I agree that the culture of poverty in this country has become institutionalized to an extent that is surprising to me and many others. Poverty has been with us since the beginning of time, and in many cultures there is a permanent underclass with all the problems that that suggests. It is contrary to the American ethos and history of progress that we would see that developing and becoming institutionalized in our country. There is nothing new about having poor people in our midst. What is very new is that we now have the institutionalization of that culture of poverty in ways that are difficult to reconcile with the whole concept of upward mobility, change, the American dream. And so those observers, including Senator Moynihan, who point that out as one of our major problems are absolutely right.
Sure, I’ve been talking about that since 1973. You know, I am one of the first people who wrote about how rights and responsibilities had to go hand in hand. Nobody in the political campaign seemed to understand that that was what I was saying, except for the people who actually read what I wrote.
No, no. I have advocated highly structured inner-city schools. I have advocated uniforms for kids in inner-city schools. I have advocated that we have to help structure people’s environment who come from unstructured, disorganized, dysfunctional family settings. Because if you do not have any structure on the outside, it is very difficult to internalize it on the inside.
Oh, I think you have to. What happened in Arkansas is that people who refused for whatever reason to participate had their benefits cut.
Well, the benefits that were cut were the adult benefits. There’s a real problem with maintaining even a minimal standard of living. It’s a signal. It’s a behavioral signal-very few people, if they believe they’re going to suffer consequences, will persist in that behavior. What we have to figure out how to do is to have a system that offers enough encouragement and assistance in real terms, not the kind of charades that we’ve seen over the last 12 years. [But there should also be] sanctions so that the message is loud and clear [that] certain behavior is no longer going to be tolerated. But let’s be sure that we get the best possible help and support and encouragement and incentives to those that we think we can actually help …
Part of what I’ve done for 20 years is to figure out how we do that. And I have not fallen easily into any camp, like this is the dogma that we have to adopt, because I don’t think there is any camp out there. I think we are piecing together a different set of approaches to try to deal with what has been the breakdown of internal control, of internal responsibility. But if all we do is think in terms of people that are already impoverished, we miss some of the bigger social trends. I think the same message of responsibility should not go just to the 15-year-old welfare mother, but should also go to the college student who cheats, should also go to the business person who is irresponsible with respect to polluting our environment.
Oh, I hope it does, yes, I think that we can get to the point where we truly are colorblind. [But] we’re a long, long way from that right now. I think the existing framework that we have now is appropriate. I don’t think we should go any further, and I think we should move toward a time when we can eliminate it.
I don’t know, I can’t speak for them, so I don’t know what they mean by that. But I think that it is important if you are in a position of leadership to open your mind. There are a lot of good ideas that have come up from people’s individual experiences, that have been affected by their gender or their ethnic or racial background. I think we will be stronger for having the kind of thinking that breaks through stereotypes and looks for well-qualified, meritorious people who have in the past not been, perhaps, viewed as someone who could meet a certain job requirement.
No.
Probably, but I haven’t analyzed that.
Well, it’s too early, and I’m not sure that there is any model, but there are pieces of system that have to be addressed. One is that individuals are going to have to also be responsible to take care of themselves and to have an understanding of what causes health as opposed to illness, and I think that’s a piece of the whole responsibility ethos that the president has talked about.
No. I think what has happened, though, is that we had a system to care for the elderly-it’s social security and Medicare. It has provided a safety net. What we haven’t done is figured out how to provide that same kind of system for children. The more poor children we have, particularly those in the most disorganized settings, the less likely it is we’ll be able to continue to provide security in the most basic sense for the elderly or anyone else.
Because of crime, because of declining productivity, because of a declining tax base-you can list all of it. Personal security is at the root of everything that I think we have to be focused on. Personal security on the streets and in your homes, personal security to not worry about being sick and facing catastrophe, personal security in some job that we can hold out to people.
You can go down the line and nearly every issue we look at, whether it’s instilling responsibility and self-esteem in children who are living in our inner cities or personal security to our elderly citizens who lock themselves behind their doors because of those same children. We are all in this together.
