Hoy Sun Ning Yung Benevolent Association

This is the building in HotWinds, USA in the Chinatown area. I snapped this photo and later wondered what the heck it was. As it turns out, the H.S.N.Y. Benevolent Association and others like it do some good, and have done, for more than a hundred years. Although I don't know if this particular office has been here for more than a hundred years.

In general, there are more than one Chinese Benevolent Association, generally in cities that have enough ethnic Chinese to form a Chinatown area. Many of these societies banded together into a Consolidated Benevolent organization, tying efforts in New York to those in San Francisco, for example.

Historically they have helped Chinese immigrants get on their feet, and also lobbied for guidelines for immigration. They represent a self-help approach to acclimation to American culture, and also a network within American culture.

They are also the kind of group that in Singapore's public assistance model would be funded for social good instead of the Welfare system we have now.

Interesting, no? And all I did was just walk by.

Hoy Sung Ning Yung B.A. in Atlantic City Web site.
New York City's Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association Web site, which I found interesting.

Cities, Crime, Detente: Sudhir Venkatesh

More on Cities, Crime, and Economics:

Colombia University's School of Social Studies gave a Conference on "Cities and New Wars" which is definitely a timely topic Sudhir Venkatesh spoke, (and so did Claire Cutler of Victoria, Canada).  With only two panelists, and two divergent sets of concerns, I don't think it was the best panel ever. However, each speaker was interesting in their own way. And I'm actually going to take them both, one post at a time.

But never mind Cutler now. Here is the link to the video, 55 minutes long. Professor Venkatesh spoke starting at minute two, and ended at minute 30 or so. That's plenty to start with.

The examples are set in Chicago. Nobody needs to think this is limited to Chicago, by any means.

Policing, or Not, in the Urban Ghetto
Venkatesh's topic was ostensibly "Policing in the U.S. Ghetto." However, it took a sharp turn into urban economic violence from the start. His contention was that the ghetto has a "city government within a city government." It is unofficial, shady, what we call extortion, gang wars, and the crack economy. The police are not the main security providers in these areas.

He describes drive-by shootings--that they have a definite sound sequence, a noise associated with "incoming". One of the things I noted was that children were growing up in the Robert Taylor homes with the same expectations of violence that we consider a feature of Beirut or Baghdad. That a mother's care includes an admonition to "get your ass down now."

He then describes the park/turf that was the proximal cause of this violence: a three-way gang war for the economic benefits of the park. This included sales territory for drug or weapons sales, but also "taxation authority" for the other activities around the park: food vendors, clothing vendors, prostitutes, car repair.
Before they were torn down, the Robert Taylor Project was truly ruled by an alternate authority than the City of Chicago. It's interesting to note that under-the-table businesses do have a huge tax bill, in the government that makes the place work (dysfunctionally or functionally, take your pick) and that with this alternate government, they also try to evade or avoid taxation through under-reporting of receipts.

The gangs have pride of place. Like a nation, they control specific territory. When two gangs contest turf, the sets of diplomats include community leaders such as pastors and activists. A summit meeting is called, several diplomatic activities through different intermediaries take place. The gangs eventually agreed to a division of the park for commerce and taxation. They also agreed to avoid certain hours for their activities, such as when children were out of school.

Mr. Venkatesh does note that the police came but did not get out of the car on several occasions when drive-bys or other violent/war-like events occurred. I don't think he was making a judgement, just underlining his theory that the City does not have primary authority in this area, even in security.

More Recent Data
The Robert Taylor Homes are long gone. This second video is from last year. Hat/Tip Second City Cop's "A Riot? Not Quite" post of August 16, 2009. And this one is perhaps more to the point.

1. You can see that the police car is the first presence, and that the police disperse the crowd--by getting out of their cars at great risk--only when the second police car shows up.
2. You can also see that the fighters don't disperse right away. They're defiant.
3. You can also see that if they were totally defiant, things could have taken a totally different turn. But two police officers in two cars cannot change a neighborhood in the middle of the night. They can only impose order for that time, that place, that minute.

It remains a question about how controlled the "rioters" were. I think not so very. .

What a riot! from Joe Gray on Vimeo.

But let's look at the other city, state, and national authorities. Their first job is to provide security, and they have, in some fashion. Governments also have tax authority--this goes hand in hand with having the "standing armies" that maintain the state. Yet this is equally compromised. No IRS or other local authority shows up to collect taxes--they send a letter once a year. The evasion or avoidance of taxes to the local authority--the gang--is even more prevalent for the government--because the first tax becomes "business overhead".

The place where (what we call) the legitimate state makes the most impact is in a kind of internal "foreign aid". This aid is a tied aid--to certain behaviors (live here, for instance). Like much foreign diplomacy, it does not succeed in changing many internal cultural values. It may not even seek to. Mostly it stops war from breaking out along the border. In the end, looking at the shadow economy, you almost begin to wonder: just who runs this territory? At what point does legitimate rule go to who claims it?

The U.S. claimed a lot of land by sending people to sit on it that were sympathetic to their government, their culture, and their folkways. Other parcels they bought: from Mexico (the Gadsden Purchase), from France (the Louisiana Purchase). Other parts were wrested away (e.g. the Republic of Texas fighting against the government of Mexico). At the time we brought all this territory under one aegis, we also allowed people to barter, make local arrangements, and didn't tax so much. Many customary activities then are now considered shadow economy by our own nation, state, and city. And yet we won't pay for increased security without increased taxation.

If we want the inner city claimed by the government we know, then the city has to have a presence in that area that can contend with the de facto government that really seems to run it. That means increased security, and establishment of taxation authority, and cultural interchange, and--gaining the consent of the governed.

Venkatesh doesn't necessarily lead where I did, but he has plenty to say. It's well worth picking up a book or two of his and giving them a good read. The one I am still reading (fascinating!) is:

Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor by Sudhir Venkatesh. It's not at every bookstore, but still readily available.

Crime and Insurrection: Local Economics, part 1

Credit: AP, via UK's Independent

When I read law enforcement blogs, I frequently come across writers who are convinced that civil conflict has started or is on its way. They don't mean a bad Friday night, either. They frequently see the destruction of civil society as a permanent or lasting problem, close to or past the tipping point to insurrection.

This is hard for many of us to reconcile in other neighborhoods. And as a nation, we don't seem to be at that point. Look at Iraq: just yesterday, a suicide bomber blew himself up along with 61 Army recruits. Perhaps we could look at Hemet, California, or Chicago, Illinois, and see equally deadly, unpredictable, and fatal or potentially-fatal results for law enforcement. Places where terrorist attempts or local violence has escalated to mean that local authority has no sway.

Customary Expectations
Nevertheless, even in Hemet and Chicago, most people have an expectation that they will be able to buy groceries from their desired list instead of whatever's available. They expect to be able to drive there without too much chaos, complain about gas prices but still be able to obtain some from a safe device, complete their shopping, and go back home without incident. Odds are highly favorable that this set of actions will occur as predicted. This is not the case in Baghdad. Baghdad has civil conflict. They have war.

The United States is not at war with itself. But something is up, and it is a crisis for us as a society. It's past time to examine what these law enforcement professionals are telling us. It's important to relate their real-life, anecdotal, experiential accounts to a discipline and study instead of a platform or set of platitudes such as "tough on crime" or even "soft on crime".

This post compares the economic predispositions toward civil war, as studied by international political economy, applied to our own international, local, political economy. (Footnotes below).

Paul Collier  on Economic Drivers of Civil Conflict
Earlier I posted twice on Paul Collier's work. He asserts that civil conflict has consistent economic features. Here are the high points:

A. Economists view civil conflict as crime, since it
1. is against the law and
2. causes the destruction or seizure of capital assets (reorganizing ownership).

For those of you who aren't used to this way of looking at it: when an army invades: they take your factory or trample your crops. They loot your house, eat or waste your food, kill your sons and carry off your daughters. These are property crimes and crimes against persons.

When your car stereo is stolen, and somebody fences it, it changes something for you--but not on the same Scale. Likewise, if your son is murdered for his watch or your daughter brutalized, these are horrible, life-changing tragedies. But they are still not war, because in general they are Exceptions to the local Majority experience. There is still someplace to go (the police, a minister, a counselor) in your milieu. It is still, terrible as it is, on a lesser scale.

 Yet if you take these crimes against property and even persons as an economic event, you will see that they have reorganized ownership. They took a watch, a car stereo, a life that did not belong to them. They disposed of it as they saw fit. Add all these up in aggregate--a car stereo, a watch, lost human capital--lost wages as well as a lost life. Pretty soon you're talking about a lot of reorganized wealth.

And when that reorganization and violence become Customary, or the Majority experience under local conditions, with little or no recourse, it begins to approach the conditions of War.

B. Three economic features drive civil conflict. They are:
1. Nation trades in one (or few) commodities, and does not produce what it needs to live. It must trade for those goods. Or put it another way: the economy is unvaried. It has one main industry, and everything else supports it. consider a mining town, for instance, with a few stores that all live on mine owner purchases and mine worker wages.

2.Low national income.

3. The "revolutionaries" have the means to fund revolt, (through appropriation/theft of national commodity, remittances or donations from elsewhere, and / or illegal activities such as piracy, kidnapping, or extortion.

C. The economic causes of civil war will be cloaked in public relations, the language of grievance and protest.

--I won't get to this one today.

Macro versus Micro
In aggregate, this country is huge, with plenty of resources. On the local level, in many inner cities or poverty enclaves (condition # 2), these conditions do apply. These are what police bloggers are informally calling "war zones." There is little industry: chain restaurants, a few drug stores, some bottle-and-sandwich outlets. If you need to buy a shower curtain or a decent frying pan, you must go elsewhere. Same with services: no dry cleaner, few auto repair shops, pawn shops that lock down like jails and maybe a hardware store. Joblessness is high--if you count legitimate jobs especially.

Illegitimate jobs
There are two kinds of illegitimate jobs. One is to do honest work (car repair, house-cleaning, house-painting, plumbing, whiskey distillation, clothing import/export by the suitcase-load, etc etc) without benefit of a license or payment into the government's tax regime (of which licenses and permits are a part). The other is to engage in illegitimate work that is in itself a crime (selling drugs, pimping, kidnapping for ransom, and so forth).

The former is a drag on the tax system--just ask Former Soviet states, where a good part of the challenge of building the economy is to get it on an official standing. But again, this is a matter of scale. We forget that most business in the U.S. grew under a lack of licensing and permitting by the state. Just as an example, stagecoach stations had horses, carriages, guns, food and sometimes beds--but also no standards for animal care, stagecoach repair, marksmanship, sanitary food or sheets on the beds. Conditions were frequently appalling. Yet they were integral to continental transit. They hired people. Poverty does not grow into a middle class unless some barriers to entry are low.

In the unofficial economy, many services are bartered or run on a goodwill system--untaxable already. And it's not optimal, according to our contemporary standards. A renegade auto mechanic is not disposing of oil properly (I'm betting). He's not paying taxes or attending classes that certify his understanding of computer chips in cars. A woman who sells home cooking without a food license has not taken food handler classes (these cost $500 to $1000 per person, are only offered occasionally, and do not automatically net you the license, which is another fee).  On the other hand, the mechanic and the cook are not unemployed. They are entrepreneurs, building a local economy that inner cities would otherwise not have. Their industry is also very precarious.

Illegal Markets
For the United States, the real challenge is the second category of illegal work. In a way, the unofficial-legal economy is part of the good in a poor neighborhood. They make up a sector of productive economy. They keep normal life running in a location with few official goods and services.

In contrast to the unofficial-illegal economy, the criminal market is running on one class of industry--that in illegal drugs. Other sorts of crime are lucrative, but the various drug markets constitute the overwhelming percentage of dollars earned and numbers employed. The other crimes have become externalities to drug markets, or a source of capital for entering the drug market in a bigger way.

The world market for illegal drugs is hard to get a dollar feel for, because it is unofficial. But figures from the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime estimated USD 110 billion yearly ten years ago. When I checked the Worldometer at the time of this writing, the total they estimate so far this year world-wide is 251 billion and counting. This is, for a poor neighborhood, the only rapid-growth industry. It dominates economic activity and  ensures that Collier's condition # 1 is met in full--a one-note, unvarying economy. Because it leads to other crime, it creates barriers to entry for other, more varied industry, goods, and services. It also looks like the only real-money profession around.

The third condition of civil conflict is that there is money to spend on it--that there is funding. The funding in the "unofficial war zones" that law enforcement continually faces comes from a variety of sources. There is, when you add it all up, plenty of money to be found.

1. Illegal drug sales.
2. Prostitution
3. Property crimes
4. Extortion from other criminals, such as the "street tax" collected by the Mexican Mafia.
5. Public assistance
6. Wages diverted from other wage-earners (e.g., "borrowing" from someone who has a job).

I have more to say on this issue, and to drag other economic findings in. The point I would like to leave with today is that civil conflict does appear to be a huge problem in the United States in growing areas. We are not at war with ourselves in the grand picture. Yet in almost every city we have microclimates that contain the economic elements required for violent civil conflict on a large scale. And because of the money involved, these microcosms are connecting to each other. They are growing in area. At what point could this growth in area, population, and local risk constitute a threat to national integrity?

I am not advocating that everyone buy a bunker and a machine gun. It would be better if we looked at these conditions and made some assessments. Then we can lower the risk of civil conflict and re-introduce conditions conducive to law and order.

I'm going to gather some supporting posts from police officers who blog and collect them here.

I will talk about drug markets more fully, using Levitt and Ventakesh, a few others. This set of thoughts will grow and be extend my Crime, Economics, and Cities series. Also, I want to spend some time on the language of grievance, on the organization/coalitions necessary for civil conflict to organize.

Just food for thought.

References:
Second City Cop for Chicago's out-of-control crime. A recent post.
Hemet California PD's troubles at Ann T. Hathaway
Click on the Worldometer to see the estimated total U.S. Dollars spent on illegal drugs worldwide this year. When I checked, it was $251 billion.

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• World Economists: Paul Collier (auntiehathaway.blogspot.com)
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Volunteer Charity: More Poems from the Front Lines

Yesterday, I posted the first three poems written by The Bug in 1986, when she volunteered at a charity organization. Together they make quite a statement. The reason I separated them into two posts, however, is to feature each one a little better, hopefully for a cumulative effect.

           IV. 

“Shut that baby up!”

And the child cries on.

Mary Justevich sings

her raucous song of life

& the child cries.

“The next time you come,

you leave that baby at home.”

And in the wounded eyes 

of the mother, I see

her cry:

There’s no one there

no one there

no one.

V. 

They sit as if they’re
used to waiting.
Staring off into space
thinking their own
thoughts.
Waiting. Waiting.
And I am angry.
I watch the waiting
from behind the desk
and I know.
My heart hardens
against the saints
as they talk
and wander about
ignoring the waiting.
thoughtless passages
of time.

            VI.

And in the “real” world
I see that I’ve changed.
The lights have gone gaudy –
I’ve seen the war
behind the glitter.
There will always be
dark, empty buildings
and Al & Fifi, &
even Buddy fighting
for a way of life
fighting for life
fighting.
The homes of the rich
frustrated me –
repugnant desire
of my fickle heart.
I will be gentry one day.
Will I forget
the other side of town?

The Bug posted one of these poems last week, and another post explaining what it was about and what she thinks now. This is what I think they are about: the humane, giving heart. But also, the world of humiliation that seems to go along with poverty and assistance. The humiliation of having your best impulses rebuffed--maybe because you've misjudged the scene or don't have the right thing to offer, or even that there is no right thing for someone in distress. She also writes how people on both sides shut down their best impulses, become indifferent. But there's also hope in these observations. She plunged into the work: recorded it, one poem per day. She Saw. And she knows things now that the rest of us can use. Very much so.

Thanks again, dear Bug, for an invaluable chance to gain some insights.

Volunteer Charity: Poems from the Point of Contact, part I

My friend and regular reader The Bug worked as a volunteer for a church group and charity in the Midwest in January, 1986. She was, as she puts it, "young and idealistic, and didn't know what was going on", but that's quite wrong. She was new to the experience, but that didn't stop her from observing everything carefully.
She wrote a little more about it in yesterday's post.

She mentioned some poems. I asked to see them, and she sent me six. They are very illustrative of the challenges of modern poverty eradication. But they are far more personal than that. They are also very lovely. I took the liberty of numbering them, just so you can more easily see where a new one begins.
Three today; three tomorrow. I want to thank Dana for sharing them. They are a primer on where any of us would start, inside and out.

I. 

The war is very real here.
Will you come with me
to my warm home
and partake of my bounty?
I want to draw you near,
to catch the wind
away from you,
to open my heart
(who cares if you
break the locks?).
But I don’t know
how to give
and
you don’t know
how to accept.

            II.
“You’re here for clothing?”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
And I felt like a
savior –oh these poor
people. I was going to
clothe them. I felt so
big – so clean & sacrificing.
After lunch I picked
blouses off a filthy floor
& hung them on filthy
hangers. Castoffs from
faraway people. Dusty,
dirty & tired, I felt small,
very small, a
shopkeeper ashamed of
the selection for my clientele.

III. 

Shame is a funny word.
It’s not the aggressive
mothers struggling to
feed their children. 

It’s not feisty
elders proclaiming
to all who want to hear,
“Life is shit!”
It’s not the children with
soulful, confused eyes.
Shame is the man who said, “Yes,
I’m married. I
have three children &
we’d like some food.”
Shame is the young
man bringing his
bride – “here are all
our papers. Please
help us.” And “I have
no income. No income.”

Shame burns deep 
in the eyes of a man
who can’t provide 
for his own.

The Bug blogs at "The Bug's Eye View", and is also featured on my blogroll. She's a talented writer, a member of her choir, a former sojourner to Africa, a photographer, and a great neighbor!

Tomorrow, the next three poems. Thanks to The Bug for sharing her personal experiences.

Public Assistance in Singapore

Image via Wikipedia

CPF Building, Singapore

There will be a million reasons why the public assistance model in East Asia is not applicable, unworkable, ridiculous, impossible, or politically dead in the water for the United States. I do not care. Their system is worth a look: a successful model, surely imperfect, but worth describing. 

The argument along economic lines will be circular: Singapore has a growing economy, low unemployment--they can afford to have less expenditures in public assistance. Yet the cost of U.S. public assistance and two wars (let's don't leave that out; however you may feel about them, they are expensive) has caused the U.S. to swim in debt. We are a sluggish, water-logged ship on turbulent economic waters. Let's see what Singapore does for Welfare. Maybe they know something we don't.

Most of my info and quotes come from:

David Seth Jones (June, 2002)
Welfare and Public Management in Singapore: A Study of State and Voluntary Sector Partnership. Asian Journal of Public Administration, 24:1, pp. 57-85. HERE. (Download; pdf)

Jones states that East Asia follows a Confucianist model of public assistance rather than a Western model. As such, it privileges "correct behavior" in regard to public assistance rather than what I think we do, which is "redress of wrongs, forgiveness, and mercy, to apathy and despair". The "correct behavior" applies to every individual in society, on public assistance or not. Those who have money have duties; those who accept assistance also have requirements. The level of conformity is high.

The following comes from one long paragraph that I separated for easier reading. All emphases are mine:

"Although the classic model of state welfarism has been eschewed, the Singapore government has sought to ensure that certain basic needs are met. This has been done in three ways.

The first is by subsidization.  Services such as education and health care are provided by the state with the consumer required to pay a proportion, sometimes a quite small proportion, of the cost. In this way the consumer assumes a shared responsibility in financing the services from which he or she benefits.

The second is through state-administered asset acquisition. The cornerstone of this is the Central Provident Fund scheme. Under the scheme, each employee is required to set aside 20% of his or her income every month, with 16% contributed by the employer. This amount of money is lodged in the employee's own personal account in the CPF--essentially a form of compulory savings. The employee can invest ...a certain proportion of the savings, or may use it to purchase a residence or to pay for costly medical treatment. The primary objective of the scheme, though, is to provide finance for retirement.

The third way by which social needs are met is by voluntary involvement. This relates to welfare provision and personal social services for the most needy and vulnerable in the community, which will be discussed below. (pp.61-62)

Jones says (p. 62) "At the heart of the model is the primary role of the volunatary sector and the community--welfare organizations, community associations, charities, religious bodies and even businesses, as well as the family--in the management and delivery of welfare services. The government is considered essentially a regulator and a facilitator, rather than a deliverer."

1. So Singapore does have public health care. They also require a co-pay.
2. Singapore has public education. That also requires a co-pay, and probably other steps such as entrance exams.

3. Singapore has a kind of Social Security, a little more direct than our Social Security. They have an Ordinary Account, a Medisave Account, and in some years a Special Account was also used. The government allocates, say 24% to the Ordinary and 6% to the Medisave. In times of economic downturn, they lower percentages in order to stimulate the economy. (Vandine, p.2).

II. Voluntary Welfare Organizations

Paraphrasing Jones: VWO's include: charitable organizations, community associations, ethnic self-help groups, religious groups (Christian, Taoist, Buddhist, and Muslim).  The volunteer aspect is that a (church) might agree to fill a particular need and become a VWO. Volunteerism comes from their membership, although a lot of people do seem to get paid. It's subcontracting with citizen participation. The government pays about 25% of the Total spending on Public Assistance.

As a group, VWOs do the following:
1. provide care for elderly and disabled
2. individual and family counseling (either in need or under stress)
3. accommodations and 'support in kind' for the destitute
4. assistance to needy families.
5. preschool education
6. supervising children before and/or after school
7. child and adolescent counseling
8. therapy and rehab for drug addicts
9. home health care
10. their version of "Meals on Wheels"
11. operate residential institutions for addicts in rehab, abused children or children 'out of control'; elderly; disabled, and destitute.

In many of these activities, day-care centers for children provide the locus also for child or adolescent counseling; other centers will do elder counseling, socializing, or care during the day.

Jones does not specify what number of these people are paid. I suspect  most of them. But they are hired through a VWO organization, not civil service. The VWO might also seek informal, free consultancy: a food kitchen might benefit from a (ethic association member's) grocery store acumen, or "Meals on Wheels" might get its restaurant layout looked at by a (neighborhood association member) who owns a restaurant. This help would be graciously accepted but is also part of one's civic duty.

III. Funding

Singapore's citizens may donate directly to a VWO or to Singapore's state-run Community Chest, which allocates funds for VWOs. This is also voluntary giving, frequently through regular paycheck donation. The donated C.C. funds are apportioned according to governmental criteria by the National Council of Social Service. This Council is quasi-governmental and works closely with the Ministry of Community Development and Sports. There is also a fund for Corporate Giving. Corporations can choose broad areas of concern, or specific charities, or the general welfare. Then the NCSS takes that into account.
Last of all, the Government of Singapore also chips in, up to 50% of of what it considers an appropriate operating cost for an approved VWO. Many times this is done on a per-capita basis (by number of people served).

IV: The Government of Singapore Generally Pays for: 

1. Start-up grant, for first months of investment.
2. Building/remodelling costs for facilities (including furniture, transportation, all initial costs), up to 90%, based upon a budget submitted by the VWO and approved/checked beforehand. Therefore, the VWO is kicking in 10% or more of the cash, plus the sweat equity.
They also pay 'hidden costs':
3. Rents are high in Singapore. Part of the government funding is to arrange low rent in federal property, and then pay that rent. The lease generally must be renewed every year or some agreed period of time. It is not automatic.
4. Auto licenses are expensive in Singapore. The government pays that.
5. If there are many voluntary donors for a particular Local project, sometimes the government matches funds. In that case, locals get a little more say in what is put into their area. Otherwise it follows the federal formula. In other words, citizens have to put their $$ where their commitment or perceived need is, not wait for a Congressman to pork it up for them.

V. The Ministry of Community Development and Sports is responsible for:

1. Training and advising paid staff of volunteers, occupational therapists, aides, etc.
2. Training in motivation, administrative, and career skills for VWO managers.
3. Consulting for continual training and advisement.
4. Manuals and guidelines to set standard best practice. Every VWO operates from a standing government-determined framework. Frequently there are targets and quotas.
5. Expects quarterly reports from each VWO
6. Expects conformation with guidelines/manuals--everything from how much space to staff/service ratios, hygiene, safety
7. Measures performance and holds VWOs accountable for government guidelines.

Thus Singapore has a public/private partnership that "avoids dependency on direct state welfare". The government supplies funding, regulations, guidelines, and limits duplicate efforts in the same region. The private sector is the partner who delivers the care. It is perhaps paternalistic--it requires conformation to societal norms by all parties--and it requires a significant amount of private donations.

Okay, So--?
What do you think? Consider my first example, a "disadvantaged youth in trouble."  He would go to school, be supervised before and after, his parents would be counseled or he would be housed in a charity arrangement. The difference is perhaps that he might be expected to conform against inner inclinations (to violence, good; but to a certain profession, maybe that's un-American?).  The standard set before him would be the only one to attain. On the other hand, encouragement and attention would be given when he made those steps.

or take my second example, the temporary food stamps. A person in crisis might have gotten a little financial counseling, or, a follow-up to be sure they no longer required assistance. That follow-up may have been an appointment that I would be duty-bound to make.  They also may have been making sure I DID spend those food stamps on staples or canned goods, rather than Kool-Aid or candy bars.

That's what I'm seeing, though I could be wrong in details. I don't think one paper is enough to know how Singapore and East Asia's social contract works--but I do think this gives us plenty to think about.

Another question: are we too corrupt/special-interest driven to implement this system fairly?
Is our land-mass too widespread to implement a standard system?
Another question: despite our opinion of ourselves, the U.S. is not by per capita measure or % of GDP the most charitable nation in the world. Could we get into the culture of giving?

Further References:
Government of Singapore, Central Provident Fund Web site. in English
Vandine, Comparing U.S. Social Security to Singapore's Central Provident Fund
Wikipedia, Central Provident Fund, linked above.
Hat tip to Inspector Gadget at Police Inspector blog. He wrote that Blair was interested in Singapore for UK welfare reform, and then never reformed UK public assistance. That got me started.

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A Public Assistance Mind-set, part 2

Yesterday I wrote that I did not consider myself a "Disadvantaged Youth in Trouble". However, that was not true the next year. I had medical problems: abdominal pain that never went away. I will spare you the details.

Suffice to say, I was spending a good portion of my paycheck on weekly or bi-weekly doctor visits. At that time, I took home about $330 every two weeks--about $5.00 an hour for a 40-hour week. I took every overtime possible. A doctor's appointment was $40.00 plus prescriptions, shots, and extra procedures. The doctor had me on a different antibiotic every week. The pain just got worse and worse. Pretty much I was working, worrying, and sleeping the rest of the week. It was a drag and I was uninsured. There was then, just as now, no credit at the doctor's office: I paid cash on the barrelhead.

This went on for months, until I passed out in the storeroom of the 7-11 on my way to use the head. I woke up with a lump on my forehead and the floor exhaust from the back-room freezer blowing on my skin. That was some scorching hot air in a very hot room, but I was shivering cold under the draft and all the sweat. Never fainted in my life before. Never have again.

I dragged my butt up and finished the shift. And I determined to get a second medical opinion. This doctor was a specialist. When I showed up with my empty pill bottles, and he saw the number of things already tried, he admitted me to the hospital the next day for surgery. Did I say I had no insurance? I was three weeks short of the entry for insurance at my employer.

After abdominal surgery, you are not allowed to lift anything heavier than five pounds for six weeks. I don't know if you've thought about this, but at 7-11 you lift things all the time. Milk crates. Beer cases. Shipments. This meant I could not work. Plus I had medical bills out the Whaz.

7-11 kicked in my insurance early, but that was months later. In the mean time, I had no idea they would be so good to me. I also had no income and I soon had no food. Every time I stood up I felt like the shit had been kicked out of me. Finally an older friend, at whose house I was eating dinner twice a week (but no more, to save my pride you see) advised me to go get Public Assistance. It took her a week to convince me. Finally she said, "I'd a hell of a lot rather have you getting my tax money than some deadbeat."

That partially bolstered my sore pride, and I went down. I qualified for Food Stamps, people! Unbelievable. The Social Worker was a nice lady. She said I was able to get $45.00 worth of food stamps, but they wouldn't ship for 30 days. Unless I said it was an emergency.

Okay, I said (kick me now) "No, no, it's not an emergency. I just need a little help."
"Are you sure?" she asked.
"Yes, yes, thank you. Not an emergency." I could not wait to get out of there.

If I had been more amenable to public assistance, I would have survived a little better in the short-term, don't you think? Or perhaps it was just denial, even at that stage of the situation. I can tell you that not eating has a way of prolonging your weakness and slowing your recovery.

As it was, I nearly became homeless. In six weeks I returned to work, still feeling like crap but medically cleared. When those food stamps came in, I was sure I was rich. I made a list and bought $45.00 worth of staple groceries which I then kept under the bed, in case of future emergencies. There was a beer box with flour, sugar, dried beans and macaroni, all carefully sealed up with wax paper and Scotch tape. I forget what else: I think canned goods and oil. But you talk about a near thing. Perhaps at that stage, I should have returned the Stamps. But no, I spent them. I was too afraid that I might get stuck again. Starvation was no longer an abstract idea.

To deal with temporary situations is as much work as constant ones for Social Services, maybe more. For one thing, the administration can't forecast its workload very well. And yet what we are wishing for is a system for self-help people getting assistance for acute situations. To get public assistance where we want it to be, it must encourage that "get up and get with it" that fortunately I had--and that S.S. reinforced by giving me a "temporary need" status.

In the previous post, I showed (faintly) how public assistance diminishes the capacity of those who use it. In this post, I show (faintly) how NOT having it can diminish capacity for individuals in society. I don't think I'm a representative case. But I do think I have had experiences that illustrate some part of the dilemma.

At this point, I remind you that I was single, childless, and had a correctable illness. For many, it would not be a one-time slump or confluence of situations. How can we afford to pay for twelve new S.S. hearings a year, for monthly food stamps, on a family perennially down on their luck? If we saw this family twelve times a year, what opportunity for training and counseling would we have? Budget counseling, for one. Reinforcing good behaviors. Yet it's cheaper (up to a point) and less government just to send the damn checks in the mail or (nowadays) credit the food stamp PlastiCard by computer.

But it's worth a thought when trying to divine a new solution. How many more S.S. personnel would we need? Do we want to pay for that instead--and unfortunately--in addition, at least for awhile?

The system is broken. For sure. But what will we do to change it? I offer my tiny examples as a starting point for new ideas. Otherwise, I would never tell you that once I accepted public assistance.

Related articles by Zemanta: One liberal, one conservative. Both are correct in their way and inform the other for a balance of views--

• Nearly 40 Million Now on Food Stamps (dailykos.com)
• Forget Unemployment, Check Out The Depressing Surge In Food Stamps (businessinsider.com)

A Public Assistance Mind-set, part 1

Today and Tomorrow: Two Anecdotal Reports on Public Assistance, with Two Different Viewpoints:

I don't know if I blogged about this before or not. It's a little bit about political correctness I suppose and a little about me. My main point will be, though, that public assistance comes with an attitude. When that attitude is pervasive in your life, I think it is deadening.

A long time ago, I worked for 7-11. At that time, companies such as this were eligible for supplements from the government for hiring people that fit a job-training criteria. Therefore, all of the employees in my district were sent, with pay, to the local Social Services for an interview to see if we were part of 7-11's job-training contribution to American society.

Now this program probably had the intention of rewarding companies that taught job skills, and making it easier for small businesses to hire people who didn't have those skills in the first place. At the same time, it seemed ridiculous to me. This company was nation-wide, and was doing okay. Why give money to a corporation when there were so many people walking around with real problems?

I didn't get it. It was about teaching people how to fish, instead of standing in line for the Dole.

My appointment (although I didn't realize it at the time) took up time for local S.S. (social services, not storm troopers). Multiply that by every clerk in every convenience store in town. We all know that S.S. workload is huge and heartbreaking. Conversely, it is a system dominated by a civil service mentality. So long as Some progress is made, then it's progress, so do your work steadily, slowly, and avoid burnout.  I am sure that my appointment looked like a huge waste of time to the S.S. that interviewed me.

At the end of my interview, she told me that "Yes, I did look like a disadvantaged youth in trouble" to her and so would be eligible for the program. I couldn't believe she said that to me. Was that what I was interviewing for, the position of "Disadvantaged" and "In Trouble"? How could you call a person like me disadvantaged? What about all the amazing steps I was taking, to pay my own rent, get to my own job, fix my own car for the first time in life? I had a royal blue phone and the bill was paid on time. What was so damn wrong with me?

I cried all the way to work. Shouldn't have been driving, really. My boss was flabbergasted.

"They called me a disadvantaged youth, like I have nothing going for me at all," I sobbed.

This (the same guy who told me to use napkins on a bleeding-to-death shooting victim, because they were not on inventory) got mad. "Those Assholes!" he stormed. "You're perfectly good just as you are. I'm calling the f*ing District Manager! None of my people are going to go through this. I'm telling him."

I would like to think that he supported me, but nowadays I wonder about the extra hours he was putting in while we all went to be interviewed. That may have been a major part of his ire.

My main point is this: the language of classification in Social Services is not empowering. It is a language that documents our weaknesses and not our strengths. How could it be otherwise, if they are addressing  social gaps? We aren't planning to give assistance to the able-bodied that don't need it (except, well, 7-11?). The only way to avoid this weakening language is to use number categories, which are even more dehumanizing, and--always come with a verbal explanation anyway.

Somehow I fit that description, and though I was insulted by it, it wasn't wrong. If major disaster had struck (as it did, a year after) I had no cushion.  Yet I found the process demeaning, dismissive of my humanity, and onerous. If a "disadvantaged youth's" parents learn to operate under this demeaning, dismissive, and onerous categorization, what does he or she learn? They are more disadvantaged than me, have more to overcome. We talk about generations of people on Welfare, but we don't see how the system itself can be weakening to its participants from the get. And yet starvation and joblessness are far more weakening still.

There must be a way to involve the language and actions of strength in the public assistance process. If we can do that, we can probably get people out of the bottom of the barrel and into a better world. By doing this, we strengthen our citizenry, and our efforts are more likely to gain us a win-win outcome.

Right in Front of Me, Allegedly

Last month I had an exciting hour allegedly waiting for the bus. I allegedly was watching alleged drug deals from across the alleged street. It was allegedly unbelievable. The three jokesters were on a major street, in a high traffic shopping area, with what appeared to be, allegedly, Road Construction both ways.

This was why I was waiting so long for that darn bus. But it was not a waste of time. Oh, I was positively nostalgic over my alleged years in the allegedly crack-drenched neighborhood in RiverTown.

Top-Down versus Bottom-Up
The area is also a target of city-initiated (top-down) rather than owner-driven (bottom-up) gentrification. Therefore, new apartments and condos sit side-by-side with better quality assisted housing (but still projects).  The shopping center is supposed to keep this gentrification from being a doomed enterprise. And it's a good idea. It's hard to live in a neighborhood with no services like dry cleaners, groceries, or a hardware store.

The big-box stores and food franchises have gone in, but there are No Local Businesses Interested--as in, the dry cleaners or hardware. They can't afford the losses, or the efforts for loss-prevention. This despite the city subsidy. A grocery store chain will be moving in, though--one of the final pieces on local services. That's what I hear.

Let's Make a Deal!
Because of the mixed, slow traffic and exceedingly public venue, it seemed like the stupidest place on earth to allegedly undertake illegal transactions. However, I think it was another two-step arrangement, where the money is separated from delivery of the product. So the slow movement of heavy traffic actually aided them. They would allegedly catch the pedestrian clientele on the way-social interaction. Drivers would allegedly pull over for a chat, in the still-extant parking lane, and then move on. All the uninvolved drivers were just trying to figure out how to make the light, so they paid no attention.  Good thing we were all in such an allegedly good mood.

My pictures do not bear out any of my allegations. Perhaps this is a different scene altogether? Maybe these gentlemen are just taking in the sun and talking to pretty girls when possible. Could be the only rule they are breaking is the 'no loitering' sign that I allege was there, although not pictured.

My favorite part was watching when they had no alleged business to conduct. Laughing, pulling out their money in a way I would never do, counting it and laughing again, then shoving it back in their pockets.  I would have paid the price of whatever just to hear what they were saying.

Of course the neighbors know. I scanned the building's balconies: they were family-style. Nice, in other words, with plants, furniture, tricycles.

So I started thinking what architecture had to do with the tipping point for crime in this building.

Straight, Narrow Hallways--Limited Exit
Drug syndicates on this low-level do have some kind of loyalty to each other, and physical strength, but mostly they have numbers. Loyalty sometimes breaks down under outside scrutiny or pressure. But I don't believe it breaks down inside the building. Between the connections, the annoyance of living next door to somebody who will be angry for years, and the fear factor, it doesn't take much to intimidate the entire building.

An elevator is a trap, and so is a staircase. A balcony could be. And there's maximum three exits. You can cover those with six to nine guys. Or three guys and two spotters. Piece of cake to control the whole building.

So wouldn't be an accident of placement for these guys to be at the Front Entrance. It seems stupidly obvious to traffick there, and yet it shows 'ownership'. It keeps the neighbors in line, and the neighbors must be kept in line. Heck, even I was toeing the line. I had no wish to be allegedly shot while allegedly taking pictures, or causing the bystander with an allegedly broken foot standing next to me to be in some allegedly unequal cross-fire.

This is a nice building with recent renovation.
I know that tearing down projects exports crime to wherever these residents go. The business alliance can remain, transfer, and even extend with this movement of people. I know that some of the most gang-riddled areas are neighborhoods full of single family residences.

I am left in a quandary, of course, when looking for a solution. In the meantime, those three guys are still allegedly counting their alleged rolls of soft and allegedly planning their next big party with the alleged profits.

My bus came. I managed to take a couple pictures from the window, when it seemed safe for me and everybody else to take them. I'm kind of relieved they are such bad shots. They're certainly not evidence of anything. Three guys, taking the air in front of their building. It is more in the way of an alleged memento.

Besides architecture, I thought about labor hours. You know there is a sense, from Freakonomics and elsewhere, that drug dealing is not profitable as an hourly wage. But the demands on the time are not the same as they are at a fast-food job. Freakonomics authors Stephen Levitt and Paul Dubner may have missed part of the point (see short funny lecture in previous post).

What do I learn from this?  How does it advance a solution or formulate a strategy? I am still thinking that through. Because it's possible that city planners have done the best-faith effort here possible. And yet, allegedly, here we are, with low-wage crime and terrified or complicit neighbors.

The Form and Function of the Family

Here's something I'm thinking over.

In studying poverty and crime in America, we frequently talk about disintegrating family structure. Joe the Cop over at Arresting Tales recently wrote about this. Momma Fargo has it on the sidebar of her blog: the family doesn't spend time together, and children are unsupervised. It crops up repeatedly in political discourse about what's broken in society.

Frequently we mean a nuclear family: one dad, one mom, both involved in an economic unit (a household) and engaged in responsible child-rearing. Basically, a family is supposed to raise responsible descendants, provide present-day stability, and accumulate capital, i.e., property and money that can be used to further family goals and investment and commerce. Over the years, we have added that it should foster attachment to family and country, and then finally to compassion for society at large. 

Much of the basis for our understanding of psychology (and other social sciences) comes from the axiom that the single-family household is normal. For instance, Freud posits that we learn how to interact in the world from our same-sex parent. We get our ambition from our opposite-sex parent. What if the father isn't there?  How does a young woman gain or lose ambition thereby? How does a young man learn how to act?

But what if our solutions are based upon one family model that doesn't cover every economic contingency? Or, perhaps, is an unworkable premise at the present time?

Is the nuclear family the axiomatic model?

I want to say that the nuclear family describes a portion (half?) of the historical record, even in Europe and the United States. Most families in history are extended families--multi-generational.  Some of them were nomadic, and some settled. Not all of them were related by blood--some households were more like a wolf pack, with alpha members having reproductive rights and servants or retainers with none. There are years of history where men went to Crusades or World Wars, or all the adults died of plague. Families are broken by more than one circumstance. They change in shape according to economic, reproductive, and security necessities. 

These necessities are rarely charming, or cruelty-free, or actualize individual choices. They aggregate money, defense and power, and are a fight against group mortality. 

The nuclear family as we understand it originates as a wrench from the multi-generational extended family. It represents a huge social displacement. Somebody cast off from the old country (immigration). They moved from settled lands further West (migration).  They were turned out as youngsters and forced to seek their fortune elsewhere (apprenticeship). Or, they ran from their responsibilities to their starving parents or lackluster cousins and started over, never to return. 

Frequently, the multi-generational family offers the most support in poverty. It is also the least mobile in responding to change.  It creates instant support for some things, such as child supervision or a barn-raising. It does not respond to economic innovation or gain rapid money aggregation. Somebody is always getting old, sick, or in trouble. A nephew always needs a ride or a money order. Individual success is always diluted by the constant need of the group.

Industrial society requires a mobile population. This is better accomplished by a smaller nuclear family. An agrarian society under constant pressure from nature and with low technology is better served by an extended family. We have today a settled society doing lower-income service work with unreliable schedules. The family formed under these conditions in neighborhoods is the extended family, mostly female. There is always someone with whom you can drop off the kids. Nuclear families in the meantime, keep looking for day care options, finding either none, or professional playrooms, or importing nannies or au pairs, or--reaching out to the extended family yet again.

Toward Restoring Family Function

Mostly I'd like to point out that if we don't have a nuclear family with one father, one mother, and the appropriate number of children, we have to work with the family structures we have. We may have to start with a different goal that is equally family-oriented. That would be, to enable extended families to aggregate capital and contribute stability. And finally, to raise children who would understand how to perpetuate social values with a functional family, in whatever form it seems to take. Maybe we need to quit wishing and see the strengths of the families that have formed in response to the changing economic realities. Or maybe we just need to intervene after all. 

[Below the jump: a haphazard history, cherry-picked from research I already did for other reasons. Just to give examples of family structures that served at the time. It rambles, and not everyone needs it to understand what I mean above. In short, my discussion is set up: it's just background for the same.]

Medieval History

In the Middle Ages, under Norman rule, the elaborate courtly love scenarios mask a grim reality: few men were allowed to get married. Few had property, which was the means of income. If this estate wasn't to be broken up, then many knights had to stay unmarried. While there was no lack of male influence, there was no nuclear family either. Instead, one man had legitimate bed-rights and the rest were tossing scullery maids and ladies-in-waiting on an unofficial basis.

A baron with a small holding and six sons had to send five of them to the clergy, or get them fostered out to richer lords as pages--yet a different kind of extended family. Unless these sons won renown and property, they never married. Do we think they never had children?

Peasants married (or, not.). Frequently they had their own family cot. Just as frequently, they lived in loose association, an extended family through marriage or blood, in associated cabins or a long-house arrangement. The long house arrangement was also used by the Saxons, the Scandinavians, and expanded for feudal/serf society.

References: Marriage & Family in the Middle Ages by Frances and Joseph Gies; William Marshal: The Flower of History by Georges Duby; et cetera.

Manorial History

In later centuries, the Medieval models changed somewhat: both agrarian and servant labor was more mobile. Still, the butler could not marry the housekeeper without prior permission from his employer. Nobody wanted a pregnant housekeeper, because it interfered with housekeeping. Therefore, the scullery maids's position did not change much. Female servants were sent packing at the first sign of pregnancy. No references were given, thus cutting those women off from legitimate economic avenues. Prostitution has almost immediately diminishing economic returns. So there were a lot of orphans in European cities, actual and de facto. A skilled worker such as a cook or first ladies' maid might have accumulated capital and a skill that enabled her to leave her child elsewhere and return to the work force.

Land-owning families, and some rich proprietors were nuclear families. They also tried to extend that network with connections forged by marriage for property and power alliances: marriage for advantage in the extended family, rather than affection. 

Servants held a higher rank than a tradesman (a collier, for instance, but maybe not a jeweler.). Yet there are mansions with a history of making their servants use hidden staircases, never to be seen. Other manors where servants were supposed to turn their faces to the wall in the presence of their lord. They were part of a household, but their place was limited. They were paid in room and board, livery, and a quarterly wage, very small, and their retirement might or might not be forced. It might or might not be accompanied by a monetary gift.

Those who farmed manorial land had a nuclear family, again extended by close proximity to other nearby family members, and a de facto or customary inheritance of rented farms and jobs in the local village. It depends on what kind of noble landlord, his bailiff, and how much he was willing to re-invest that tells you whether they had quality of life. Over time, farming made less money with more expenses than herding enterprises. Rural re-investment stalled or died for the tenant farm after industrialization. And this broke up many extended families.

References: Life in a Noble Household, 1641-1700 by Gladys Scott Thomson; Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire by Amanda Foreman; An Elegant Madness: High Society in Regency England by Venetia Murray; et cetera.

Industrialization

While industrialization served to privilege nuclear families, it also disrupted them. Women worked cheaper than men; children worked cheaper than women; and so to the factories the children went. This is not the nuclear family we generally invoke. Without reformist labor laws, the male has traditionally earned the higher wage--when he can find a job. 

The American West.
When homesteaders married on the frontier, and the wife died, it was not unusual for a man to marry his first wife's sister. Their background was known, their home training the same, their location known. Likewise, homesteading widows remarried if they could, just to keep things going. Or, if she had no extended family, she frequently was displaced to a town in order to support her children by legitimate or unsavory means.

References: Interwoven by Frances Mayhugh Holden; et cetera.

Slavery

In some ways, slavery combines many of the factors above. It resembles the manorial or Medieval system for servitude, except there was even less mobility, and less aggregation (say, zero) of capital.  The conditions of slavery combine the features of rural extended families but also broke those extended relationships through brutality and by selective relocation--either during the expansion of property, 'hiring out' or subcontracting slave labor, or through sale of family members to another owner. In this situation, you have heartbreak. As in many family situations listed above, family then adjusts to whoever's still around. 

Only in slavery and in families with capital or land to inherit does an expectant woman have greater value while pregnant. Once the child is weaned, then the child became another potentially valuable factor in alliances, wage-earning, or as a worker, slave, or vassal.

Frances Kemble of the London acting family left the stage to marry a plantation holder. She kept a diary that detailed her observations and horrified feelings about slavery and how it was conducted. The slaves she met constantly appealed to her for mercy, extra food, clothing, or the like. In such conditions, eating two meals of corn gruel a day to do field work in the summer, it would perhaps be hard to feel attachment to anyone. Your best survival attachment was to your enemy, or to the least resolute of your enemy.

Kemble writes also that individual slaves were sometimes singled out as favorites. In such cases, the requests for relief could take on a more trickster-type mode, based upon making the owner laugh and give in rather than outright pleading. This kind of trickster mythology, seen in the myths/legends of B'rer Rabbit (but not the Disney version), was a very effective pressure. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. calls this kind of interchange 'signifying'.  It was a teachable skill and used throughout the single- or extended- black family in the Jim Crow South and beyond. I saw my husband scammed by it once. And Eudora Welty, in "The Worn Path" gives incredible examples of how it works. If you don't read carefully, you never see it. This contains a whole other subject, but it does show that generational wisdom did get passed down through the black family under very trying conditions.

The main differences I see in slavery is that it did not teach the accumulation of capital at the same time that it produced no relief from strong, isolating anxiety. The most important alliances to maintain were to your enemy. There is also a temporal distortion of up to six hundred years in that extended, group family structure from the ones most nearly the same in European history.

Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-1839 by Frances Ann Kemble (Butler); other slave accounts; The Signifying Monkey by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.; et cetera.

States v. Markets in Health Care Bill

We continue to define national issues only as political ones, where the spendthrift vanguard meets the tight-fisted old guard, where the charitable spirit meets boot-strapping independence.  By focusing on liberal v. conservative, we are not seeing the real fight.

The National Health Care Bill
More than two armies were in the field.  They're all visible, but somehow we keep forgetting this has been a melee, with various feudal bands all going for the same patch of ground at once. See picture below: many flags, confusion. That's what this was. All the alliances were temporary.

I can assure you this is not a Democratic victory.
Yes, there was a Democrat president. Yes, there was a Democratic  Congress. Yes, no Republican voted for this bill but the Democrats carried the day.

This was a victory for various market actors.
Once again, some political faction (this time the Dems) has fought the war and traded the favors and gained the reputation, for good or ill. They didn't gain anything. The market actors did though.

Who Won

Small Players

1. Small business owners will be able to achieve cheaper pricing for health insurance and ensure their employees all have coverage without breaking the bank. This is a good. A lot of them vote Republican.

2. It's a victory for the working poor, who will be able to get health insurance. This is also a good.

3. It's a victory for the not-working poor, who now know what they can get for free or minimal cost. Democrats. They were mostly getting it anyway.

4. It may even be a victory for the illegal alien, who will be treated for free or minimal cost, depending on how many green cards have to show up in the E.R. They can't vote. But see small business above.

Big Business

5. It's a victory for the pharmaceutical companies and their stockholders and employees (except sales and R & D). Their competition will become less acute. The companies will ally and form joint ventures for R & D and share the wealth. This will cut their costs. There will also be less choices for consumers, from the rich on down to the poor. In general, conservative-minded people are going to benefit here, especially those involved in investment markets.

6. It's a victory for the health care conglomerates and their stockholders. Some employees will be let go when consolidation of the cartel occurs (a defeat).

7. Health-care manufacturers will be able to plan their production of everything from gauze to complicated machinery. They'll have a boom in some products and cut production in others.

**8. It's primarily a victory for the insurance companies. High-risk individuals or communities will go in a pool, and the burden will be shared. They will finally get EVERYONE as a customer, and can start regulating us in full.

As for pharmaceuticals and large health-care conglomerates, standardization allows the present actors to work out a cartel arrangement. They're already a cartel, but the insurance supplier just became more impenetrable. These are traditionally conservative.

The management of these various cartels will undergo some consolidation. There will be fewer actors in that market. Watch your portfolio if you have one. You could do well in the changes.

Win Here, Lose There

9. Under-served areas will have subsidized or lower costs in placement of health-care facilities. This is a victory for rural areas which frequently have nothing (and vote Republican). Urban hospitals and medium-sized areas will be overburdened. Urban areas lose.

10. The middle class will not lose their savings over severe health care issues. They will be the most aggravated, but as a class it keeps them from sinking into the lower class in the face of catastrophic disease. To this, add increased tax burdens.

11. Baby boomers get the federal government to subsidize their health care needs as they approach age. This is a victory for them and a burden on the subsequent generations.

Who Lost
12. It looks like a defeat for the Democrats. The cartels got what they wanted, and can now go back to funding Republicans in elections. The Republicans will not be able to abolish managed health care, but they're more likely to leave it alone once it is established. In my view, traditionally Republican "big business" was hand in glove with the Democratic party on this one. But big business is not loyal to the Dems. It's a temporary alliance.

13. It's a defeat for innovators outside the cartels. That includes most professionals, such as doctors and researchers.
14. It's a defeat for any medical consumer who does not respond to standard treatment, or who needs prolonged treatment.

15. It's a defeat for advertisers and those who depend on advertising revenue (the media, for instance). Reduced competition may lead to less advertising.

Conclusion
It's a mixed bag for us as market actors (suppliers, laborers, consumers. investors) and it is a defeat for us as taxpayers.

The health care bill underlines how governments bumble around restricting markets-- only to free the market actors from all kinds of costs. Standardization is viewed as a good in almost any market over time.

In this case, the federal government is agreeing to take on the costs and burdens of compliance with standardization, while realizing few if any of the benefits. The more convoluted the law, the more burdens the state takes on. It's going to work fine in a burgeoning economy (over time). The years of its inception, and the years when our economy weakens, it's going to sink us like a stone.

Illustration: word and game files wordpress.com