Clear and Present Dangers 7

In my latest reading of M. Stanton Evans' Clear and Present Dangers: A Conservative View of America's Government (copyright 1975), I read the chapters on education and inflation, and I started the chapter on health care.  I have three items.

1.  In the chapter on education, Evans disagrees with the liberal view that more government spending on education will improve educational quality, and he also argues against school busing.  In this item, I'll focus more on the busing issue.  Evans discusses the work of a scholar, James Coleman, who contended that African-American students would do better academically if they were removed from their own impoverished community and put around white people, and that became the rationale for busing African-American children for long distances to public schools that are largely white.  When I read that, I thought about Robert Reich's argument in I'll Be Short that students who are around other students who don't plan to go to college will probably themselves lack the aspiration to go to college (see here).  Reich there was not arguing in favor of busing, nor was he suggesting that it's awful for African-Americans to be in their own communities.  But I was reminded of Reich because both he and Coleman (as Evans describes him) make the point that one's social environment can affect one's educational achievement and aspirations.

Evans contends that school busing has failed, for it has not resulted in higher academic achievement among African-Americans, and it has exasperated rather than improved race relations.  Evans also quotes the 1964 Civil Rights Act in arguing that busing is a violation of that law.

Evans may have a legitimate point that school busing was problematic.  As I mentioned in my post here, I once talked with an African-American woman who said that busing was a bad idea because it removed African-American children from their neighborhoods.  Prior to busing, she said, an African-American doctor could mentor an African-American child in his neighborhood who wanted to be a doctor.  With busing, however, this was less likely to occur because African-American children were removed from their communities for long periods of time each day.

Where I differ from Evans, however, is that he does not seem to think that unequal schools were much of a problem.  Evans appeals to "a compilation of papers derived from a Harvard seminar on the Coleman Report, edited by Frederick Mosteller and Daniel P. Moynihan" (page 179), and he says that scholars in this study found that "in many respects the level of spending on Negro schools is higher than that for schools that are chiefly white, and that where discrepancies exist in favor of whites they are less discernible in the South, not more", and also that "variation in school facilities has little to do with variation in achievement" (Evans' words on page 180).  I don't have the time or the energy right now to read the Coleman Report or to do a research project to refute what Evans is saying----but see here for wikipedia's documented description of the Coleman Report.  I will say this, though: I'm sure that there are a number of scholars who have arrived at conclusions different from what Evans is arguing.  Moreover, I should note that even Republicans, such as George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, argued that there was an achievement gap between whites and minorities, which (according to them) No Child Left Behind helped to close.

2.  In the chapter on inflation, Evans argues that the wage and price controls of the 1970's did not work because they resulted in shortages, for they discouraged people from making products because the price controls would inhibit them from charging enough to make the profit that they desired.  Evans locates the problem of inflation in the increase in the money supply, and he contends that deficit spending makes this problem worse because the government prints money in an attempt to satisfy the growing government budget, while avoiding increases in interest rates and the tax burden.

I'm sure that there's something to Evans' arguments.  At the same time, I wonder: How have inflation rates managed to be low, when government spending continues to rise?  See here.

3.  I started the chapter on health care.  Evans argues that there is not much of a health care crisis in the U.S., for the U.S. has reduced infant mortality, plus there are more doctors per patient in the U.S. than exist in a number of other countries, and Evans argues that there are long lines to receive medical care in Great Britain.  But Evans acknowledges that the cost of health care is rising, and he believes that Medicare and Medicaid are contributing to that, for treating people for free requires higher costs for the people who pay.  In a sense, Medicare and Medicaid patients are not treated for free, for their care receives a reimbursement from the government.  But there have been concerns that the reimbursement is not adequate, and so a number of physicians either choose not to see Medicaid patients, or they pass costs on to others.

I think that Evans' critique of the Swedish system is worth quoting.  On page 207, Evans states: "Since nobody [in Sweden] has any incentives to control costs, patients come to hospitals for the most minor or imaginary ills and hospital stays are protracted.  Private practice of medicine on an outpatient basis has been discouraged, although steps are afoot to alter this.  In addition, the Swedish system has discouraged entry into medicine by new physicians, and it is noteworthy that the doctor-patient ratio is considerably lower than in the much more populous United States."

I don't think that a person should be afraid to see a doctor, for even "minor or imaginary ills" may indicate that something is seriously wrong with the patient.  At the same time, there should be efforts to control costs----to ensure that doctors are not ordering unnecessary tests to get more money, to focus on results, to value preventative care as a way to prevent more expensive emergency care from being necessary down the road, and to seek cost-effective ways to meet patients' needs.  In my opinion, Obamacare either does these things, or is moving the health care system in the direction of doing these things.

I agree with Evans that the doctor-per-patient ratio is important, for a greater supply of health care facilities can result in lower prices.  Otherwise, you probably would have long lines to receive medical care!  In my opinion, newer physicians should be encouraged to enter the field rather than discouraged.  Regarding how the U.S. compares with other nations on this, there are countries that have the sort of system that Evans opposes----a single-payer national health insurance system----that have better doctor-per-patient ratios than the U.S., and there are countries with a single-payer system (such as Canada) that have worse ratios than the U.S. does.  See here.  In my opinion, a single-payer system is compatible with a decent ratio of doctors to patients. 

There has been concern, however, that Obamacare is scaring people from the medical profession or is encouraging doctors to leave the profession early.  I think that the government should take steps to encourage people to enter the medical field.  One professor I had suggested that people who decide to enter medicine should receive their college education for free.  Maybe that would be costly, but it could also bring down the cost of health care.

Robert Reich's I'll Be Short 4: At What Price?

I finished Robert Reich's I'll Be Short: Essentials for a Decent Working Society.  Reich had a profound chapter on feminism, as he talked about his wife being denied tenure, how women are not always listened to in male-dominated sayings, ways that he believes that men and women approach issues differently, and the financial struggles of many women in America today.  I especially appreciated how Reich presented himself as growing in his sensitivity to women's issues.

What I'd like to highlight, however, is something that Reich says on page 114:

"Every city or town, every state, every region----indeed, every nation----really has two choices about how to attract global capital.  One choice is to become so inexpensive that global capital is lured by the low cost of doing business: Wages are rock bottom.  Workers get no health or retirement benefits.  Safety regulations don't exist or are barely enforced.  Companies are free to pollute.  Taxes are waived.  This low-cost strategy may indeed attract global capital and create a lot of jobs.  But they'll be lousy jobs.  Families will be condemned to a low standard of living.  The environment will be degraded.  And the entire economy will be precarious because there will always be somewhere else on the globe where the costs are even lower...The other choice is to lure global capital by becoming so productive that even though wages may be high, benefits generous, and regulations costly, capital is eager to come because workers are able to produce more and better products.  They can identify and solve new problems, create ever more efficient ways of doing things, and respond to customer needs more quickly and deftly."

In essence, I agree with Reich on this.  Granted, there may be more than these two options.  For example, there may be other ways to get a cleaner environment than costly and onerous regulations.  And yet, in my opinion, Reich is right that there is a push to dramatically limit wages and benefits for a number of workers because of a belief that doing so would make businesses more competitive.  Yes, it could make them more competitive, but at what price?  A lower standard of living for many American families?  I can see Reich's point that there has to be another way to make our country competitive, and education may be the way to go.

But what does that entail?  That everyone has to major in science or business rather than the humanities?  That may be good for the economy, but it's not good for our soul----since we should know about history and literature.  Perhaps there could be classes that would help humanities majors to apply the same critical-thinking and reasoning skills that they use in their own areas of study to other fields, such as business.

Robert Reich's I'll Be Short 3: Education

In my latest reading of I'll Be Short: Essentials for a Decent Working Society, Robert Reich focused on education.  I have three items.

1.  Somewhere in the book, Reich says that businesses should form apprenticeships for local students who are not planning to go to college.  I cannot find where exactly Reich said that, but that sort of idea corresponds with something that Reich says on page 44: "We'll return to the older view that corporations are, in a sense, citizens of our American community, that citizenship carried duties as well as rights, and that there is and must be an ethical basis to doing business in America."

This caught my attention because of the debate concerning the U.S. Supreme Court decision, Citizens United.  Critics of that decision, many of whom are on the Left, argue that corporations are not citizens and thus lack First Amendment rights (i.e., to make generous political donations, to make Hillary: The Movie, etc.).  When Mitt Romney said that corporations were people, many from the Left attacked him for that.  And so it's ironic to read Robert Reich say that corporations are citizens and have rights.  The problem is that there's a feeling that corporations do not act as citizens, for many believe that they're primarily pursuing their own self-interest, regardless of the social impact of what they do.

2.  Reich appears to support school choice, but only for public schools.  He emphatically denies that he supports vouchers, or at least vouchers that don't put "a lot of extra money behind poorer kids", since that would "drain resources from our public schools" as well as encourage the better students to leave public schools, while the "more needy or troublesome" students are left behind (pages 69-70).  The problem today, as Reich notes, is that many people from poorer communities go to public schools that do not have a lot of money, and so they don't get as good of a start in life as people from richer communities, who go to better-funded public schools.  Not only is the lack of money a problem, Reich contends, but if a person is around other people who (say) don't have plans to go to college, then peer pressure will likely discourage that person from going to college.  A way to address this problem, according to Reich, is to "Let any public school compete to enroll these kids and receive the money that goes with them" (page 69).  To meet their budgets, public schools would have to attract students.  And they probably wouldn't cherry-pick, for every student would have money that goes with him or her.

The problem here, I think, is that schools would cherry-pick, for they would try to attract the best students, since the best students would give them the higher test scores.  As far as I could see, Reich does not talk much about No Child Left Behind, under which public schools have been awarded or penalized according to how their students do on standardized tests.  But Reich does lament that public schools have become testing factories, which he considers sad because he does not believe that standardized tests adequately measure a student's competence or intelligence.  Perhaps a kid does poorly on standardized tests, after all, but he's able to learn and adapt material in other ways.  This brings me to my third item.

3.  Reich argues that people are getting left behind in terms of higher education, as schools narrow their admissions and seek to attract the students who do well academically and score high on standardized tests.  Reich also notes that, in some areas, guidance counselors are so over-worked that they cannot meet the individual needs of students.  I was thinking about whether or not this agreed with my experience.  I was fortunate to have a family and guidance counselors who cared for me and my future.  I also did well in school, and so I got into college with a scholarship.  But, as Reich tells it, there are people who are not so fortunate.  That makes me wonder about what happened to the students at my high school who did not do as well academically.  Did they go to college?  Maybe not.  At the same time, I can't say that everyone who didn't make the top ten lost out on going to college.  I don't think that would be accurate.

Robert Reich's I'll Be Short 2: Solutions and Counter-productive Consequences

In my latest reading of I'll Be Short: Essentials for a Decent Working Society, Robert Reich essentially addresses the issue of whether doing the right thing would have counter-productive consequences for businesses and workers.  You hear from a number of conservatives that it would----only they would disagree with many on the Left about what the right thing is.  Conservatives have argued that raising the minimum wage would result in unemployment; that unions encourage businesses to go overseas to escape union demands, or to hire fewer workers because each worker costs so much under unionization; and that Family and Medical Leave would result in the hiring of fewer women because it would be costly for businesses to train a female worker's replacement while she is on leave.

Reich argues that policies such as flexible work hours actually help businesses because they increase worker morale and productivity, reduce absenteeism, and keep good workers, which means that businesses would not have to spend as much money training new people.

But Reich also acknowledges that there could be such a thing as too much.  If the Earned Income Tax Credit is increased, for example, then businesses may pay their workers less because they know that the "taxpayers would make up the difference" (page 56).  Reich says that raising the minimum wage too high could discourage employers from hiring low-skilled workers or lead them to rely on machines rather than working people.  Reich does not think that unionization would necessarily encourage companies to go overseas, for most low-income people are in the "local service economy", and Reich refers favorably to efforts to unionize health care workers and raise janitors' wages.  And yet, Reich states that "there's a limit to how high unionized wages can go before employers find it cheaper to automate the jobs, cut back on staffing, or not offer the services to begin with" (page 56).  Reich says that the Federal Reserve could stimulate the economy and thus demand for low-wage workers, resulting in higher wages.  But, if that is taken too far, Reich says, the result could be inflation.  Reich then says that "the best way to make work pay is to ensure that everyone has an education sufficient to raise their productivity and thereby warrant higher pay" (page 57).

Reich states that "Together, a somewhat higher minimum wage, a somewhat expanded EITC, more unionization of low-wage workers, faster growth, and better education can lift full-time working families out of poverty" (page 57).  But Reich acknowledges that we may have to try until we get the "ideal combination of these measures", and yet he says that we're "rich enough and clever enough" for such a task (page 57).

I'd also like to note something that Reich says about welfare.  Here, too, Reich seeks to understand conservative positions about that issue.  Reich says that there was at one point resentment among working women towards welfare mothers who were only "slightly poorer" than they, for welfare mothers got to stay at home with their kids and receive welfare, whereas working mothers were out there trying to earn an income for their family after the loss of American manufacturing jobs.  But Reich then goes on to say that, now, many mothers are in the same boat, for the law aims to put welfare recipients into the workforce.  On page 59, Reich states that "direct handouts and income transfers to do the job" result in dependency and are hard to sustain politically, for "there's no political will to carry them out on a large scale."  Reich expresses openness to an idea that I read about in Rick Santorum's It Takes a Family: give the poor capital.

I appreciate Robert Reich's acknowledgement of nuance.  I think that it's important to try to solve problems, while also keeping an eye out for potential drawbacks to proposed solutions.  Both need to be balanced.  We shouldn't decide not to solve problems because some solutions may have drawbacks.  But we should also seeks ways to lessen the drawbacks, or to seek better solutions.

Robert Reich's I'll Be Short 1

I started Robert Reich's 2002 book, I'll Be Short: Essentials for a Decent Working Society.  This book was published in the year that Reich was running for Governor of Massachusetts, as a Democrat.  But Reich did not gain the Democratic nomination, and Republican Mitt Romney was elected Governor of Massachusetts.

In my latest reading, Reich was talking about issues that I have discussed before on this blog, as I've gone through other books: technological advancement and trade getting rid of jobs, the decline of unions, disparity of wealth, etc.  Jobs are lost and wages are depressed, as corporations increase productivity and get more profits for CEOs and shareholders.  (UPDATE: Reich actually did not mention increased productivity, as far as I can remember, but he did mention more profits.) Reich says that he is not for turning the clock back, but he recognizes that the decline of the middle-class and growing disparities of wealth are a problem.  In the 1950's, Reich says, his parents' clothing shop made money when the wages of local factory workers went up, for the factory workers had more money in their pockets to spend.  

It will be interesting to see how Reich proposes that we deal with this problem.  I doubt that he is for decreasing productivity, but is he for limiting the amount that CEOs and shareholders can make?  But, without a profit motive, would CEOs take risks, and would investors invest?  That's a good question, and people of different ideological persuasions would offer different answers.  In my opinion, even if the government takes more in taxes from profits, CEOs and investors are still making more than they would make by not taking risks and investing, so an incentive could still be there. 

One topic that Reich mentions that I was going to address but did not in my write-ups on Paul Krugman's The Conscience of a Liberal was the minimum wage.  On pages 261-262, Krugman attempts to refute the argument that raising the minimum wage will increase unemployment.  He refers to a study by David Card of Berkeley and Alan Krueger of Princeton that says that recent increases in the minimum wage did not result in job losses.  Krugman also notes that the state of Washington has a higher minimum wage than Idaho (higher by three dollars), but The New York Times says that "Small business owners in Washington...say they have prospered far beyond their expectation[, and] Idaho teenagers cross the state line to work in fast-food restaurants in Washington" (the New York Times' words on page 262).  Krugman acknowledges that a fifteen dollar increase in the minimum wage could result in a loss of jobs, but he doubts that a modest increase would do so.

I'd like to close this post by quoting what Reich says on page 21.  "Hey, Reich, you might say.  You were in Washington.  You were a cabinet member in the Clinton administration.  Why didn't you and your friends fix this problem?  Well, we did raise the minimum wage, implement the Family and Medical Leave Act, close sweatshops, get millions of Americans the skills they need for better jobs, and get the economy back on track.  But we didn't get everything done by a long shot."  I've long wondered what exactly Reich thinks about the Clinton Administration, since he was more progressive than some of the prominent people who served in it.  Maybe I'll one day read his memoir about that time, Locked in the Cabinet.  What I got out of that passage in I'll Be Short, however, is that he believes that the Clinton Administration did good things, but it was not enough.