Reading Response 9/15

Short reflection on the readings: Up until the Manski lecture notes, I was becoming quite disheartened by the authenticity of the readings (especially the various and extremely polar-opposite statistics presented in opposing view points’ articles). Each reading seemed to present it’s own mangled version of some sort of potential reality that, as I read more and more, seemed to become farther and farther from. The more you see the less you know, I guess. Each way to “fix” poverty seemed extraordinarily confident and had a very specific formula that the government would need to adhere to, and then….voila! No more poverty. However, being an International Studies major, I appreciate that in Education Policy Studies, researchers try and fix the problem, not just critique it. Interesting. I appreciated the Manski article because it explained to me the context in which I was reading all of these articles and the difficulties policy makers have with obstacles like: media coverage and politics as well as the tactics they employ such as: conventional assumptions and wishful extrapolations.

Application of the readings: While I understand the effects that things like education level of parents, income of parents and inefficient welfare programs have on poverty in the United States, I believe that there is a larger concept that controls many of the smaller influencing factors of poverty. In nearly every article, inequality is said to be a major influence. Also in every article, the cycle of inequality begins to spiral out of control around the 80’s. The racialization of crime with Reagan’s War on Drugs caused single-mother households (which contributes greatly to impoverished children, low levels of maternal economic achievement and thus lower educational achievement of the child; it has also caused the economic locking-out of black and brown men with the ‘felon’ label). The 80’s is also when neoliberalization and global competition took hold of world economies, moving manufacturing jobs abroad and taking away well-paid and reliable forms of unionized work for the uneducated. The 80’s is also when (according to former Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich) inequality began to raise at staggering rates. The 80’s is also when welfare reform took place which, according to Katz, is in part due to the christanization of the Republican party and the demonizing practices they employed to “reform” welfare.