Matt Lewis's blog

For millions of adults, the training and education needed to achieve the American dream is unavailable, putting the strength of the economy in jeopardy, too. At at time of intense overseas competition, a lower percentage of the workforce is graduating high school than it did 40 years ago. And about half of the adult workforce doesn't have the basic skills and education that are increasingly required to get good jobs. Responding to the scale and gravity of the problem, National Commission on Adult Literacy has new vision for the adult education and skill development system (full report and summary). Its breadth of knowledge is impressive, and I think its ambition is inspiring.

Following the media coverage of the housing mortgage crisis gives me a headache. It's difficult to make sense of what's actually happening. But without a doubt there's one clear causal factor emerging from the media fog: subprime mortgages. A quick scroll through Dean Baker's blog shows just how often the media pins the crisis on subprime loans. Yet Baker, who was one of the few economists who saw all this coming, makes it clear that the subprime mortgages are just a chapter in a larger story about how housing prices got so out of line with their historical value. Why have they reduced such a complex story to this particular factor?

It's probably because "subprime" is code for minorities and poor people, always an easy target. What do you think the public hears when folks say "subprime?" You can almost see the thoughts taking shape in the public mind: "you know, if those poor people hadn't been so irresponsible with their money, we wouldn't be in this mess. They should have known better than to take out those loans." Personal responsibility being so powerful a cultural trope, it's probably trumping the narrative that places blame on Wall Street bankers.

Am I being paranoid here? I know there isn't much evidence, but in a circular way, that's the point of speaking in code. I'm open to contradictory evidence, though.

Two prominent economists came out against deficit hawkery today. Perhaps this is the beginning of something. Larry Summers in the Financial Times:

Second, Congress should move promptly to pass further fiscal measures to respond to our economic difficulties. The economy would be in a far worse state if fiscal stimulus had not come on line two months ago. The forecasting community is having increasing doubts about the fourth quarter of this year and beginning of the next as the impact of the current round of stimulus fades. With long-term unemployment at recession levels, there is a clear case for extending the duration of unemployment insurance benefits. There is now also a case for carefully designed support for infrastructure investment, as financial strains have distorted the municipal credit markets to the point where even the highest-quality municipal borrowers are, despite their tax advantage, paying more than the federal government to borrow. There are legitimate questions about how rapidly the impact of infrastructure spending will be felt. But with construction employment in free fall, there will be a need for stimulus tied to the needs of less educated male workers for quite some time. Fiscal stimulus measures must be coupled to budget process reform that provides reassurance that, once the crisis passes, the fiscal policy discipline of the 1990s will be re-established.

And Brad DeLong:

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and it seems pointless to work to strengthen the Democratic links of the chain of fiscal advice when the Republican links are not just weak but absent. Political advisers to future Democratic administrations may argue that the only way to tie the Republicans’ hands and keep them from launching another wealth-polarizing offensive is to widen the deficit enough that even they are scared of it.
They might be right. The surplus-creating fiscal policies established by Robert Rubin and company in the Clinton administration would have been very good for America had the Clinton administration been followed by a normal successor. But what is the right fiscal policy for a future Democratic administration to follow when there is no guarantee that any Republican successors will ever be “normal” again? That’s a hard question, and I don’t know the answer.

Granted, Summers repudiation is heavily qualified, and DeLong's is grounded in political considerations. But this beggar will not be a chooser. So I'll be keeping a list of reformed deficit hawks, Keynsians, and other economists who don't think the next administration should make deficit reduction a high priority, immediately or ever. Call it, in the spirit of Greg Mankiw's Pigou Club, the Keynes Club.

Hereby establishing The Keynes Club, chartered June 30th, 2008, the presiding officers and members:

Brad DeLong (founding member)
Lawrence Summers (founding member)

Gregory Acs and Pamela Loprest of the Urban Institute have a new paper describing the demand side of the labor market where college degrees aren't required. Prior research has focused on noncollege workers themselves, some notable Inclusion products excepted. The paper transcends the DC debate over the low wage market, where one side says "it's all about skills and education" while the other says "it's all about job standards and full employment." And it addresses the taboo subject of racial and gender discrimination in labor markets.

Its findings include:

• Jobs that require experience, specific skill training, and basic reading and writing skills pay substantially better. "Soft" skills are also important factors in hiring.

• Large firms, higher-wage paying industries, and companies in rural areas are more likely to report having trouble finding workers.
• Most jobs offer unpaid leave, but about half offer paid leave.
• Unionized firms and sectors that are targeted by employment service providers tend to pay better.
• About 70 percent of jobs offer a chance of promotion, and 64 percent of workers reportedly receive a raise after 6 months on the job.
• Minority and female workers are paid less than their white, male counterparts.
• Empolyers show a willingness to hire former welfare recipients, but not ex-offenders.

I've been reading the book The Politics of Free Markets: The Rise of Neoliberal Economic Policies in Britain, France, Germany, & the United States, and there's a chapter on deregulation that shows the dangers of pursuing progressive policy goals within a conservative frame.

The short version of the story is that in the 1970s, some liberals took a critical look at the regulatory state and decided that rather than protecting the public, it was in effect subsidizing companies that didn't need it (contrary to what I thought, it was liberals that deregulated certain industries in the 1970s). Ralph Nader lead the movement from the left, but as it turned out he had a lot in common with a pre-presidential Ronald Reagan. Take this mind-exploding exchange from 1975:

Reagan: I agree with you about business and the fact that business is responsible in part for going along with regulations that finally have led to some advantages for them such as preventing entry of new businesses into the field, competition, price fixing, and so forth. I still think those businesses are wrong. And I think ti's led to what I call an interlocking bureaucracy. That the bureaucracy in government is now being matched by a bureaucracy employed by business to do business with the bureaucracy here and now you have two bureaucracies feeding on each and neither one of them wants the other to go away because then they wouldn't have a job.
Nader:If you make that your campaign theme next year you'd be making a major contribution to the American dialogue.
Reagan: Well. I-
Nader: Speaking out against corporate socialism and government subsidies of big business where big corporations are so big they can't be allowed to fail; only small businesses can go bankrupt, but if you're big like Lockheed and those other companies you can go to Washington instead....Massive outflow of the taxpayer's revenue into the coffers of these giant corporations...people who say they're conservatives do not speak out enough against monopolistic practices, highly concentrated industry; they don't speak for the enforcement of the antitrust laws for beefing up the Justice Depeartment's budget; they don't speak against the massive, inflated contracts and subsidies that pour out of Washington which makes up the bulk of government...And if you speak out against that, politics will be enriched.

Nader then lists the parts of the federal government he wanted to see eliminated. Indeed, Reagan and Nader agree that the solution is to eliminate government, rather than reduce corporate influence. Their biggest disagreements were probably over which programs to eliminate.

This movement kicked off a sweep of deregulation that didn't benefit consumers. As the author puts it, "Public opinion in favor of the populist consumers' movement, and this movement's late-1960s to mid-1970s salience...lit the torch under the deregulatory effort. Executive control of deregulation and the 'frame ambiguity' of the cultural Left allowed Ronald Reagan to shift this effort in favor of business."

There's a lot to unpack here. I think the whole episode is analogous to the anti-poverty debate. Anti-poverty advocates, many of which are Nader's contemporaries and are set back by the same "frame ambiguity," construct their arguments according to a progressive understanding of the conservative impulse to do charity, which John thoughtfully wrote about. Their case for reducing poverty centers around a magnanimous donor (the public) and a deserving recipient (the poor). Conservatives easily reinterpret this framing to support their policy goals.

But I also think it shows that progressives should be careful when we frame policy that unfairly benefits corporations and the rich, something that got considerable attention when Bear Stearns was rescued. 2008 is a different political environment than 1975, but then again, the public has extremely negative feelings about government. Anti-government rhetoric from the left could be wrapped around conservative policy yet again.

From one of The Nation's blogs, the Social Security privatizers and entitlement-crisis grandma haters are joining forces to convince young folks to stand up for their rights, and, well, undo the generational social compact. And they're doing it with the bias and misinformation that's endemic to the Washington discourse.

On Monday, these and other youth organizers, along with a number of conservative and "nonpartisan" policy types, convened in Washington for the Youth Entitlement Summit. The name alone--entitlement--should ring alarm bells as a conservative frame, as should the leading sponsor organization, Americans for Generational Equality (AGE)--a conservative outfit that promotes "intergenerational strife" and argues for the privatization of Social Security. Founded in 1986, it closed up shop in 1990 only to reopen it's doors - and PR machine - in 2006.

The conference claims "non partisanship," and a spirited discussion of the issues, but if that is really true, why are there no progressive economists like Jared Bernstein or Dean Baker addressing the attendees? Why are the Center for American Progress and the Economic Policy Institute nowhere to be seen in the list of partners? Instead, the agenda boasts scholars from the Brookings, Heritage and Hoover foundations and the panels all take on the false frame of "X program in crisis." Hardly a fair and balanced representation of the issues.

In related news, Gene Steurle, who, like any good grandma hater, is moving to the Pete Peterson Foundation, is also trying to wake up the youth to the travesty of democracy that is our retirement and health security system. Perhaps there's a good reason why young folks don't trust old people.

A good piece by CAP's Mike Ettlinger in favor of letting most of the Bush tax cuts lapse to pay for infrastructure, education and health care.

The punch line for champions of President Bush’s tax cuts, echoed often by Bush himself, was “Who knows how to spend your money better, you or the government?” The answer, of course, is that some of our money is better spent independently for our own personal needs, and some of it is better spent together for things we can’t obtain by ourselves.

That’s probably not the answer President Bush was looking for, but over the coming years there are some very important investments that we need to all chip in on together — investments that are imperative for our nation’s productivity, competitiveness and economic success. To name a few:

Our aging infrastructure needs repair and modernization.

Our education and training systems require both reform and additional funds.

Research and development funding is lagging when science and technology are vital to our competitiveness and to reducing energy consumption and costs.

Our inefficient and costly health care system needs to become a rational, efficient system that covers everyone and reduces costs for families and the economy.

Seems smart to me to use these taxes to fund concrete programs that could help folks out and get the economy moving again. This could have a number of good political effects, too. First, it's much more powerful than the fiscal responsibility defense, whose benefits are hard to define and grasp. We saw how well that defense worked during the first and second rounds of the Bush tax cuts. Second, it could restore the connection between taxation and spending for the common good, as Mark Schmitt has argued. And it could move us out of the fiscal responsibility paradigm. The piece doesn't once mention the debt or the deficit. It does talk about paying for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which is deficit reduction in all but name. But clearly it's not the highest priority. So you can de-emphasize the deficit and be quite different from Dick "deficits don't matter" Cheney, too.

My only quibble would be the language about the things we "can't obtain by ourselves." This might just be me, but I've always found this language kind of technical and uninspiring. An alternative could be to talk about investing in things that will benefit us all, rather than tax cuts that only benefit the few.

The Post had a front page article on the deficit yesterday that makes me miss the days when MaxSpeak was still around. The article's bias is absurd for how obvious it is. The reporter quoted zero progressives. Is it so unreasonable to expect reporters to do more than reflect the establishment consensus?

But maybe it is. MaxSpeak's absence is conspicuous. That website was one of the few places you could go for budget commentary that pushed the boundaries of the debate. As far as I can tell, the progressive fiscal community does not promote itself with the same energy that the center/right coalitions do. For every Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, for every Brookings-Heritage axis of evil, there is no progressive counterpart. The press probably won't broaden the debate without one.

This matters. I see the impact every now and then. Some people in the social policy world think there isn't enough room in the budget to ask for big funding increases. They think they'll get laughed out of the room if they actually ask for what's needed. And unfortunately, they probably will, since the influence of the budget balancers runs deep. So they scale back their vision and hopes, and it becomes even harder to imagine that things will change.

Some folks will tell you that all this balanced budget talk makes progressive programs safer. That may be true when budget reduction and tax cuts are on the agenda. But when we're dreaming about tomorrow, I have no doubt it's a barrier. I just wish an organized force was pushing to tear it down.

Update: At least we still have Dean Baker.

This month’s Atlantic has a story about housing and poverty, and to me it’s a case study in what’s wrong with the safety-net-as-opportunity narrative.

The article argues that the Section 8 housing vouchers and the destruction of public housing are responsible for the uptick in crime in smaller-scale cities like Memphis, where much of the reporting was done. But the argument fails to pass the smell test because a)crime has largely been dropping like a stone for the last 15 years and b) it doesn’t compare statistics on Section 8 usage in larger cities, where crime hasn’t gone up. However, while it may not be structurally coherant, the argument does fit into the neoliberal narrative on anti-poverty policy, where good intentions produce bad results, and where it’d be nice to do something about poverty, but unfortunately, there’s nothing you can do. Sounds like it's ready to publish.

Putting crime aside, the article does tell an interesting story about how housing policy is changing. In the 1990s, housing policy focused on addressing concentrated poverty, which was considered more harmful and offered less opportunity than diffuse poverty. Housing projects came down, Section 8 vouchers were given out, and people were supposedly on their way to greener pastures. However, most folks who moved out didn't do much better.

So has our housing policy really failed, as the article implies? I’d argue no, because the primary purpose of programs like Section 8 isn’t to make things better but to keep them from getting worse. Having a voucher helps ensure you won’t live in dilapidated housing or be forced onto the street. It is, in other words, a safety net program. To say that the program failed to achieve its goals is a distortion of what its primary goals are.

But this isn’t the author’s fault- both liberals and conservatives have sold housing policy as way to reduce poverty. Conservatives thought if you got rid of the projects, you’d get rid of poverty, while liberals thought if you let folks move out of the racism-created ghettos, you’d get rid of poverty. Turns out, it’s a bit more complicated than both of those stories.

Strangely, the article doesn't make it to this point, and I'd speculate it's because this safety-net-as-opportunity narrative contributes to individualistic thinking. Take the author's closing remarks:

The problems of poverty run so deep that we’re unlikely to know the answer for a generation. Social scientists tracking people who are trying to improve their lives often talk about a “weathering effect,” the wearing-down that happens as a lifetime of baggage accumulates. With poor people, the drag is strong, even if they haven’t lived in poverty for long. Kids who leave poor neighborhoods at a young age still have trouble keeping up with their peers, studies show. They catch up for a while and then, after a few years, slip back. Truly escaping poverty seems to require a will as strong as a spy’s: you have to disappear to a strange land, forget where you came from, and ignore the suspicions of everyone around you. Otherwise, you can easily find yourself right back where you started.

As usual, the causes of poverty are reduced to the individual. Poverty exists not for lack of get up and go, as popular opinion has it, but for the psychological effects of a poverty-stricken environment. So poverty is a viscous cycle, and there’s not much you can do about it.

But that’s RIDICULOUSLY STUPID. People move out of poverty ALL THE TIME. The economy gets better, our policies shaping opportunity get better, and people move out of poverty. It's lost on the author that all the policies mentioned aren't primarily meant to lift people out of poverty, and that other policy does it more effectively.

This type of defeatism isn't particular to the safety-net-as-opportunity frame. Individualistic narratives of all types produce it. And even though there's leftward movement in our politics, Americans still tend to see social policy through the lens of individualism, unless otherwise prompted. While it may take a more subtle, though equally insidious, form in the Atlantic, you can bet its nastier cousin has an even stronger hold on media that doesn’t aspire to middlebrow respectability. The challenge remains to elevate the discourse to the systemic level, and the safety-net-as-opportunity argument consistently fails to do this.

When reframing anti-poverty work comes up, I often hear reservations about taking the word "poverty" out of our vocabulary. Lots of people think you can't address the issues if you can't speak about them directly. While I think they're wrong, the point gets at a deeper debate about how to talk to an American public that seems like it just doesn't care about poverty.

The first couple of times I heard this question raised, I thought it was easily resolved. There's a million and one ways to talk about poverty in different terms. Phrases like "low-wage work" have the benefit of being more specific (about jobs for low-income people) and get people focused on the structural causes of poverty. Maybe I'm being stubborn, but I just don't think this is an arguable point.

But if the debate was about words and not ideas, it would have ended long ago. Rather, I think the real debate is over what to do about American values. As you may know, it's been a while since Americans have done much to reduce poverty. Does that mean our values need to be overhauled? Or can we emphasize some part of American culture and deemphasize the rest?

I believe that all we really need is a change of priorities. Lots of public opinion surveys show that Americans believe "we're all in this together." That belief, however, must compete with individualism, the other major current in American political culture. Individualism may have been dominant recently, but in the not-too-distant past, Americans weren't quite so individualistic. Public-spiritedness once trumped individualism, and it can again. This is the idea behind the Demos Center for the Public Sector's work on framing government, EPI's work on framing the economy, and Inclusion's work on framing low-wage work.

Now, the folks who want to use the word "poverty" have legitimate concerns. One of those is that poor people will be framed out of the policy agenda, a la Clinton-style triangulation, if you don't talk about poverty. Sometimes I hear communications experts do this- they say, "forget about poor people, nobody will ever go for that. You gotta focus on the middle class." So their concerns are warranted, but they're being too cautious. Not all communications folks agree on everything, and there are ways of including low-income folks in effective frames.

Another concern: who's excluded from the "we" in "we're all in this together"- that is, the "other"- racial and ethnic minorities, immigrants, rural folks, to name a few. Many Americans still have not embraced stigmatized populations, so frames rooted in a vision of an "us" could exclude them. It follows, then, that the poverty frame must be redefined and the lens through which Americans understand it changed fundamentally. If certain groups are always going to be excluded, then the only alternative is to get people to value poverty reduction per se.

There's also truth to this point, but it's too pessimistic. Far more folks are included in the national "we" than they think. Granted, much more could be done to get folks to see marginalized populations as "one of them." This is vital, but long-term, work. Indeed, much of it began in the '60s, and I think it's now paying dividends. While we still haven't destigmatized poverty, America has become a far more inclusive society since 1968. In today's environment, we will get results if we put our ideas into a frame that's tied to a vision of an expansive "us."

But a debate needs to happen over how to prioritize both the long-term work of broadening the "us" and the short-term work of building a frame for inclusive policy. This debate hasn't been happening, but it could help move things forward.

This week's issue of The Nation has a special on inequality. From the promising introduction:

Over the past three decades, market-worshiping politicians and their corporate backers have engineered the most colossal redistribution of wealth in modern world history, a redistribution from the bottom up, from working people to a tiny global elite.

This special issue of The Nation exposes the widespread costs of this rising inequality and offers a blueprint on how to reverse course. We will never achieve social and economic justice for those at the bottom of our economic pyramid until we tackle wealth concentration at the top.

Doug Henwood begins the issue by placing our current extreme inequality in historical context. We now live, he writes, in a second Gilded Age. Today, as in the robber baron era a century ago, the gap between those at the top and the rest of us is simply staggering. The richest 1 percent of Americans currently hold wealth worth $16.8 trillion, nearly $2 trillion more than the bottom 90 percent. A worker making $10 an hour would have to labor for more than 10,000 years to earn what one of the 400 richest Americans pocketed in 2005.

I liked Bob Creamer's article in the Huffington Post today about transformational change, especially this part (disclaimer: by quoting from it I'm not taking a position on his endorsement of Obama):

From 1932 to about 1973 -- at least so far as domestic policy is concerned -- traditional progressive values defined the political and economic center in the United States.

By the mid-1970's that changed, and we've been on the political and ideological defensive ever since. For seventy percent of the years since 1968 we have had Republican presidents. President Clinton made many important progressive initiatives. But even in the Clinton years we were forced to battle the dominant conservative value frame.

To achieve realignment, we have to get out of that defensive crouch. To do that we have to forcefully, proudly, consistently stand up for those progressive values. We have to provide a clear contrast between the Right's belief in the unbridled pursuit of individual interest and our commitment to the common good; between selfishness and commitment to others; between division and unity; between fear and hope. We have to consistently assert that fundamental progressive premise: that we're all in this together -- not all in this alone.

I think Creamer's more or less echoing the point that Andrew Rich makes about the anti-ideological orientation of liberal think tanks. I'd speculate that rather than springing from liberal ideology, it's probably just a matter of circumstance, as for pretty much the entire time liberal think tanks have been around, liberal ideology has been in decline. Most "non-ideological" think tanks probably just don't want to be identified with liberalism because it didn't make any political sense.

But as Creamer argues, this is a defensive position, and if liberals are ever going to get their mojo back they have to be loud and proud about who they are. Call it whatever you want- liberal or progressive, I'm fine with whatever works best- the most important thing is to wear our ideology on our sleeve. We could do a lot worse than use Creamer's formulation of solidarity, the common good, and idealism.

Unfortunately, I have the sense that far too many folks actually believe in this "objectivity" stuff now, and don't see it as a product of political reality. I see the same pattern among the fiscal responsibility-ists. By doing so I worry they will prolong the era of conservative dominance longer than it has to be.

I don't know about you, but I'm pretty disappointed by the selection of Jason Furman as Obama's head economic guru. Read Furman's April piece in Slate that instructs the next President on fiscal policy for some clues on what his advice will be. Basically, Furman is a liberal deficit hawk. In the article, he makes clear that the next president should prioritize deficit and debt reduction.

Now, Furman is the good kind of deficit hawk, and he's gotten better with time. He favors an extended health care plan and has become decent on long term budget issues. He doesn't think the sky will fall if you raise taxes, nor does he think tax cuts and savings accounts are the answers to all life's problems. But he does say it's ok to veto spending bills, and he's still operating in the Clintonian paradigm that puts deficit reduction above all else, which means spending will be foregone. That's bad for social programs and the prospects for shared prosperity.

Why wouldn't deficit hawkery produce shared prosperity now when it did under Clinton? Because times have changed. We're in the middle of a recession, and our fiscal policy now is to pump up flagging demand and avoid a deeper recession (stimulus, etc.). The biggest problem with today's economy is that nobody has any money anymore. What jobs are left suck, our insurance system sucks, basic necessities are more expensive, and, as a result, everyone's up to their eyeballs in debt, and now that debt's come due for a lot of folks. And Furman thinks reducing the deficit will fix this? Is that what Obama thinks too?

And deficit hawkery is bad politics. It's not conservative as much as it's pro-status quo, cautious, and centrist. All it's really good for is opposing things you don't like, in the sense that it's more a reason to be against something than it is to be for something. You are for something that is good and against something bad, and while fiscal recklessness is bad, fiscal restraint isn't necessarily all that good. In other words, revolutions are not made on fiscal responsibility; they are prevented. Not particularly inspiring stuff, and, while it might be a somewhat successful defensive strategy, it does nothing to advance progressive policy.

Bottom line: Obama's signaling he won't push the envelope on fiscal policy.

Sen. Hillary Clinton's speech ending her campaign is rich in the language of anti-ideological liberalism. Liberal think tank-ers may find the language familiar. As Andrew Rich has written, think tanks are some of the main purveyors of this anti-ideology, which doesn't advance our cause in the war of ideas. So the following examples are more "don'ts" than "dos."

The first example:

I entered this race because I have an old-fashioned conviction: that public service is about helping people solve their problems and live their dreams. I’ve had every opportunity and blessing in my own life - and I want the same for all Americans. Until that day comes, you will always find me on the front lines of democracy - fighting for the future.

So we've got a vague articulation of the role of government, technocratic problem solving language, and, of course, the driving force behind it all, paternalistic guilt. Anyone feeling inspired?

And at the end of the speech:

All of you were there for me every step of the way. Being human, we are imperfect. That’s why we need each other. To catch each other when we falter. To encourage each other when we lose heart. Some may lead; others may follow; but none of us can go it alone. The changes we’re working for are changes that we can only accomplish together. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are rights that belong to each of us as individuals. But our lives, our freedom, our happiness, are best enjoyed, best protected, and best advanced when we do work together.

So we do things together because we have no choice. Its the pragmatic way to go. Is it just me or is this a lifeless and tired way of thinking about government? Or does competence and pragmatism stoke the fires of your soul? It doesn't mine, but I always hold out for the possibility that I'm just weird. But I don't think I am.

Most importantly, liberal anti-ideology does not answer basic questions about our political lives. It does not tell us who we are as private and public persons, where are private lives end and where our public lives begin, what we ought to expect from each other and what we ought to contribute, what values our politics should stand for, what defines a citizen, and what ties us all together. Few of these questions have been answered, and I think it's unrealistic to expect Obama to answer them on his own. Liberal think tanks should step up to the plate.

An emerging challenge for liberals is to how to frame the apparent success of New York City's program that gives cash rewards to low-income people who exhibit certain kinds of good behavior, like attending school and visiting a health clinic regularly. An individualistic perspective informs the program's design, and according to some recent evaluations, it's working fairly well (Kathy G has a good description of it).

So how should liberals frame it? Half-Changed World suggests the following:

I agree that I worry about the framing of these payments as all about overcoming poor people's bad values. You can also tell a convincing story about how the financial incentives make it possible for a worker who is paid by the hour to take off from work to go to a parent teacher conference, or wait in a crowded medical clinic to get the kid immunized, or let the parent keep their job by hiring a more reliable babysitter, but that's not how these payments are being covered in the media.

As true as this point is, I see a couple of problems with it. First, it seems like the tail is wagging the dog. These cash payments are conditioned on behavior. Changes in behavior are more a result of that fact than anything else. To me, the framing feels like an attempt to claim the policy's success for liberalism, but it just isn't. I worry that rather than reinforcing a progressive narrative, it would muddle what people think progressives are all about.

Second, it doesn't direct enough attention to systems as opposed to individuals. I don't blame the author for this- I've been thinking it over, and I just can't come up with a systems-based frame. I think the reason is it isn't about systems. It's about individual motivation. There's no alternative to the conservative frame, because it's conservative policy. You can't shoehorn everything into a progressive frame.

But that's ok. A better way to frame it is to admit it's working because of individual incentives but put more stress on a progressive narrative. I.e: yes, the program does encourage good behavior, but the far more important task ahead of us is to fix the systems that leave so many folks behind.

I also think it's important to encourage the kind of conservative thinking that led to this program. More conservatives should be thinking about how government programs can reward good behavior. Many are way too focused on punishing bad behavior by kicking people off programs or throwing them in jail. I've been reading Prof. Charles Karelis's book about what's wrong with the conservative economist's understanding of poverty, and I think it, like the New York City program, represents the compassionate side of conservative thinking on poverty. He denies that poor people are irrationally unmotivated and must be punished. Rather, he argues that they're unmotivated, just for the rational reason that work and work supports don't provide enough reward. What follows is a a larger role for government and an expanded notion of social responsibility.

But as much as I hope conservatives pursue this line of policy more, I really hope liberals don't. Plenty of progress can only be achieved by changing systems, and when we reinforce the conservative narrative, we undermine our own. I don't think that means opposing good programs, like New York's seems to be, but it does mean pushing for a different set of policies, advancing a frame rooted in systems, and condemning hyperindividualism.