February 21, 2006
Creating Wealth for the Poor
By E.
J. Dionne Jr.
Ron Sims, the county executive in Washington state's King County,
believes government's job is "to help create wealth more efficiently."
That view comes naturally to a leader of the entrepreneurial Seattle
region, which has improved the nation's experience of everything
from technology to coffee.
The late
Paul Offner was animated in the final years of his life by a moral
passion over the failure to address the deep problems of our nation's
poorest young men, particularly African Americans. He left behind
a manuscript, published last month by the Urban Institute, in
which he and two colleagues issued an urgent plea for public action
on behalf of our most disadvantaged fellow citizens.
Oh, and just
as a reminder of how misleading stereotypes can be: Sims is African
American while Offner, who died in 2004, was white.
Meeting Sims
and reading the Urban Institute manuscript provided a bracing
reminder that there is an authentic search going on outside of
conventional politics for the new ideas to animate a new political
era -- precisely what Democrats are supposed to be seeking.
Sims is a
bluff, warm man who gets excited about problem-solving. A Democrat,
he will talk your ear off about the King County government's effort
to work with local employers in creating a new heath care delivery
system. The idea is that government can be a catalyst for negotiation,
research and reform and save both public and private employers
money while producing better health outcomes for consumers.
It fits with
Sims's larger idea that government, far from being a drain on
the nation's wealth, ought to "provide the social infrastructure
and the physical infrastructure to help wealth be created."
He said during lunch here the other day that Democrats should
run under the slogan: "Rebuild America."
Sims notes
that after World War II, the federal government helped unleash
an era of exceptional growth through investments in schools, interstate
highways and higher education. Both India and China are "making
intelligent moves for economic growth" and the United States
cannot stand by and watch. "You need people and brains to
create an economy," he says. "You need transportation
to move an economy. And you need an environmental policy to create
clean air and clean water."
Sims's idea
reminds Democrats that a commitment to active government is not
simply about redistributing wealth. It is also rooted in the historically
sound insight that effective government has always been essential
to robust economic growth. Government, in the Sims formulation,
should be a dynamic player in our nation's economic life.
Yet Democrats
face a paradoxical problem: They find themselves attacked for
being too concerned about redistributing money, yet they are far
too timid in committing themselves to lifting up the very poorest
Americans.
That's where
the Urban Institute study, "Reconnecting Disadvantaged Young
Men," co-authored by Offner with my Georgetown University
colleagues Peter Edelman and Harry J. Holzer, comes in. They write:
"Nearly 3 million less-educated young people between the
ages of 16 and 24 -- about half of whom are young men -- are disconnected
from education and employment in the United States." This
disconnected cohort includes significant numbers of Hispanics
and whites, but African Americans are disproportionately represented
in their ranks. While policymakers have spent much energy on the
problems facing single mothers, they have done little about the
disadvantages facing young men.
The decline
of manufacturing employment means the economy is producing fewer
well-paying jobs for the less-skilled. These disconnected young
men tend to go to the poorest schools, grow up amid concentrated
poverty and in families that often lack fathers, and face persistent
employment discrimination. Face it: The one expensive social program
we have for this group is incarceration. Can't we do better?
The authors
of the report offer resolutely hardheaded solutions. They would
reform education and training programs and work with employers
and other intermediaries to connect these young men to the labor
market. They would expand programs such as the Job Corps that
have "proven track records," and have us do far more
to integrate ex-offenders into the world of work. They would create
much stronger work incentives through income supplements, higher
minimum wages and changes in the child support system.
The Urban
Institute authors can be read as bringing Sims's practical focus
on government's role in wealth creation to the task of expanding
opportunities for the least fortunate among the young. This is
good public policy. My hunch is that it could also be good politics.
©
2006, Washington Post Writers Group
