Mickey Kaus is a senior editor at the new Republic and a regular contributor to the Washington monthly. His writing concentrates on social and legal issues with an emphasis most recently on welfare reform. In his most recent book the end of equality, mr. Cows argues that the cause of entrenched poverty and despair in American cities is not primarily an issue of economics. but one of class isolation he has developed the concept of civil liberalism. What you defined in terms of bringing people together across racial and class boundaries through such programmes is national service and National Health. I'm sure we'll hear hear more about that in just a couple of minutes. Professor Ronald Walters is a full professor and chair of the Department of political science at Howard University. He has a long distinguished career inside and outside academe as an intellectual leader in the Civil Rights Movement. He was a senior advisor to Jesse Jackson and Mr. Jackson's presidential bids in 1984 and 1988. It's fight for civil rights has been an international one. As made evident by his important role as senior advisor to the United Nations security Council special Committee Against apartheid. A position he held from 1977 to 1989 his opinions on the current presidential race are sought offer on a variety of national media programs including the MacNeil Lehrer NewsHour a warm welcome to both of our guests and we will begin with mister cows. Thank you very much. I to believe in civil discourse and I read of the controversy surrounding the last in the lecture series. I have a feeling that what passes for incivility in Minnesota is I merely friendly initiation in New York and Washington, but we'll see I want to start with a quote from Daniel Patrick Moynihan the prolific scholar and senior senator from New York. I'm not a big fan of many things Senator Moynihan has done the secret. He has been crappy Seminole important figure for three decades in dealing with the problems of poverty in inner cities are a friend of mine. Set confided to me once that the secret of his success is that he always appears to be drunker than he actually is but he's a brilliant man and he said one thing and his book is latest book on welfare that I think. Is so profound it's probably worth re-electing him in perpetuity. And it was this he said the central conservative truth is that it is culture not politics that determines the success of a society the central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself. So my first contention today is that this concept of culture is Central to confronting the problem of poverty in urban areas. Now, what do I mean by culture people talk a lot more easily about culture today than they did a few decades ago. It's become a staple of business management advice literature, you know bold CA CEOs telling their corporations. I want a new culture and make it snappy but it's still a slightly controversial subject when applied to the differences among nations and it's especially controversial apply to the problem of poverty where there is talk, which and I agree with this concept that there is a culture of poverty growing up in her inner cities. The reason it's kind of her. So I think is to fold a people think that if you say there's a culture of poverty you're saying that people are poor through their own fault and they think that you're saying but the problem is insoluble that there's a you can't do anything about a culture of poverty so we might as well give up neither consequence follows. If there is a culture of poverty that doesn't mean that people who were in it are responsible for it. They didn't create segregation. They didn't create isolated housing projects. They didn't create the welfare system and I'm certainly not saying because people are in a culture of poverty a can of scape ore to heck with them as Moynihan says cultures can be changed. They can be changed through government action and there is a culture of poverty another word for this. Call Cherise the underclass that sort of an unpleasant word because it implies people can't get out of an underclass once they're in it. And of course that's untrue people get out of it all the time of perhaps a better word ghetto poverty. That's the word Professor William Julius Wilson uses either way, I mean that in under class or ghetto poor neighborhoods Across America, there's a system of values and habits A system that virtually in insurers impoverishment when you have a community in which 90% of the children are born into fatherless families were over 60% of the population is on Welfare for young teenage girls, simply expect to become pregnant before they turn 20 + Austin before they leave High School where work and the discipline of work is often unknown in the home and the entrepreneurial Drive is channeled into gangs and crime. Then you have a problem that can't be solved by the conventional means we used to solve poverty in this. namely jobs and cash transfer payments How big is this underclass I'm talking about. Well, the best definition the most widely accepted his from Isabel Sawhill at the urban Institute. She identified neighborhoods according to form pictures of what she called dysfunctional Behavior. They were numbers of single women with children welfare. Dependency Dropout rates and joblessness or a regular employment among adult men and she found their 880 neighborhoods in the country that met these criteria. They had 2.5 million people in about half of those people were poor. Now. The first thing is obviously this is a tiny a small part of the overall poverty problem 3/33 million Americans were poor only 2.5 million living and he's under class neighborhoods. But this is the most intractable part of the body problem. It's the center of long-term poverty in America and it's also the most destructive part for our social fabric. Is the underclass Black by most measures anyway, you cut it these under class neighborhoods break down roughly sixty percent African-American Wednesday wife 150s panic. And I think when you look at how the underclasses formed it's impossible to take out the notion of race for African Americans according to William Julius Wilson who helped Pioneer to the study of this area the story of how the underclass was formed. Go something like this when Southern blacks migrated North they settle because of segregation in the urban ghettos, then beginning in the 1960s two things happen one. Well paying unskilled jobs began to move out of the cities and to the suburbs and Two Hearted by the civil rights laws middle-class and working-class blacks began to leave the central City's for the suburbs as well. This out of migration left the poorest elements of African-American Society behind now isolated in freed from the restraints that the black middle-class had quite self-consciously imposed without jobs in Role Models. Those left in the ghettos drifted out of the regular labor market. The problem I have with Wilson stories that have leaves a question hanging a question that one of the scholars Wilson sites does a switch is how were the people who were left in the inner cities able to survive? What was the the substitute for the jobs that have left and discolored Jon Cozart of the University of North Carolina has an answer welfare programs is the answer cuz start a note that by 1982 in the central City's there were more black single mothers who weren't working then who were and 80% of these not working single mothers were getting some form of welfare. Mainly Aid to families with dependent children, which is our main welfare program. And which is by definition of ailable almost virtually entirely to single mothers to Broken homes. There's a small program that that is available to two-parent families, but it's very restricted and it's only 10% of afdc welfare is what provided welfare is what in effect hold the least motivated residents of the inner cities that it was okay to stay put when everybody else was getting out and getting on with their lives. So I don't think Marlin Fitzwater was entirely wrong when he blamed ghetto poverty on welfare programs welfare not have been the main cause of the underclass but it enabled the underclass form and it is unable to culture of poverty to survive. And what is it? Where did this analysis and leave us in terms of solutions? I think most populations today recognized that the old Solutions won't work. One of y'all Solutions is giving people cash. This is very popular in the sixties among both the right Milton Friedman and among politicians of the left. But if we have a culture in which teenagers who grow up assuming that their lives will involve having a baby and going and Welfare, then it's insane to give them more welfare to do just that so just get richer people and more people having babies and going on welfare. North does the evidence seemed to support the idea that economic growth jobs in tight labor-market by themselves will cure the culture of poverty. It's true that in the 1980s in the hottest Metropolitan economies unemployment among disadvantage young black men who are looking for work and that's a crucial qualification tell dramatically from about 40.5% to 7% Now that's a dramatic drop but as the conservative writer Charles Murray has pointed out the percentage of young black man who weren't looking for work at all, which is the core of the underclass. I'm barely buzzed. It dropped slightly in the hottest economies button slightly less hot economies. It didn't drop it all and in areas with unemployment rates of 5.6% unemployment rate would be happy to have today the percentage of black men not looking for work actually Rose. Similarly in Boston, which was the hottest of the hot economies after a half a decade of spectacular growth the percent of black families headed by a single woman dropped only slightly from 57% to 55% Keep in mind that we can never hope to get an economy as hot as Boston's in the entire country for a sustained. Of time in the Boston economy. Even in Boston eventually crashed, what about the so-called empowerment agenda of the new Left Right consensus in favor of Enterprise zones and tenant ownership all the candidates in the current race indoors Enterprise on concluding Ross Perot be a little different versions of it, but they're all say they're for Enterprise zones. And for the overarching idea that Enterprise islands are part of which is the idea of Community Development the idea that you can restore through government initiatives to get out at centers of jobs employment and a Viper in Civic life. My attitude toward Enterprise Zone do they have the virtue of chicken soup, which is they can't hurt. We should give him a try see if they work but we should recognize when we're starting this that Enterprise owns and the whole idea of Community Development probably is not the answer the idea of making the ghettos Bloom with a with jobs and prosperity is probably quixotic and maybe even perverse Jack Kemp who proposes Enterprise owns obviously admits that big business isn't going to move to the ghettos just because they're offered a few tax breaks what he argues is that if you offer the tax breaks people within Ghetto areas will will suddenly come forward and then the entrepreneurs in those areas will will foreign businesses and do keto full bloom from within a wheel those who were in the poverty culture flock to take advantage of of President. Bush's 5% refundable tax credit on wages. Will they suddenly open? Will they open community-based micro-enterprises is Clinton provides enough credit and provides pure support groups as he says he's going to do Odyssey some will but the question is will enough to transform the keto the same thing the same problem faced is 10 and ownership. It's a potentially transformative experience to own your own apartment, but will it make enough of a difference? Does it make a difference if The mother in a housing project owns her own apartment. If she pays the rent with an afdc check intended manage Cochran Gardens, which is showpiece of empowerment strategy. 40% of the household heads are still on welfare only 27% work at another of camp showpieces bromley-heath in Boston. The unemployment rate is 81% Obviously pain management at least hasn't been enough to transform transform these communities. Although by all accounts. He's housing projects are much safer than the normal housing project Nicholas. Good book called The Promised Land about the great black migration North says there was already happening and was working as people not people staying in the ghettos and making them Prosper people getting out of the ghettos for a better life. One of the most successful anti-poverty programs is Chicago's Patrol project which takes people from the inner cities gets them housing in the suburbs after five years over half of the of the name a single mothers would never work before and their lives have jobs by standards of any poverty programs. That's a fantastic success. So the question is The danger of the empowerment Enterprise Zone Community Development strategy is that it sends the perverse signal to people who would otherwise get out of the ghettos and have a better life that they should stay in the ghettos and engage in the probably futile attempt to make those areas Prosper may send the wrong signal it goes against the natural flow, which is to get out for those left behind in the ghettos. I've argued that the key to transforming the culture of poverty is to change the welfare system that sustains it may not have created it but it sustains it. The ideas of welfare enables the culture of poverty and Welfare in my ton enable the culture of poverty. What would such a nun enabling program look like I argue with you mean something like this. It means replacing afdc and all other cash like welfare programs that assist the able-bodied 4 with a single simple outfit from the government an offer of employment for every American over 18 who wants it in a useful public job at a wave slightly below the minimum wage, but at a wage supplemented in both the public and the private sector by the government so that everyone who works full-time has enough money to raise a normal sized family with dignity out of poverty in the system. If you could work needed money the government wouldn't give you a check which is welfare. It wouldn't give you a check in and try to cajole or threatened you into working at off work there or at the training it off. It would give you a location of several government job sites if you showed up and work, You paid for your work. If you didn't show up, you wouldn't be paid. It's simple unlike welfare WPA works progress administration style jobs will be available to everybody men and women married and single know that wouldn't be getting Auntie family incentives is Donald Trump wanted to show up and work for a poverty-level wage. He could to are they be open to everybody but I'll just see Donald Trump wouldn't show up the jobs with themself rationing sell to those who needed the most in the key thing is that the same requirement would apply to single mothers daycare would be provided but not cash mother's to would be expected to work as wood two-thirds of American Mothers young women, playing single motherhood would know that they couldn't count on afdc welfare to sustain them and the prospect of juggling motherhood in and and a job maybe not a very lucrative job would make them think twice most I think would make better choices than then they're making out why not stay in school and A little later when you're earning more money when I married a breadwinner and have two incomes the natural and sentenced to form two-parent families to reassert themselves, but even single pair even single parents who took advantage of the WPA jobs would have something that welfare mothers can't have now which is dignity. They could hold their heads up cuz they will be earning the money that they that they lived on. One thing to say about this program is it is very expensive. My best estimate. Is it cost about fifty billion dollars a year more than we spending now, that's one problem considered is half of it is that they don't want to spend the money, but it'll be worth it because the single parent culture of the underclass simply could not survive in this regime. It'll be worth it for another reason as well. And that's the larger point. I'd like to leave you with which is which is this and that's the larger pointed at this book that I just finished writing. It sad. We live in a capitalist society and capitalism as the Communists ex-communist of Eastern Europe are discovering is a package deal. You can't have capitalism without considerable disparities in income equality. Now, what should our reaction be to this fact that you can't have capitalism without income inequality and I would argue growing income inequality. Should we engage in an effort to try to redistribute incomes and make money more equal? I don't think so. I think the right answer is that at the grey? British historian and socialist RH tawney who said what does repulsive is not that one man should learn more than others for where community of environment and a common education and habit of life. I've read a common tradition of respect and consideration. These details of the counting-house are forgotten or ignored. What is repulsive is that sunglasses should be excluded from the heritage of civilization, which I just enjoy and that the fact of human Fellowship which is Ultimate and profound should be obscured by economic contrast with your trivial and superficial. I would argue the Liberals in America has been too preoccupied with what Tony called the details at the counting-house and they should pursue a strategy instead of creating a public life in which money doesn't matter as much in which we have equal Dignity of Wichita detox, which is Which is the best word for the social equality not income equality, the existence of an urban underclass is it is itself a profound violation of this idea of social equality. It is also the most obvious cause for another type of social equality, which is the social inequalities. Fear the inner cities and move out to the isolated suburbs where they begin to forget that and things happening in the inner cities. If you saw the underclass problem, that is the key first step to restoring social equality in society as a whole it would also the process of divorce in both directions simulating the underclass would remove the most acute threat to the public sphere but it wouldn't ruin accelerate if your simulation of the underclass for one thing it would immediately make the ghetto pool or less poor poor people always rely on public facilities if we create We we create a public sphere of life people with minimal incomes would have richer lies. You could might still earn $5 an hour, but you couldn't the simple way to think of it as you still earn $5 an hour. You make a party-line come but you could walk in the Parks again. You could have used some schools again because the culture of poverty would have disappeared. We have a new story to tell people who growing up in the ghetto. What can we tell them now? We can tell them if they go to school and work hard. They can be lawyers doctors and Executives. Well, some can too many realize that they can't maybe in the old unionized industrial economy. We could tell them they could take an unskilled blue collar job stick with it and enjoy a comfortable middle-class life, but not in today's pay for skills world if we make money their goal, they may rational conclude the drugs and crime of their best chance to get it now. We can't tell them they'll be rich or even a four or even comfortable we can offer them at least a material minimum and a good shot of climbing the ladder and we can't run disrespect in his 1982 book the underclass kennel that interviewed Michael jr. Antonetti a thirty-seven-year-old Puerto Rican who lived in a Brooklyn housing project antonetti worked as a janitor. I have friends. She complained their strong yet. They're not going to work. No way. They could rent they get food stamps. They get welfare checks. They say to me. What are you going to work for their supposed to work? Like I do I go to work at 5 in the morning right now. I could send my wife over there and she could tell welfare a junior like me Junior left me. She would get a check. I won't do it. I think it's fair to say we will never achieve through money redistribution or any other means the economic equality that would enable a janitor like Junior antonetti and a banker with a stock option plan to afford the same level of housing clothing or even education that we can achieve it Society were a junior antonetti. Even if you only makes a barely adequate living deals and is felt by others to be and by and large is treated as just as good as a banker because he works just Thanks.