{"id":17080,"date":"2013-04-09T15:12:31","date_gmt":"2013-04-09T22:12:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=17080"},"modified":"2013-04-10T09:46:22","modified_gmt":"2013-04-10T16:46:22","slug":"unemployment-is-not-primarily-a-matter-of-individual-responsibility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=17080","title":{"rendered":"Unemployment is not primarily a matter of individual responsibility"},"content":{"rendered":"

David Blankenhorn wrote<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s another one of the ads (and this one blew me away):
\n

\"NYC<\/center>
\n[Image shows a subway ad<\/a>, produced by the New York City government, which says “If you finish high school, get a job, and get married before having children, you have a 98% change of not being in poverty.”]<\/em><\/p>\n

First, it\u2019s factually true. Surely that ought to count for something!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But it’s not <\/em>factually true. It is wrong technically, and it is wrong on substance.<\/p>\n

Technically, it’s untrue twice. The 98% statistic comes from the book Creating An Opportunity Society<\/a><\/em> by Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill. Haskins and Sawhill listed three social norms as crucial for avoiding poverty: Graduating high school, having a full time<\/strong> job, and waiting until you’re 21 and<\/strong> married to have children. So in two ways – forgetting that the job has to be full-time, and forgetting that you have to wait until at least age 21 to have kids – the New York City ad misstated the statistic.<\/p>\n

It should also be mentioned that the statistic only refers to your chances of being in poverty right now<\/em>. If you currently have a full-time job, graduated high school, and waiting until 21 and married to have kids, then odds are 98% you aren’t in poverty right now<\/em>. But there’s nothing in that 98% which promises that you won’t lose that job tomorrow and wind up in poverty. It’s a statement of present correlations, not a prediction of the future.<\/p>\n

It’s substantially wrong, because it concentrates all its fire on individual responsibility – all you have to do is get a job, and you won’t be poor! – about matters that are frequently not subject to individual control. Many people cannot control for themselves whether or not they have a full-time job. They can apply for work, but that won’t guarantee that they will <\/em>get a job. “In the fourth<\/a> quarter of 2012, nationwide unemployment rates were 6.3 percent for whites, 9.8 percent for Hispanics, and 14.0 percent for blacks. These elevated rates are projected to remain essentially unchanged at the end of 2013.”<\/p>\n

There is an implied social contract, I think, between ordinary workers and the government. Ordinary workers are required to make a good-faith effort to support themselves. But the government, in return, should do all it can to bring about a healthy job market so people can find reasonable work with reasonable wages.<\/p>\n

The government has failed to hold up its end. Faced with a jobs crisis, the government hasn’t done nearly enough to fight unemployment. The initial stimulus bill was barely followed up on. In fact, the government is making things worse with austerity policies, such as raising the payroll tax and pursuing massive layouts of government workers at every level of government. These policies mean it will take longer for our employment numbers to recover.<\/p>\n

In that context, telling people they can avoid poverty merely by finding a full-time job is – well, the nicest thing I can say is “clueless.”<\/p>\n

\n

Further reading:
\nRick Santorum says stay in school, work hard, wait to have kids, and you\u2019ll avoid poverty. It\u2019s not that simple.<\/a><\/p>\n

Marriage is not antidote to poverty<\/a><\/p>\n

Contra Santorum: Most Adults in Poverty Marry and Have High School Diplomas<\/a><\/p>\n

NYC\u2019s campaign against teen parents ignores the structural realities that create the conditions for unintended pregnancies<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David Blankenhorn wrote: Here\u2019s another one of the ads (and this one blew me away): [Image shows a subway ad, produced by the New York City government, which says “If you finish high school, get a job, and get married … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics-and-the-like"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17080"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17080\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17084,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17080\/revisions\/17084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}