraising capacity.  And this is largely due to the much greater levels of social capital in general.  Parents tend to be better educated, make more money, have fewer issues with drugs (at least that affect their life success), have more intact families, etc. This generally explains how they were able to afford to live in a better neighborhood and send their kids to "good" schools.  "Good" being a euphemism for a student population with higher levels of social capital.

The interesting nature of social capital is that it is exponential.  The greater the capital, the more it is leveraged into more total capital.  Inversely, the less the capital, the less it is leveraged, resulting in less total capital.  In this way, it is like other forms of capital, in which when invested (put to good use), they pay off in dividends.  When we expect people with low levels of social capital to see themselves rewarded with success, it is an absurd an expectation than as if we expected a small amount of money in the bank to pay out great dividends.  To extend the analogy to schools, a most schools' ability to pay dividends on its student population, in terms of student learning, is generally the same, as are two banks with similar declared interest rates.  Yet when we put more money in one bank, we don't put less money in another bank and expect it to perform as well.  "Garbage in, garbage out", as they say.  That's a terrible way to speak of children, but that's precisely how we are ultimately treating them when our policy interventions don't match the hubris of our rhetoric.

So if we truly care about intervening in these communities, we will approach them with an accurate accounting of their need.  Only then will be able to properly diagnose and respond to their needs in ways which are both cost effective and which produce overall increases in social capital.  Because the worst thing we can do is wait around for things to go bad, and then respond.  This sort of "emergency mentality" conflates the difference between treatment and preventative care.  Of course we must provide a safety net for those in need.  But we also need to respond to the issue of social capital disadvantage and its corrosive effects on communities and individuals.  What this will inevitably require is a more holistic approach, a sort of "social capital management", in which community needs are assessed and targeted for remediation.

The Uncollective

The school year is getting long in the tooth.  Students are weary.  Teachers are testy.  Here in the desert, the temperatures will soon reach a daily average of 100 degrees.  Testing will begin soon.  Our students will fail dramatically.

Today one of the teen mommies told me she and her boyfriend, with whom she lives, are breaking up.  She had been the only one - all of the others had been left long ago.  She's a spunky kid, tough and testy but always relatively positive.  Sixteen, her Dad ran out on the family years back.  Then her Mom "went crazy" and she was sent into foster care.  She then got out, moved in with a relative, and then her baby's daddy, who's 18.  Is it even legal for her to be living alone?  I imagine it is better than foster care.  Today she told me, "Life sucks."

Another young lady - so far unpregnant - was recounting the fight she had the other night, how it began after the partying got too loud for a parent with a heart condition, and then peaked after they spilled out into the street, her and another girl had drunken words, and ended up tussling on the pavement.  She showed me the girl's phone she had made off with.  The girl seemed sad, angry in the pictures.  There was a shot of some guy doing a line of something.

I asked her about her boyfriend, a sometime gang-banger with severe defiance and aggression issues.  At one point they were going to move away together, to live with her mother in another town, far away from the troubled local scene.  Yet that fell through after her mother broke up with her boyfriend, after finding "teen porn" among his things.  When mom asked how he could have such things around her teenage daughter, he replied that he only likes brunettes.  They moved out of his house, taking with them what they could fit in the car.  He refused to let them have the rest of their things.  He had been abusive.  My student rattled off a list - clothes, music, TV, shoes, etc. 

Sometime later her own boyfriend was expelled.  She said things went downhill from there.  He didn't treat her well.  He was jealous.  He tried to hit her but she hit back.  He flipped out when she said it was over.  He chased her for blocks, until she finally dove into a bush and watched him run past.

In the staff lounge, a couple of other teachers spoke of how sick of it they were - the teen pregnancies.   They said they resented their tax dollars being spent so that young girls could get free health care and welfare.  "Most of them do it for the government checks.  One girl has a friend who had 3 of them just for the money!"  This from the libertarian who says she wants universal healthcare, yet cracks at least one "execution" joke a day.  The Reagan Democrat piped in with a story of "some woman" who had nine kids - just for the welfare.  The libertarian complained that her son, making $15k a year, payed his taxes, yet made "too much" to qualify for medicaid, while illegal immigrants and unworking teen moms got all the care they needed.  She was convinced teen moms - or even the out-of-work - ought to have their kids put in orphanages.  The Reagan Democrat offered another woman, this time a friend of hers, who was raised in an orphanages - and liked it fine.  I suggested a few "helpful" remarks.  I referenced human and social capital, pointing out that the teen moms need not be blamed - they are disadvantaged.  "No excuse!" was the paraphrased refrain.

It's April.  The days aren't getting any easier.  The kids still won't work.  They never come to school.  When they do they're often high.  Their parents are often worse.

This evening I ran across a PhD thesis by a man by the name of Tom Healy, at the National University of Scotland, titled, In Each Other’s Shadow: What has been the impact of human and social capital onlife satisfaction in Ireland?  From a chapter describing the nature of social capital:

Social capital refers to resources inherent in self-organised human networks
based on reciprocal

• expectations and obligations (of support, engagement, delivery) [TRUST];
• communication of information, knowledge, informal norms, sanctions
and understandings [VALUES]; and
• belonging [IDENTITY]

that facilitate collective action.  (p.69)

Something rang true in those words in brackets: Trust, Values, Identity.  These students lack social capital, and thus have not been able to develop human capital.  And what is it that keeps them from acquiring it today, in my classroom, as I try and present to them the best social capital I know how?

They do not trust me.  They do not share my values.  They do not share my identity.  So how could I expect them to do their part in the reciprocal dance of education?  There is no collective between us: there is me vs. them.

I have been struggling all year to come to grips with how I might possibly teach these children.  What am I teaching them?  It surely isn't very academic, given the abysmal rate of participation (attendance and classwork).  I have found myself seeking to act more as a mentor or counselor.  I listen to their stories, ask them to reflect critically on their choices and assumptions.  I joke with them.  I try and throw them off their "game".  I try to humanize them.  I try not to get into power struggles, or to "react" in typical ways to their well-honed tactics of defiance.  For the most part it has been very successful.  Kids smile and talk to me in ways that would have been unimaginable months before.  I ask them daily to be better people.  They seem to listen.

But this is what I have been doing all along, without knowing it: I have been trying to build in them Trust, Values and Identity.  I have been trying to break down their defensive walls by showing them love, respect, honor, and thin, yet bottomless trust.  I will be there for them, empathizing and trying to see the world through their eyes.  I want them to see that they have eyes - that there are people in the world that want to see through their eyes, that they are part of a "collective", that there is something out there to "buy into".  I'm by no means making much of a difference.  These stories started long before I got there and they will continue long after.  But I try and think I'm at least "moving the goal posts" a little bit each day.

These are kids who have been torn away from the fundamental forces of social capital.  Opportunities exist for them that they cannot even dream of.  But they are blinded by a sense of isolation and disenfranchisement, confusion and nihilism.  For them to grow again, they must learn to reconnect with society, with their humanity.  And we, for out part, must be there to help guide them.

To Deny the Rights of Man

Most of us are well aware of, if not accepting of the basic Marxist critique of capitalism: that an unequal distribution of economic capital results in an unequal distribution of social leverage, inevitably leading to exploitation as inequitable power structures become entrenched, and human rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are violated.  Yet a common rebuttal to this critique is that as long as the structural imbalances can be overcome, that there are systems in place to allow for those who desire to overcome them, then neither exploitation nor violation of rights is occurring.

This would be true, as far as it goes.  However, in reality, structural imbalances prove quite difficult to overcome.   The reason for this is goes to a fundamental error in understanding the extent to which structural imbalances exist.  In the classic economic model of structural inequality, a property owner is at an advantage over a renter because of his ability to leverage his relative wealth.  To overcome this inequality, the rebuttal goes, all the renter has to do is find some way of creating his own wealth, and leveraging it himself.  As long as there are no structural impediments to his doing so, such as discrimination or lack of opportunity, he cannot be said to be exploited or denied his rights.

Yet this naively assumes a simplicity to structural imbalance, viewing it only in institutional or economic terms.  What is left out are the other, more powerful forms of capital.  Capital, it ought to be said, is anything that contributes to an individual's agency.  Economic capital (EC) is the financial wealth one owns and is able to do things like invest, trade, or purchase; it is his financial freedom.  Social capital (SC) is the environmental resources available to one, beginning literally at birth, that help him and support his growth and development in life.  It is anything from the type of parents or neighbors he has, to the proximity of  local businesses, to the structure of government under which he lives.  Human capital (HC) refers to the resources within himself that allow him to process external stimuli in the environment and make relevant choices.  This would be everything from the genes he was born with, to the amount of vocabulary he learned before beginning school, to his ability to socialize with others, to his ability to form thoughts and critically analyze information, to his knowledge of computer software or simply control his anger.

Each of these forms of capital are dynamic.  The degree to which they exist at any given time determines the amount of leverage, or agency,  at one's disposal.  So, for instance, an individual poor in EC and SC, yet rich in HC, has a much higher chance of leveraging his HC to establish more SC, and ultimately more EC.  He might be an excellent communicator - a "people person" - which allows him to foster relationships and network, in turn leading to better paying jobs and social support.  Like wise, an individual rich in EC, yet poor in SC or HC, has a higher chance of losing his EC because of poor decisions.  He may make rash business decisions, and without an ability to relate well to others, find himself without support in difficult times.  At root, these forms of capital  make us who we are and allow us the freedom to be successful citizens.

In general, Marxist critique claims that relative inequality in EC is what drives the larger social systems, culture and institutions of man.  He writes:

My inquiry led me to the conclusion that neither legal relations nor political forms could be comprehended whether by themselves or on the basis of a so-called general development of the human mind....

In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure, and to which correspond definite forms of consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political, and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.

I have chosen to emphasize this last line because it makes a fascinating statement about cause and effect.  Marx is here claiming that the individual's EC and SC determines their HC, not the other way around.  Yet to the modern mind, this seems false.  Could not an individual, rich in human capital, thus be in a position to alter their lack of economic and social capital?

Marx wrote those words in 1859, a very different time.  He likely could not have conceived of the modern mixed-economy state, with its social safety nets, public schooling for all, libraries, mass transit, workers' rights, middle classes, public universities, and the like.  It seems that to the degree that we have these things - all of which were fought for almost precisely because of the critiques he outlined in his work - his argument diminishes.  Likewise, to the degree to which we do not have these things, his argument gains strength.  What we have essentially done with the modern state is a soft version of what he would have had us do with communism, that is to drive up HC by providing a baseline FC and SC to all.

Yet, assuming now that some degree of opportunity exists for those with a high enough level of HC, what to do about those who would have that same access yet lack sufficient HC to take advantage of it?  When I work with young (largely delinquent) low-HC teenagers, I face this exact dilemma.  My task is to increase their HC as much as possible, in the hope that this will allow them more leverage to attain EC and SC in later life.  As an employee of the state, offering public education services, I represent a level of SC they would otherwise not have, and thus am in a position to raise their HC.

Student Success, c. Flippen group

Study after study has shown that individuals in poor communities - by definition with less EC and SC - have less HC.  Not only do are those with less HC more prone to lose what EC and SC they do have, but they have likely been born into a world in which those responsible for their development have lower levels of such capital as well, resulting in their.  Because of the realities of real estate property values, individuals with low EC and SC are in effect shunted into geographic locations in which they are surrounded with peers who are similarly disadvantaged, which has the effect of lowering an already diminished level of SC even further.  This means that in the schools, jobs and peer groups of these neighborhoods,are of substantially diminished value.  This is, of course, reflected in the property values to begin with.  It is a self-reinforcing process.

To ignore or to discount the fundamental role of human and social capital in social justice and liberty is to deny nothing less than the rights of man.  To the extent that one benefits from his higher level of HC and SC relative to another, the relationship is exploitative.  We perceive this on a gut level when we purchase the services of someone from a lower class than ourselves.  We know instinctively that a maid, busboy, gardener, or convenience store clerk is fulfilling a role that has been determined by their relative lack of HC and SC.  For were they to have higher levels of either, they would no doubt not have to suffer menial labor.  To the degree that we find ourselves in a higher class position, it is no doubt due to higher levels of HC and SC.  Our relative incomes, or FC, traditionally used as a shorthand for class, are actually quite secondary to the leverage that HC and SC afford an individual.

The area where this chasm between capital classes is most striking, is between the criminal and the conformist classes.  Our deepest systems of morality and justice are written around - or in spite of - the disparities between capital classes.  When a man steals a car, abuses drugs, or beats his wife, we perform what amounts to philosophical hand-waving, as we assume that he has performed an act that we would not have, were we in his position.  Yet his "position" is assumed to merely a place in space and time, and not the psyche of an actual human being with a lifetime of experiences that has lead him to that exact instance in which he took the action he did.  For if we were indeed in his "position", we would have to accept his relative level of human capital - his knowledge, his critical thinking ability, his ability to understand and control his emotions, etc.  If we were indeed in his position, there is little doubt we would have chose differently at all.

So when the criminal stands accused before the court, his deeds those we have decided as a society to label as crimes, we are leveraging our relative richness in HC against his relative lack.  To the degree that our conviction is retributive, and not for utilitarian purposes, we are purposefully ignoring his diminished HC so as to absolve ourselves of any part in the crime.  For if we were to include the role his HC played in his crime - admittedly, an almost impossible task - we would be forced to consider the inequity in distribution of HC in our (society's) relationship with him that allowed him to commit the original offense.  Our damnation of him would in turn need to be directed back at ourselves.  This would be like taking a failing bridge to court for crumbling into the river below.  To the extent that we acknowledge the bridge's disrepair as relative to our own structural integrity, it would be illogical for us to hold the bridge accountable for failings attributable to integrity that we take for granted in ourselves.

In our desire for a veneer of social harmony, we ignore the complex relationship between human development and human action.  Those with lower levels of HC and SC are functionally incapacitated, and therefore easily exploited and victimized by those with higher levels of capital who wish for cheaper services or the satisfaction of retributive justice.  By denying that these forms of capital are intrinsic to human liberty, we deny not only our responsibility to create a just society, but ultimately the very rights of man.

Measuring SES

It is a well known fact that Catholic schools in general tend to have better success with poor students than public schools.  While its hard to know the degree to which selection plays a role in the success of Catholic schools with these kids, we know that it does play a role.  I guarantee you that the most difficult children in any any class will be those with parents that are "not in the picture".  These are the kids that are frequently absent, don't return homework, don't respond to consequences, and  - no surprise - have little respect for authority.

One of the things that gets glossed over in education debates (which are really about poor schools), is the meaning of SES (socio-economic status).  What this is often measured by is a simple formula: free/reduced lunches = low-SES.  The problem with this formula is that while it is a pretty good at measuring financial capital, it is a poor measure of things like parent education, intact family, substance abuse, parenting skills, and a variety of other factors that are profoundly deterministic in a child's development. 

I think this is something that is generally missed in discussions of poverty in general.  Everyone can look at poor neighborhoods and see how much more dysfunctional they tend to be.  But then we see that some people do manage to grow up poor and find success.  Yet this doesn't mean that there is no correlation between poverty and lack of success.  It just means that poverty alone doesn't determine failure.  What determines failure are a variety of risk factors, such as substance abuse, lack of education, etc., that strongly correlate with poverty.  Not everyone in a poor neighborhood has every one of them, but they are much more likely to.

Reflections

Creation of Light, Gustave Doré

Yesterday in Texas, a 20-month old toddler was found drunk on 4 Loko, the notorious caffeinated alcoholic beverage.  Police found the mother outside the apartment complex with friends.  Apparently she had fallen asleep in bed while drinking, then woke and went outside.  After a roommate found the infant tangled in sheets, turning blue, she called 911.  When they arrived they found the toddler wandering drunkenly outside. The mother's mug shot was plastered front and center below the headline.

Lashawnda Allen, 32, lives in a poor section of North Houston, most likely in this apartment complex.  The nearest elementary school ranks 4/10 according to statewide exams.  I was able to find her My Space page, on which she has posted pictures of her toddler, her 5 month old, and random pictures of her mugging for the camera.  The backgrounds in the pictures are of grimy apartment walls, dirty carpet and a barren concrete walkway in front of a row of government-style housing.  There is no picture of a father figure to be found, aside form a somewhat steely-eyed young boy Lashawnda notes is her cousin.

This story plays out daily in poor (often minority) communities across the nation.  Broken homes, substance abuse, poverty and despair.  These are the worst possible conditions under which to raise a child.

A terribly tragic story.  Yet what struck me were the comments that followed the piece I read.  A brief glance at responses across the internet shows a similar reaction.

"Drunk while in the care of such small children and in the middle of the day???? I can't imagine even having the desire when my kids were babies to start pounding down booze. What an idiot."

"This kind of story frightens the hell out of me on a lot of levels. We hear of them more and more often too. Are we as a nation really dumbing down this much? I realize not everyone has the benefit of a good education but the sheer lack of common sense here boggles me."

"What a waste of space. I don't understand how these people are smart enough to figure out how to "breed"."

The patten being expressed in the majority of comments on this story shows a profound lack of understanding of the causal mechanisms at work in low-income, disadvantaged communities.  The idea that this woman is an "idiot" is absurd.  Of course, what she did was terrible and shows a profound level of ignorance and dysfunction.  Yet there are reasons she developed into the person she is.

Many of the students I work with come from just these types of environments.  Not only have they received almost zero positive role-modeling in their lives, but the culture in which they live has social norms that would be unrecognizable to those who have not grown up in the ghetto.  The students live in a world in which the future stretches no further than the coming weekend, and sex, drugs and fighting are respectable pleasures in a bleak reality of absent or imprisoned fathers, overworked or depressed and dysfunctional mothers, and extensive peer groups where delinquency is the rule, not the exception.

It is a natural human impulse to become angry over what we do not understand.  Why didn't this mother - "these people" - make better decisions?  Yet she is doing the best she knows how to do, in a world of shadows in which she cannot see the way out.  Let us be angry at this, the disenfranchisement and despair that plagues the ghetto.  Let us try and find ways to help, instead of passively sitting back, judging from a distance, assuming that we would have known to different had we been raised in such a world.  Let us be thankful that we have had the privileges we have had.  Let us be grateful that our world is filled with the light to do right both by ourselves and our fellow man.

Let us take that light and reflect it into the darkness as an act of love, not hatred.  Lashawnda and her children could use it.

Capitalism vs. Family Values

There is a fascinating difference in the modern liberal/conservative perspective on poverty and inequality. The conservative sees a larger social breakdown, yet one of simple traditional values.  The liberal sees a social breakdown too, but one that is more complex and involving many more structures.  The main liberal critique is of capitalism and the free market itself, which is seen as necessarily creating poverty through free market segregation by human and social capital: income, education, property values, etc.

Both causal mechanisms find larger social mechanisms, which then place secondary pressures on individual choice.  If the liberal sees primary, "first" problems inherent in capitalism, or government policy, I'm curious as to what the conservative would see as first problems.  For the liberal, capitalism needs to be reigned in, or intervened in to soften its rough edges - a classic mixed-market economy.  For the conservative, my guess is that a sort of moral decay in traditionally productive values has occurred, and a first cause there has been suggested to be found in a sort of liberalism, whether in the form of feminist emancipation or government-intervention-induced dependency.

What strikes me about this conservative thesis is its apparent historical shortsightedness and reactionary bent.  First, what would the cause of poverty and social inequality have been before progressivism?  Next, while there has clearly been a certain moral decay in poor communities as drug abuse and out-of-wedlock birth has increased dramatically, correlation doesn't equal causation!  High rates of drug addiction, teen pregnancy and fatherlessness may on the surface look like "hippies gone wild", there are many causal mechanisms at work.

Interestingly, the actually people in these communities often have a view of marriage and family that is neither liberal nor conservative, but a sort of worldview born of emotional immaturity and nihilism.  Further, in many ways, to the extent that gender roles exist, they are in many ways quite conservative!  Women tend to value dependency and subservience to men.  Men tend to be very patriarchal and emphasize a very traditional, "macho" model of male gender - emotionally reserved, aggressive, domineering, reckless, chauvinist.

I'm struck by the continued dismissal by conservatives of social inequities, disparities, etc., relative to liberals.  I think a good part of this can be explained by the extent to which an admission of these disparities would seem also to be an admission to some of the structural problems contained within the liberal critique.  Because while conservatives can indeed find larger social causes for social failure, it would need to be seen in the context of individual decisions, and not in larger capitalist frameworks that need to be addressed.

So, for instance, if there is widespread dysfunction in a ghetto due to moral failings on the part of inhabitants, the solution is still localized.  Interestingly, if the "first cause" was, indeed, feminism or progressivism, the best solution to poverty would be to cut social programs and fight against liberal social mores.  This is exactly what many conservatives are doing.  By attacking Natalie Portman, Huckabee was actually fighting for the minds of the poor.  But this only gets you so far.  Moral explanations can account for only so much dysfunction.  There is also the question of why this dysfunction seems to turn up in such unequal quantities.  If you don't accept the liberal model of capitalist critique, it becomes difficult to explain such widespread and continuing poverty.  So, I think one of the options is to downplay the extent to which it actually exists.  And when not discussing the dysfunctional poor, but a more generalized distribution of economic inequality, the moral narrative has even less traction.

The most problematic thing to me about modern conservatism is the extent of its paranoia about the sacred cow of free market capitalism.  The modern liberal has no particular investment in capitalism - or socialism - as a perfect system.  It is comfortable with both solutions.  Private markets seems perfectly reasonable for most things - services, consumer goods, etc.  Only in specific areas do they feel the need for government intervention.  Yet conservatives have backed themselves in a corner - largely I think because of their acceptance of the over-heated rhetoric they have used to gain their currently popular position.  They have to defend the notion that government is almost always bad, free markets will solve most problems, and that thus, liberals are existential enemies.

Because this position is so often at odds with reality (social programs can do great good, higher taxes aren't the end of the state, regulations are sometimes very important, what's good for business isn't always good for society, etc.), conservatives are often forced to either dissemble (completely falsifying their arguments), or to outright deny.  The naivete of ideological purity presents an intense pressure to stomach cognitive dissonance, which inevitably results in rational decay.  What this means in conservative thought is the embrace of faulty logic, such as mistakes in correlation of causation (as mentioned), and other forms of intellectual constipation.  This is nothing new to partisan thinking, but I worry it is more acute in a modern conservatism that has forced itself to embrace a false either/or dynamic, as opposed to a more reasonable mixed-economy standard, from which more/less government can be debated not in existential terms, but on the specific merits.

You Get What You Pay For

The New York Times reports today that despite all the efforts towards "accountability", many schools are struggling to replace "failing" principals.  Of low performing schools in states that agreed to enforce strict sanctions for a chance at some of Race to the Top's $4 Billion in grants, nearly half have found ways to keep their principals on board.  Apparently finding talented individuals willing to work in troubled schools is harder than was expected.

From the article:

Because leading schools out of chronic failure is harder than managing a successful school — often requiring more creative problem-solving abilities and stronger leadership, among other skills — the supply of principals capable of doing the work is tiny.

You think?  And we're only talking about principals.  What about all the so-called failing "teachers"?  Given the average poor school might have more than 20 teachers,  finding replacements would be that much more difficult.

Of course, the assumption is completely flawed.  As the article rightfully notes, working at a poor school is more difficult.  Add to this the enormous expectations being placed on an already over-burdened and under-appreciated staff, and ask yourself who in their right mind would feel attracted to such a position?  The list of those of us willing to accept that offer is surely shortening fast.

Maybe the real question is why we should expect to be able to ask so much more of these workers in the first place?  We either need to pay them much, much more, or provide the proper support to begin with, so the job will be actually possible with an average employee.