Feature
The Fairness Delusion
The speech our President should make.
(Page 2 of 3)
But that’s not the worst of it. Tonight I am talking about parents who care most deeply about report cards and how hard their children are studying, parents who want their children to go to college. If you were such a parent, you could not even interpret what you saw on the report card — a student in the inner city could do everything the teacher asked, get straight A’s, and never be given a chance to realize how little he was learning. Thus in the last decade we have gotten used to seeing newspaper stories every spring about the valedictorian from an inner-city high school whose preparation was so inadequate that he or she could not meet the entrance requirements of a good university. Sadly, these are not isolated cases.
On the mathematics component of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (the “SAT,” the core of the College Boards), the average white score in 1980 was 482. Only 11 percent of black students scored that high. On the verbal component of the SAT, the white mean was 442. Only 13 percent of blacks scored that high.
Ask yourself: How much would the government have to pay you to make you agree to send your child to a public school in a ghetto of one of our large cities? How much money would make it a fair bargain?
“Perhaps,” I hear some of my opponents saying, “we went overboard with some of the changes we made in law enforcement and education. But at least we helped these people economically. Look at food stamps, at Medicaid, at Supplemental Security Income and housing subsidies.”
Yes, let’s do look. There is some additional money coming in. Mind you, the additional money is small. Many of the people living in poverty do not get welfare benefits — not because they are not qualified, in most cases, but because they just don’t bother. Perhaps pride is involved. And even if they do avail themselves of such programs, being employed means that the amounts are small. But never mind; some of the families of whom I speak are getting some extra resources, and, other things being equal, I would be happy about that. But other things are not equal.
Because the thing you worry about most, that all good parents worry about most, is how the kids will turn out. We worry a lot even if our children are just unhappy in their work or their personal lives. If they turn out very badly — in jail, or on drugs, or unable to hold on to a job — most of us carry a deep sense of unhappiness and of failure with us for the rest of our lives, no matter how successful we may be professionally or financially. Now, imagine how much more decisive that unhappiness would be if the only tangible measure of success in your life was investment in your children — as is the case of many low-income parents.
In the last twenty years, these parents have watched as their children have gone down the drain. I speak in part of the losses of the younger generation to drugs and to crime. But two less dramatic types of tragedy have been yet more common.
ONE OF THESE HAS consisted of the young male, poor and with a minimal education, who spends the critical years of his late teens and early twenties drifting in and out of the labor market. Sometimes he does so because there is no work to be had. But far too often, in a phenomenon that scholars are finally accepting to be real despite the reluctance of many to talk about it, youths at this critical stage of their lives begin to choose to drift in and out of the labor market, for reasons that make sense to an adolescent but lock him into poverty for the rest of his life.
From 1965-1980, labor force participation among young black males dropped radically and unexpectedly. Among 18-19 year-olds, for example, participation dropped from 67 percent to 56 percent. During the same period, participation of 18-19 year-old white males rose from 66 percent to 74 percent. The nature of unemployment among young black males changed drastically as well, shifting from periodic involuntary unemployment because of lack of demand for labor to a pattern characterized by short-term, voluntary unemployment.
The second tragedy involves the daughters of these families. Poor families — and once again, poor black families in the inner city have suffered most — have watched steadily increasing numbers of their daughters throw away their chances for a good education, for a career, for escape from poverty, by having children as single parents, often as teenagers.
By 1980, 55 percent of all live births to blacks were illegitimate, compared to 11 percent for whites. By 1980, black American teenagers had a fertility rate of 24 per 100, more than twice as high as the second-highest rate (10 per 100) in any of 32 developed nations.
Now put yourself in the position of the parents I have been talking about. Your son says to you that starting at the bottom and doggedly working up bit by bit is a chump’s game. The problem is that he is technically right — at least, over the short term, which is the term that adolescents tend to use. Holding on doggedly to a low-paying job is not smart; it yields no more money than alternative packages of periodic work, benefits, and perhaps the occasional hustle in the underground economy. It yields much less leisure.
Your daughter is sexually active, not using contraceptives, and, once she gets pregnant, finds that the logical choice — note carefully, the logical choice — is to have that child as a single parent. Given the way that the welfare system works and the child-support laws do not work, it would be foolish of her to encourage the man to marry her. In the short term.
In the long term, you are watching your children throw away their futures. But have a hard time fighting it. You try to drum it into their heads that it is in their long-range interest to behave differently, but you have to contend with the peer pressures of their friends. The wisdom of the streets once they leave the front door promulgates the short-term logic.
Even if it weren’t for the crime, even if it weren’t for the bad schools, how much would it take to convince you to let your children be socialized in an inner-city neighborhood? How much money, how many food stamps, would it take until you were compensated? How much would be fair? For most of you, no amount would be enough.
TLP| 5.11.12 @ 7:20AM
I love it when a bunch of Crooked Millionaires, go on and on about Life's Inequities, don't you?
I like when Corrupt Politicians, who've made Millions via Insider Trading, and snatching up Parcels of Land, just before the Legislation goes through for that New Highway, or that New Airport, make one of those stern faces, and lambast THE RICH for being Greedy.
Think: Harry Reid.
I like the fact that a woman, who is, OBVIOUSLY, not right in the head - Nancy (The good Catholic) Pelosi - is out there, fighting every day for the Right to Unionize, at the same time HER FAMILY, runs Vineyards and Restaurants, with NO UNION LABOUR. As do all of the Hollywood Super Libs Who film everything they can, in Canada, so as to NOT pay Union Scale. You know the type. They have to go to Africa to buy a Black Kid, because their Careers could use the shot in the arm that Adopting an African Kid seems to bring these days. So they buy the kid from its Parents, whereby they take it home, where they promptly pass it off to their South American Domestic Help, never to be seen, again. FAIRNESS.
These are the people who think it's "FAIR" to try and deny us OUR RIGHT to have a Firearm to Protect our Kith and Kin, even as they have Armed Bodyguards at their Disposal 24/7 that WE PAY FOR.
They think it's FAIR that they can get Full Retirement, after 5 1/2 Years. They think it's FAIR that they should Fly around in Private Jets and Rub Elbows with Millionaires and Billionaires, on our Dime, while Herding the rest of us in to little Sardine Can Cars, so we can save gas when we drive to the Supermarket to try and find Food for our Families, that we can AFFORD, from the "Savings Aisle", where all of the items are packaged in Recycled Containers, like the Generic Ibuprofin or the Generic Antacid Pills.
They think it's "FAIR" that they get to vote themselves Raises, or add $BILLIONS of Free Campaign Dollars (EARMARKS) to Legislation, so they can take it back to their Districts and throw it around, thus keeping them in Office, in perpetuity.
But, of course, as we've all been told before, by the Late Democrat Speaker of the House - Thomas "Tip" (as in - His Booze Glass) O'Neil - "The Fish ROTS from the Head, down".
President FAIRNESS likes to Play Golf. He likes to go on Multi- Million Dollar Vacations, and throw Lavish Parties with his Hollywood Sycophants, where the Crystal Champagne flows like a River, from the Bottles in his servant's white gloved hands, and the Caviar, the Kobe Beef, and the Maine Lobsters, are all Never Ending, and ON THE HOUSE via you and me. And when His Majesty, and Her Excellency have had their fill?
THE ONE, who has our U.S. Military out there, fighting our Enemies "On my behalf", will Majestically, step up to the Podium, and with a Stern look of resolution, on his face, He will tell us all, AGAIN, how we must "Share in the Sacrifice", because "It isn't FAIR that some should have more than others." And, if we would just all come together on Election Day, and give him 4 More Years? He can take us to the Mountain Top of Fairness. where everybody has the same thing.
They all have NOTHING.
It's like a Bad Dream.
SUBVET| 5.11.12 @ 10:14AM
TLP............right on brother.....may God bless you.
Keep your ammo dry....
TLP| 5.11.12 @ 4:21PM
You're the man.
Harry Nhadzack| 5.14.12 @ 12:52PM
TLP for POTUS!!!
cellomom| 5.11.12 @ 9:05AM
Today on CNN-"How Unequal Pay Threatens Our Democracy." Unfairness is definitely the meme of current times.
Von Mises Jr| 5.11.12 @ 9:06AM
The welfare state has cost tens of trillions of dollars that has destroyed the value of the dollar. The result is continual and massive inflation. The well employed have their incomes adjust with inflation. The liberal establishment uses this redistribution of wealth to enrich themselves.
But the poor and those on fixed income are the victims of this liberal nonsense. Seniors did not get a Cost of Living increase for a few years, I believe. Low income people and those on entitlements did not see their income increase as we suffer some 12% inflation in food over the last few years. All while the liberals in DC, NYC and Hollywierd eat caviar and drink Krystal at $150-200 per bottle at the store and probably twice that at their swanky clubs.
The welfare state was set up for the welfare of government rent seekers such as the Clintons, Pelosi, Obama and the GOP liberal establishment types.
cicero| 5.11.12 @ 1:53PM
...and the people deserve everything they get. They voted for all of this insanity. It is the people who feel compelled to pay $65.00 a ticket to listen to their heroes lip sinc on a stage, while they, the people jump up and down and scream their lungs out asking for more. It is the people who pay $100.00 for a ticket, parking, and a cold hot dog, so they can sit with the cheering crowd when their athletic heroes play little kid games. It is the people who show up and cheer when their elected rulers promise them free stuff, paid for by their own money taken from their paychecks. The tiger never feels sorry for the goat. The lion never feels sorry for the antelope. The politician never feels sorry for the fools that vote for them. They are like the alligator whose eyes water after swallowing its victim whole.
Next time you have a school millage election in your district, conducted on an off month, when nobody suspects one is being held, watch for all the parents who are thrilled that their kids' teachers finally decided to talk to them, rush to the polls, and gratefully vote in the affirmative, so that the teacher can get a raise in her salary that is double what the foolish parent gets, even though the teacher works one half the time, has a pension after 20 years that the parent will never see, and has all summer off, when the parent will have to work harder to pay for the day care, or child care establishment so that the teacher can sit on her derriere.
Great country, this America. We have so dumbed down the voting public over the past 50 years that they don't even see that they are b eing led down the chute. Unless this thing gets turnedd around, and fast, the great experiment in Republican Constitutional government will fade into history, never to be heard of again.
Lee Ghume| 5.12.12 @ 10:09AM
Bread and circuses anyone?
POST American| 5.11.12 @ 11:59PM
-----Routine, white--out 'Ball--KIN--ization' op--------
Meanwhile, "Notice as the REAL campaign
approaches, the REAL issues 'disappear'."
BTW ----speaking of the ILLEGAL, nearly
century long usurpation of our country
and 'CULL-chore' by the USURY mongering,
EUGENICS and sedition promoting 'FED'
--------------------BILDERBERG's-----------------------
set to be having their annual meeting at the Westfield's Marriott
near Dulles airport in Washington, D.C..
----------------------------------BEEEEE THERE!
Harry Nhadzack| 5.14.12 @ 12:55PM
Wow...
AM SPEC are you paying attention?
Some GREAT writers here on the comments you should pick up on your staff
TLP and Ciscero would make great add ons to your staff, imo