by John Galt » Fri Jan 04, 2019 10:26 am
what changes do you think need to happen? how can public policy be of influence here?
in general i think moynihan was right, but his report gave no recommendations on what to do as the point of the report was to show a problem not any solutions, even if he thought of solutions. he was then accused of simply blaming the victim, even though he made it clear there was blame on whites because of the caste system which was only recently at the time dismantled
nixon's "Family Assistance Plan" was one thing moynihan thought would be good to help everyone. nixon called it a negative income tax, but in the end it was minimum guaranteed income. tricky dick put that forward. think of where we've come since. anyway.
to try and fix our problems instead of helping we punished wrongdoing, no matter how slight. i'm sure there was racist intent by many in this, but others were genuinely thinking it would make things better. and so we have increased sevenfold from the 1970s our incarcerated populations. we had so many we had to look to private industry to try and help out with handling this inmate population. and this population was mostly black
there are problems with the black community, and i think moynihan is right in that it stems from the breakdown of the black family. the solutions to this will take a long time but it involves 1. family planning (contraception freely available to all), 2. increased incentives to marriage, 3. increases in income for working/minimum wage/minimum income, 4. decriminalization of drugs, 5. changes to what a "felony" is (basically needs violent crime, and heavy time (currently it's any crime where someone could be put away for a year or more, even if they aren't)), 5. changes to policies in prison to favor rehabilitation and stopping recidivism over retribution, 6. ending federal support of 4 year colleges and instead giving all that money to free adult education at community/technical colleges, and 7. ending housing covenants regarding drug use (with a newly changed definition of felony) non-felonious criminal past.
i think saz is correct that gang culture comes from a lack of authority, but it's from both a lack of a police presence and a lack of fathers. and quite often the fathers are in jail. but it's kinda hard to break a cycle where they are given a scarlet F on their forehead and forbidden from working in many places. if its violent then all means, mark them. if it's not though, forgiveness is a powerful thing; i think some guy who is pictured in churches said some stuff about it. and they need to improve their station and move up in the world, and right now they need money to do that. i think it would help all communities to have technical adult education paid for by the state (and things like "teaching 6 year olds" is fine for a technical degree, because "software engineering" should be technical as well and that takes actual brainpower iamverysmart), while academia can be paid for by private funds. if they are given the means and opportunity to turn things around, and marriage (or perhaps cohabitation with dependents? i mean, i don't like "marriage" as an institution either, but children need a father and a mother, as all things need balance) more is heavily incentivized (tax breaks/minimum income increases), i think the basic unit of the black family -- as well as failing white families, which is increasingly common -- can start to come together and have good male influences on their children. then gang culture kinda slips away
Americans learn only from catastrophe and not from experience. -- Theodore Roosevelt
My life has become a single, ongoing revelation that I haven’t been cynical enough.
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