Category: Poverty & income gap
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This Is Us. Ugh.
by Chris Saxman During Monday’s Senate Commerce and Labor Committee, three bills were on the agenda attempting to raise the minimum wage. Virginia’s policy has been at least since the late 1990s to mirror the federal minimum wage which stands at $7.25 an hour. That rate became effective in July of 2009. Watching the committee hearing…
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When the State Feeds Children, Children Go Hungry
I can’t say anything bad about Virginia’s first lady, Dorothy McAuliffe. Her cause is admirable: ending childhood hunger. Her compassion seems entirely genuine. And it appears that she had been very effective, if effectiveness can be measured by the resources she has mobilized to advance her goals. Writing in a Richmond Times-Dispatch op-ed today, McAuliffe…
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The “Food Desert” Theory Does Not Reflect Reality
A large social-scientific literature has documented that low-income neighborhoods are far more likely than affluent neighborhoods to be “food deserts,” that is to have low access to healthy food. The big question is why. Does the food-desert phenomenon reflect institutional racism, in which corporate grocery-store chains are unwilling to serve neighborhoods dominated by poor minorities?…
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One of Three Virginia Children Unready for Kindergarten
Roughly one third of Virginia children lack the social, self-regulation, literacy or math skills needed for kindergarten, finds a study on early childhood development released by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC). (That estimate was derived from a representative sampling from 63 of Virginia’s 132 school systems, so a comprehensive statewide survey might…
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Is the Big Problem at Richmond Schools Decrepit Buildings or Teacher Turnover?
The City of Richmond is debating proposals to spend $740 million to $800 million to modernize the city’s school buildings after years of neglect. The latest new wrinkle reported by the –Richmond Times Dispatch is that the Richmond School Board has delayed a vote on the grounds that it needed more time to ponder the plan.…
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Poverty, Government, and the Bourgeois Virtues
Unwinding historical injustices that trap African-Americans in inter-generational poverty is “the moral challenge of our time,” Mayor Levar Stoney told attendees of at an anti-poverty conclave at Virginia Union University Tuesday. Policy decisions that hurt the poor “have done more to hold the flesh and blood of our city back … than any bronze and…
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Even Progressives Acknowledge the Failure of Indiscriminate Student Loans
I’ve been making the case for a couple of years now that if you’re looking for a real example of social injustice, take a look at the United States higher education system. For years liberals and progressives argued that everyone deserves a college education, that government should help anyone with a high school degree attend…
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Justice for Whom?
The Legal Aid Justice Center, which has released another report decrying differential rates of suspensions and expulsions in Virginia public schools, is described by the Richmond Times-Dispatch as an organization that “works to fight injustice.” I have no doubt that the Legal Aid Justice Center sees itself on the side of the angels, but I’m…
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Plugging “Mercy” into the Judicial System
Just when it looked like the country was so locked in partisan gridlock that no one could agree about anything, along came the Republican-dominated General Assembly, the Democratic governor, and the Virginia Supreme Court to put into place reforms that make it easier for people owing court fines to keep their drivers licenses and continue…
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Second Chart of the Day: Unemployment
Another chart from the Commonwealth Institute based on the latest U.S. Census data: poverty rates across Virginia metro areas. Here’s what leaped out at me: Every single metro area, from Harrisonburg to Winchester, had a poverty rate below the statewide average of 11%. How high must the poverty rate for non-metro (aka rural) Virginia be…
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A Better Model for Lending to the Poor
It’s time to introduce into the public lexicon a distinction between “social justice warriors” and “social justice entrepreneurs.” Social justice warriors (or SJWs, as they are known short-hand on some conservative blogs) seek to remedy the conditions of the poor and downtrodden through political action, typically calling upon government to wield its power and money…
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Motels as Housing of Last Resort
Two Sundays ago the Richmond Times-Dispatch ran a disturbing special report on poverty and housing insecurity along the Jefferson Davis Highway in Chesterfield County. Hundreds of people live in shabby motels, paying $200 or more per week to live in conditions almost as deplorable as Richmond’s public housing projects. These hotels, the housing equivalent of…
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Public Housing Vs. Private Housing, Round Two
A couple of weeks ago, I published a post, “Your Taxpayer Dollars at Work: Stuffing Poor People into Hideous Housing,” trying to put the $150 million maintenance backlog at the Richmond Redevelopment Housing Authority into context. I noted that the RRHA’s $65 million budget, spread over 4,000 public housing units, amounts to $16,250 per unit…
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How Computer Games Are Sapping the Initiative of Young Men and Shrinking the Workforce
We’re all familiar with the stereotype of the young male slacker, disinterested in looking for work and holed up in his parents’ basement, wiling away the time surfing the Web or playing computer games. Many of us have observed such behavior in our own homes. (I’m not mentioning any names.) Now four economists writing for…
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Your Taxpayer Dollars at Work: Stuffing Poor People into Hideous Housing
The Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority, which provides public housing to about 10,000 Richmond residents, faces a $150 million backlog in repairs for its 4,000 housing units, reports the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “At some point you’re going to have very serious health and safety problems,” agency CEO T.K. Somanath told the authority’s board last week. The authority…