[Mb-civic] Creating Wealth for the Poor - E. J. Dionne - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

Creating Wealth for the Poor

By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Tuesday, February 21, 2006; A15

Ron Sims, the county executive in Washington state's King County, 
believes government's job is "to help create wealth more efficiently." 
That view comes naturally to a leader of the entrepreneurial Seattle 
region, which has improved the nation's experience of everything from 
technology to coffee.

The late Paul Offner was animated in the final years of his life by a 
moral passion over the failure to address the deep problems of our 
nation's poorest young men, particularly African Americans. He left 
behind a manuscript, published last month by the Urban Institute, in 
which he and two colleagues issued an urgent plea for public action on 
behalf of our most disadvantaged fellow citizens.

Oh, and just as a reminder of how misleading stereotypes can be: Sims is 
African American while Offner, who died in 2004, was white.

Meeting Sims and reading the Urban Institute manuscript provided a 
bracing reminder that there is an authentic search going on outside of 
conventional politics for the new ideas to animate a new political era 
-- precisely what Democrats are supposed to be seeking.

Sims is a bluff, warm man who gets excited about problem-solving. A 
Democrat, he will talk your ear off about the King County government's 
effort to work with local employers in creating a new heath care 
delivery system. The idea is that government can be a catalyst for 
negotiation, research and reform and save both public and private 
employers money while producing better health outcomes for consumers.

It fits with Sims's larger idea that government, far from being a drain 
on the nation's wealth, ought to "provide the social infrastructure and 
the physical infrastructure to help wealth be created." He said during 
lunch here the other day that Democrats should run under the slogan: 
"Rebuild America."

Sims notes that after World War II, the federal government helped 
unleash an era of exceptional growth through investments in schools, 
interstate highways and higher education. Both India and China are 
"making intelligent moves for economic growth" and the United States 
cannot stand by and watch. "You need people and brains to create an 
economy," he says. "You need transportation to move an economy. And you 
need an environmental policy to create clean air and clean water."

Sims's idea reminds Democrats that a commitment to active government is 
not simply about redistributing wealth. It is also rooted in the 
historically sound insight that effective government has always been 
essential to robust economic growth. Government, in the Sims 
formulation, should be a dynamic player in our nation's economic life.

Yet Democrats face a paradoxical problem: They find themselves attacked 
for being too concerned about redistributing money, yet they are far too 
timid in committing themselves to lifting up the very poorest Americans.

That's where the Urban Institute study, "Reconnecting Disadvantaged 
Young Men," co-authored by Offner with my Georgetown University 
colleagues Peter Edelman and Harry J. Holzer, comes in. They write: 
"Nearly 3 million less-educated young people between the ages of 16 and 
24 -- about half of whom are young men -- are disconnected from 
education and employment in the United States." This disconnected cohort 
includes significant numbers of Hispanics and whites, but African 
Americans are disproportionately represented in their ranks. While 
policymakers have spent much energy on the problems facing single 
mothers, they have done little about the disadvantages facing young men.

The decline of manufacturing employment means the economy is producing 
fewer well-paying jobs for the less-skilled. These disconnected young 
men tend to go to the poorest schools, grow up amid concentrated poverty 
and in families that often lack fathers, and face persistent employment 
discrimination. Face it: The one expensive social program we have for 
this group is incarceration. Can't we do better?

The authors of the report offer resolutely hardheaded solutions. They 
would reform education and training programs and work with employers and 
other intermediaries to connect these young men to the labor market. 
They would expand programs such as the Job Corps that have "proven track 
records," and have us do far more to integrate ex-offenders into the 
world of work. They would create much stronger work incentives through 
income supplements, higher minimum wages and changes in the child 
support system.

The Urban Institute authors can be read as bringing Sims's practical 
focus on government's role in wealth creation to the task of expanding 
opportunities for the least fortunate among the young. This is good 
public policy. My hunch is that it could also be good politics.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/20/AR2006022001120.html
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