Why not get the government out of the way? Clearly black families did better during the first 50 years than the second 50 years of the 20th century (ref Raj Chetty 2015 MTO paper and many books by Thomas Sowell). Chetty found that that moving families to a lower-poverty neighborhood significantly improves college attendance rates and earnings for children who were below age 13. If there's systemic racism, it's the policies that keep successive generations of black families stuck in substandard public housing, surrounded by violence, drug peddlers and substandard schools (unions and democrats oppose charter schools which would give black mothers a real choice, ref De Blasio in NYC). IMO, it's unconstitutional as it conflicts with a central tenet of the Bill of Rights (life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness clause)...
I simply don't understand why most welfare systems weren't reformed years ago. At the moment they are a strong disincentive to the first dollar earned. A supplement which phases out at a rate somewhere between 25c and 33c per dollar earned would be a far more humane system which would encourage people to pick-up less reliable work and transition into employment, whilst also helping the perennially low-waged.
My suspicion is that Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy is at play. It would mean that much of the bureaucracy which surrounds welfare could be dissolved, and the administrative state wouldn't want that, would they?
and I suspect you are spot on w.r.t. Pournelle's Law -- more current examples are the FBI, FDA and the Dept of Education whose budget & spending increase each year yet our students score in lower quintiles than other OECD countries.
Why not get the government out of the way? Clearly black families did better during the first 50 years than the second 50 years of the 20th century (ref Raj Chetty 2015 MTO paper and many books by Thomas Sowell). Chetty found that that moving families to a lower-poverty neighborhood significantly improves college attendance rates and earnings for children who were below age 13. If there's systemic racism, it's the policies that keep successive generations of black families stuck in substandard public housing, surrounded by violence, drug peddlers and substandard schools (unions and democrats oppose charter schools which would give black mothers a real choice, ref De Blasio in NYC). IMO, it's unconstitutional as it conflicts with a central tenet of the Bill of Rights (life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness clause)...
I simply don't understand why most welfare systems weren't reformed years ago. At the moment they are a strong disincentive to the first dollar earned. A supplement which phases out at a rate somewhere between 25c and 33c per dollar earned would be a far more humane system which would encourage people to pick-up less reliable work and transition into employment, whilst also helping the perennially low-waged.
My suspicion is that Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy is at play. It would mean that much of the bureaucracy which surrounds welfare could be dissolved, and the administrative state wouldn't want that, would they?
and I suspect you are spot on w.r.t. Pournelle's Law -- more current examples are the FBI, FDA and the Dept of Education whose budget & spending increase each year yet our students score in lower quintiles than other OECD countries.