social solutions to poverty

Dr. Scott Myers Lipton conducted a session on social solutions to poverty. He presented some interesting facts. He flew down from San Jose on invitation.

Apparently, he is a clearcut democrat as he didn't support policies by Bush administration regarding acting as per the Church to reduce poverty. Besides, he also appreciated the Clinton era for the reduction of poverty. One of the significant potshots at the Bush adminisitration included removal of the word poverty by Mr. Bush as it is too abstract. I didn't know that trivia - lol !

According to him, the top ten effective and interesting ways to eliminate poverty were:
10. Provide assets to young women and men, as suggested by Thomas Paine (1796) and recently by Michael Sherraden (2000)
9. Living wages, as indicated in Robert Pollin (1998) and Matthew Carrey (1830)
8. 40 Acre and a mule, as suggested by The Freedman's Bureau w.e.p. Du Bois (1901) and Randall Robinson (2000)
7. Worker owned cooperatives, as suggested by Huey Newton
6. Public works, as being worked upon in the Gulf coast Civic work project
5. Centers of civic engagement, as suggested by Huey Long (1935)
4. Re-distribute wealth - of course in a sensible way - basically a capped taxation
3. End hunger, as suggested by EPIC by Upton Sinclair in 1934
2. Strengthen unions (by far this was one of the stupidest one I must have heard from him)
1. Economic bill of Human rights, as suggested by Martin and Franklin.

What I didn't like about the presentation was that in order to be sensational he was taking some of the assumptions to the extreme. He was making one feel bad about the DJIA reaching about 13k. Some of the facts were not being presented in the correct light.

Also, I didn't like his emphasis on the US focus. I rarely agree with Mr. Bush. But, on this one, I definitely do agree - the removal of the word Hunger because it is truly abstract (especially in the US context). If we look at the Gates' efforts and Buffet's help and their interview on Charlie Rose show, we will realise that they focussed their efforts to help across races, across geographies, across gender, and across world in absolute terms. That sounds more intelligent than a mere US focus. Also, I wonder why Mr. Lipton did this today - was it for sensation?...was it for attraction from the crowd? ... cos he mentioned that he did some work in Africa, etc. however, he repeatedly emphasized on America....which was something that bothered me. Social solutions must be across the board and not just restricted to the US. I am not against the US but just vouching for a universal solution. Huge imbalances lead to issues such as the World Wars and hence, the concern.

I feel that as long as the society is material-minded, it will be difficult to reduce this gap and it might keep on increasing. Of course, Clinton administration did some good things to reduce poverty proportions and create new jobs and the Raegan and Bush administrations did some stupid things to increase poverty proportions. However, some of the above remediations are not good enough - for instance the strengthening of the unions.

This reminds me of his presentation of fact that form 1947 to 1979, the poor got richer faster than the rich got richer. This is an ideal climate which we wish to attain. However, after 1979, the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. Thus, there are few historical incidents that lead to this. The housing market was about to collapse in this time frame when the administration came up with some measures to forgive mistakes by the bankers and bail them out. There was an adverse supply shock in form of oil problem. After that, there started forming a lobby of pre-boomers who started asking each other for favors. Also, the boomers were more and more material minded (This was the culture that cherished Madonna et al. ) Thus, the poor got poorer and rich got richer in this second era.

The whole presentation also took me back to the discussion of Nickel and Dimed book by Barbara Ehrenreich.