What Can Government Do To Promote Upward Mobility?
A recent provocative column by Matt Miller of the Washington Post takes the Republicans to task for exalting the ways in which all their stars arose from humble circumstances on the backs of labor from their parents. But the question he poses is, how is the classic American story of upward mobility to exist today when the overall economic situation is so grim and the willingness on the part of Republicans, and yes Democrats, to spend more money on education, and on educational equality, is at a low ebb. We have tapped out the system, and have nothing to show for the past investments in education.
What then should be done? The first point here is to understand that the stakes are very high. All the work on early childhood education shows that high levels of investment at a very young age yield the highest level of return. Getting students into this system therefore is critical. But where? The Miller column does not say a word about either unions or charter schools. My own sense is that in places like NYC, the strong union system for both administrators and principals is a huge impediment to the improvement of education, with its constant stress on strong tenure protection and suffocating work rules, which combine to hurt education. Charter schools, which are largely free of these constraints, have a huge pent up demand. However, the strong level of union opposition to charter schools has made it ever more difficult to open up new ones, which would put the public schools in a position where they would either have to improve their performance or find themselves out of clientele. Making the educational system competitive would not require the additional dollars that Miller calls for. It would only require that the dollars that are committed to public education be spent in ways that do not enrich teachers who are protected by state laws, but rather the pupils who could benefit by education and choice. These structural changes would outperform any effort to throw more money into the current system.
The second piece of the puzzle deals with the returns from education, which depend on marginal students being able to find a place in the workforce. Right now the protections that are afforded to workers under various labor laws do wonders for those who have already secured their places. But they shrink the overall size of the economy and thus reduce the opportunities at the bottom. For these purposes, it does not matter whether we focus on the minimum wage or overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act, or the perceived costliness of the future health care forms under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which has yet to be implemented. The bottom line remains the same: the protections that are afforded to incumbents become barriers to entry for the most vulnerable of the population. Once they see that doors are closed to them, why work harder in school when there is no payoff at the end of the road?
Here again what is needed is not additional expenditures, but a removal of restrictions on gainful employment. These are not bromides. They offer the only path to success. The government cannot inspire parents to work hard for their children. But what it can do is pare down the size of its own apparatus so that parents themselves have a chance to increase incomes, which they can then use to advance the position of their children. The consequence of our current policies is a falling tide strands all ships. A combination of targeted reforms and general growth supply the answer that thus far seems to have eluded Democrats and Republicans alike.
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Comments:
Jun '10
Re: What Can Government Do To Promote Upward Mobility?
"All the work on early childhood education shows that high levels of investment at a very young age yield the highest level of return."
Do you include Headstart? There are mixed reviews, but here is an example of the position I have most often seen:
"A recently [2010] released experimental evaluation by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found that Head Start has had little to no effect on cognitive, socio-emotional, health, and parenting outcomes of participating children."
Mar '12
Re: What Can Government Do To Promote Upward Mobility?
Beyond the labor policies that Richard rightly points out benefit incumbents at the expense of new entrants, the two policy areas that have most damaged upward mobility (and even lower middle class viability) are (1) open borders immigration, both legal and illegal, which has reduced real income and status of blue collar work; and (2) environmental/zoning laws that have made mining/manufacturing operations economically unviable especially in or near urban corridors. Education is marketed as a panacea to the effects of these policies, but I cannot see any demonstrable case that it is so, except for the relatively small numbers of workers in schools themselves.
Dec '11
Re: What Can Government Do To Promote Upward Mobility?
Do we actually have a problem with income mobility?
Aug '10
Re: What Can Government Do To Promote Upward Mobility?
If the Bard were surveying the situation today, would Henry IV have contained the following line ?
"...first thing we do, let's kill all the teachers..."
While the admin is doing all they can to close private vo-tech schools to show that their intuitions are exactly wrong as is the usual government approach.
We are graduating millions of high school level literates, with degrees of no use to anyone, indoctrinated by a clerisy of tenured liberals, and they have built a mountain of debt estimated to be a trillion dollars.
Kill the Leviathan and all it's taproots of support.
Unwinding the environementals is going to be as hard as rewriting ADA.
But they are all laden with stupidity and overengineered social architecture and they need to be undone. That will take a president of superhuman powers.
Jan '11
Re: What Can Government Do To Promote Upward Mobility?
Should the government promote upward mobility?
Or is it better (although less satisfying) to simply stop getting in the way?
Sep '11
Re: What Can Government Do To Promote Upward Mobility?
I think you're making a mistake in equating education with prosperity. If I have a graduate degree, am I more prosperous than some schlub with only a bachelor's?
Is that true if my master's is in Puppetry, and said schlub's bachelor's is in chemical engineering?
Will the sad sack with the ChemE degree make more than a stiff with a high school diploma? If that high school stiff runs a decent business--even a pizza joint--the answer may well be 'no.'
I propose that a far more effective measure of the likelihood of future prosperity is the presence in the home of a functional role model. I don't know of any research on the subject (I dare say it would be career suicide in academia), but I'd bet that poor kids with a working father do far better over the course of their lifetimes than middle class kids living with a single mom.
May '11
Re: What Can Government Do To Promote Upward Mobility?
I can't remember the last time I met a bartender who didn't have a college degree.
Far too many people waste their time obtaining worthless degrees.
So, which misguided incentives need to be removed ?
Aug '12
Re: What Can Government Do To Promote Upward Mobility?
Sowell has cited recent CBO studies using IRS data to show that we do not actually have a mobility problem. IRS data which tracks individual income over years shows that there is a great deal of mobility out of poverty. It also showed that the most volitile movement is in the top income bracket (most who enter it leave it).
Jun '10
Re: What Can Government Do To Promote Upward Mobility?
School vouchers, school vouchers, and more school vouchers.
Feb '11
Re: What Can Government Do To Promote Upward Mobility?
A huge part of the problem is the insane growth of *credentialism*.
There are talented workers in factories who will never get promoted to shift supervisor because they lack a college degree. There are talented bank officers who *do* have college degrees but will never be considered for Region VP jobs because they don't have MBAs. And there are brilliant people *with* MBAs who won't get top investment banking jobs because the MBA is not from an Ivy League school.
Basically, we as a society have allowed the universities to establish themselves as toll collectors, similar to the medieval Robber Barons who blocked rivers and allowed transit only after payment.
Aug '12
Re: What Can Government Do To Promote Upward Mobility?
I can answer best by giving a couple of examples.
1. Not long ago, a bunch of us friends got together. One guy was considering starting a small manufacturing business. Fifty years ago, it would have been easy: just buy the equipment and set up shop. Today it's a different story. We started going through all the approvals of all the various regulatory agencies he'd have to deal with. In the end, he discarded the idea not because it was unworkable or unmarketable, but simply because of the heavy hand of government regulation.
2. I love to make sausage and smoke it. My friends and family rave about it. But can you even begin to imagine the regulatory hoops I'd have to jump through in order to turn it into a business.
So the answer is simple: to promote upward mobility the government should get rid of about 90% of the regulations.
Feb '11
Re: What Can Government Do To Promote Upward Mobility?
What is the purpose of upward mobility?
More stuff? Surely one grows out of that desire.
More creature comforts? Where's the line between necessity and luxury?
Freedom and wherewithal to be generous? Moral hazards abound.
When is enough, enough? I want the freedom to pursue happiness my way. I do not want to be judged, envied, nor pitied for where I find it.
Since in order to promote anything a government must first measure and judge and then compare outcomes, I say, do your job in providing security and infrastructure and BACK OFF. De gustibus non est disputandum .
Apr '12
Re: What Can Government Do To Promote Upward Mobility?
I must say, I'm rather sick of hearing folks demand a college degree-- from military veterans!-- to prove they're able "to show up on time."
Oh, goodness, yes, let me waste thousands of dollars to get a degree that isn't worth the time it demanded, let alone what it cost, to show you that I can show up on time after six years of doing that with actual punishment as an alternative.
Of course, when I growl at folks who suggest it, they defend that they do that because it's a way to weed out the obvious problems-- like the high school dropouts with a criminal record as long as my arm. They can't "discriminate" against those, so they demand expensive BS.
Apr '12
Re: What Can Government Do To Promote Upward Mobility?
ATR has a point-- my husband is on year three of setting things up to open a gaming shop. I'm still not sure it will ever happen, just because we're not sure if we'll be able to afford to set things up to "have people who like games sell game stuff to other people who like games."
Jul '11
Re: What Can Government Do To Promote Upward Mobility?
Create the conditions for prosperity. Remove barriers that keep small businesses from being created or profitable. Once businesses thrive, employment demand will increase and create the demand for the education that our academic system can answer.
Trying to educate people for jobs that do not exist in fields of study yet to be determined is putting the cart before the horse.
Nov '10
Re: What Can Government Do To Promote Upward Mobility?
mask
Sowell has cited recent CBO studies using IRS data to show that we do not actually have a mobility problem. IRS data which tracks individual income over years shows that there is a great deal of mobility out of poverty. It also showed that the most volitile movement is in the top income bracket (most who enter it leave it). · 5 hours ago
Has Sowell published any recent data on this? I've heard/read him saying this over the years, but a recent theme of the Left has been that it is not true, or at least not true any longer. I'd love to have a recent source on this subject.
Jul '10
Re: What Can Government Do To Promote Upward Mobility?
?Isn't this Conservatism 101. Unleash people from government and they thrive. They create. They prosper.
In Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick, a description of North Korea in the 90's, a thoroughly depressing landscape is brightened by the fact that in all this complete emptiness, a market spontaneously arises, people in it thrive, it grows, and new and unheard of items become available. And no regulation - of any kind! If it can happen in North Korea (granted far from Pyongyang), it ought to be able to happen here.