Moving at the Speed of Creativity - Poverty and Globalism

Poverty and Globalism

Published by Wesley Fryer in economics, politics on January 31st, 2006

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Tim Kane has published a new article in National Review online entitled “Income Relativism: When people care more about politics than helping the poor.”

The issues of income inequalities, empowering the poor to better themselves educationally and economically, bridging the digital divide… these are all important to me. Tim’s thoughts are worth considering. He offers some definitions of words like income relativism and income absolutist to structure his positions and clarify this debate. He writes:

The willingness to conflate real poverty with income inequality is what I call income relativism. If you’re concern is fighting poverty, then you’re an income absolutist. If your concern is politics and class warfare, then you are an income relativist.

I think there is a real crisis for U.S. political and economic liberals closely tied to the arguments Tim makes in this article. I am reminded of a book I read about a year ago, “What’s the Matter with Kansas: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America” by Thomas Frank. “The alternative” to conservative, pro-business and qualified free-market capitalism used to be viewed as a continuum that moved from socialism eventually to communism. State controlled economies are not growth economies. As Thomas Friedman (who is a traditionally-defined liberal economically, I think) observed in “The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century,” it has only been recently as countries like India, China, and Ireland have liberalized their economic policies and moved toward freer markets that their economic growth rates have taken off.

But there are still problems with laizze-faire free market economics. First, of course, we should observe that markets like those in the United States are not truly free and open. I am not an economist, but my perception is that there are still a large number of regulations and restrictions which constrain trade, particularly in agriculture.

Second and more important point is that all sectors of society do not appear to be basking in the divine, profitable light of the new economy. Take the situation of New Orleans and hurricane evacuees. Many of those who found temporary shelter here in my hometown of Lubbock, Texas, were reportedly third and fourth generation welfare families. I think a strong case can be made that these people need an opportunity as well as economic incentive to move out of the welfare state.

This is a huge issue, and I will not pretend to either understand all the economic issues or have “the solution” clearly in mind, but I do think that at the core of these issues is education. Why do we need to bridge the digital divide and provide students with challenging, engaging and robust educational opportunities? One reason is enhanced vocational opportunities. Tim seems to brush this idea aside, writing:

An absolutist is obsessed with better education, because enhancing skills among the less skilled is the only way to give them dignity. It’s the old “teach a man to fish” approach. But that requires shining the spotlight of widespread illiteracy on the teachers unions.

I don’t think you have to be an “income absolutist” in Tim’s terms to be obsessed with better education. We DO have to teach men and women how to fish. But we currently appear to still have a welfare state that has not figured out how empower people to rise up and out of it.

I don’t know what all the answers are in this context, but I do feel strongly that a high quality education for ALL students is a major part of the formula. Unfortunately, by ranting and legislating about test scores, politicians and educational leaders are NOT getting this job done effectively. We need leaders who understand the fundamental contradiction between the classroom outcomes of high stakes testing, and our need for helping students develop authentic 21st century literacy skills. So far, I haven’t heard a state or national level leader who is understanding and articulating this vision.

I’m still looking.

On this day..

1 Comment »

http://www.psesd.org/weblogs/edtech/ Conn McQuinn

I certainly take great issue with Tim’s comment that being obsessed with better education means “…shining the spotlight of widespread illiteracy on the teachers unions.” That’s a widely-accepted leap of logic that has no factual basis to support it. Just in the last week the federal government released a huge research report that showed that student performance in public schools is no worse than the performance of equivalent students (adjusting for demographic characteristics) in private schools. If schools with no teachers unions get the same (or worse) results, then you can’t reasonably drop the blame on the unions.

As H.L. Mencken wrote, “For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, obvious, and wrong.” Teachers unions may be hindering some of the solutions we’re looking for, but they are just one of a dizzying array of issues we have to deal with. If we focus too narrowly on what we perceive the source of trouble is, we risk invoking another quote – “The chief source of problems is solutions.” That one is from Eric Sevareid. Somehow, it makes me think of NCLB!