Category Archives: Social Policy

Misguided drug policies can create tragic, unintended consequences

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Published in The News Tribune, November 8, 2012

As part of an introductory course in economics, I used to teach my students about the unintended consequences that usually accompany well-intentioned attempts to make particular transactions illegal.  I would draw on current drug policy to link theory with reality.

One thing that I learned from these conversations was that many students felt that discussing the pros and cons of drug legalization was immoral.  This sort of belief is one of the challenges we’ve faced in confronting failures in our drug policies.

Tuesday’s passage of initiatives in Washington (I-502) and Colorado to legalize recreational marijuana usage offer promising signs that change is now in the air.  Continue reading →

Rising inequality partly to blame for stagnant economy

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Published in The News Tribune, October 25, 2012

Are we better off today than we were four years ago?   For too many people, the answer is no.

As disappointing as this fact is, it’s mostly due to the cycles that modern economies are prone to.  Four years ago we had just passed a cycle’s crest; today we’re slowly climbing out of its trough.  To compare these two periods is to contrast two points in the economy’s short term ups and downs.

This detail of course doesn’t make it any easier for those suffering through this cycle.  It’s just that such a perspective doesn’t reveal much about the true direction in which our economy is headed.   Continue reading →

A citizen’s worth cannot be measured by simple arithmetic

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Published in The News Tribune, September 21, 2012

A colleague of mine bought a cup of coffee at the local coffee joint this week.  A moment later, cup in hand, she left the shop only to return a minute later to pay for three more.  She’d seen some contract workers outside cleaning up campus in anticipation of the pending arrival of our students.  On the spot she somehow decided that these newcomers to campus would appreciate some coffee.  After paying for their three cups, she informed them coffee would await them during their break, and then off she went to put in a day’s work.

Now I don’t know if Jeannie is among the 47 percent of Americans who don’t owe income taxes.  But I do know that paying taxes is only one of many ways that citizens make valuable contributions to our society. Continue reading →

Court ruling could leave state’s poor without access to health care,

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Published in The News Tribune, August 2, 2012

The Supreme Court’s decision this summer to uphold the most controversial part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) – the “mandate” requiring individuals to buy health insurance – was both historic and a critical victory for those battling to achieve universal health care in the United States.

However, while most of the public’s attention has rightly focused on the Court’s determination that the federal government can indeed require us to buy health insurance, this wasn’t the only provision in the ACA that opponents argued was unconstitutional:   They also claimed that the ACA’s expansion of Medicaid to more of the nation’s poor coerced states’ participation by setting the penalty for nonparticipation too high. Continue reading →

How many homeless, hungry? Make statistics public

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Published in The News Tribune, May 23, 2012

Do you know how many children in Tacoma School District (TSD) schools are homeless?  Or how many people in Pierce County lived without heat or electricity this winter because their power was shut off?

If you don’t, you have lots of company.  And the invisibility of such problems in our community is itself part of the problem. Continue reading →

Ex-offenders face incredible odds against shaking their past

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Published in The News Tribune, May 9, 2012

If his warm greeting as you enter the downtown YMCA doesn’t get your attention, his story will.

Mychal Goode is an ambitious, smart and personable young man.  Like thousands of others around the state, he’s counting the days until he walks across the stage that marks the completion of his college career.  In his case he’ll have earned a bachelor’s in Business Administration from the University of Washington Tacoma.

Mychal (pronounced Michael) seems pretty typical – a full-time student holding down a full-time job at the Y, looking forward to the future.  We see a lot of students like that at UWT. Continue reading →

Solutions exist for Social Security’s long-term problems

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Published in The News Tribune, April 25, 2012

What is true in most poor countries today was true in our own long ago:  When elders can no longer support themselves or make sense of what is said around them, their children take care of them.  This is an example of a social compact that balances out in the long run, since children expect their kids in turn to care for them during their waning years.

Some may be surprised to learn that today this social compact is alive and well in our own country.  It is called Social Security.  With Social Security, the elderly look not to their own children, but rather to the collective contributions of the working generation; these workers in turn look to the next generation of workers for support during their retirement.  The terms of this social compact are now politically determined, but the basic idea is the same:  the economically productive support those who no longer are. Continue reading →

No country for young (and undereducated, unemployable) men

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Published in The News Tribune, March 28, 2012

Over the last six months Washington’s unemployment rate has fallen from 9.3 to 8.2 percent.  That’s terrific news. The same is occurring in states across the nation as employers are now hiring at a record pace.

Yet as some pessimistic sage surely said, every silver cloud has its dark lining.

The problem with our labor market is one I’ve been highlighting this month:   too many citizens have inadequate job-market skills with few options for upgrading them, and receive too little support for navigating what for them is an unstable job market.

Continue reading →

Poor public policies send desperate people to dubious colleges

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Published in The News Tribune, March 14, 2012

In my last column I argued that the life line we’re throwing to those at the bottom rungs of society is increasingly beyond their grasp. Truth is, we also don’t provide them with many chances to rise up.  With neither a hand out nor a hand up, too many citizens are consigned to pretty dim life prospects.

What’s more, other efforts taken to assist them have been akin to the actions taken by Captain Renault in the movie Casablanca.  The Captain famously responded to a shooting of a Nazi by a known assailant with the unforgettable instructions to “round up the usual suspects.”  Renault hoped that the appearance of vigilance would protect him from his evil superiors, and we all hope he was right. Continue reading →

Safety net continues to shrink for those who need it most

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Published in The News Tribune, March 2, 2012

The Obama Administration’s recently-proposed budget continues what has become a troubling trend in federal policy.  And it isn’t the growing debt I’m referring to.

What is is the large number of citizens who we seem to have given up on.  In fact, so forsaken are they, and dire the consequences to us of this abandonment, that I’ll use my next two columns to pick up where this one leaves off.

The trend is this:  We’re supplying our most vulnerable and low-skill citizens with fewer and fewer public dollars.  Instead, our nation’s “safety net” increasingly targets the rest of us, particularly those with jobs and a working- or middle-class income.  I’m all for helping the gainfully employed – especially those with low income — but when public dollars are scarce, the marginalized are the least capable of competing for them because few advocate on their behalf.  Not surprisingly, they’re losing out in the competition for public dollars.   Continue reading →