Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.
--Daniel Patrick Moynihan

February 5, 2021

MACA: Make America Competent Again

 

By David K. Shipler 

The first in an occasional series 

                Perhaps the word “again” should be put in quotes or parentheses or followed by a question mark, because while the United States has done a lot of things very well through its history, incompetence has also plagued governmental behavior in areas ranging from foreign affairs to poverty. A frequent hallmark of failure has been the unwillingness to apply what we know to what we do. Expertise does not get translated into policy.

                The most obvious recent example is the Covid-19 pandemic, where the Trump administration’s floundering cost lives and worsened economic hardship. But the gap between knowledge and practice inhibits problem-solving in many fields. If you add up all of society’s accumulated understanding about the causes of poverty, for example, or about the sources of conflict in one or another region of the world, and then compare that knowledge with the actions being taken, it looks as if knowledge gets filtered out through a fine sieve before it gets to the policy level.

The Vietnam War was such a case. The US government saw North Vietnam as a Chinese and Soviet proxy in the vanguard of communism, and therefore a threat to American security. But historians knew that Vietnam had resisted China for centuries. And so could any American soldier or diplomat in Saigon who bothered to notice how many streets were named for Vietnamese heroes in the long campaigns against Chinese occupation. It should have been no mystery to American policymakers that the war, for Hanoi, was the continuation of a long anti-colonialist struggle, not one fought to spread global communism.

The dilution of expertise in making policy can be seen in the Middle East, Russia, China, and other parts of the world. The same is true at home. Much is known about how to treat prisoners to reduce recidivism rates, how to prevent police from extracting false confessions, how to provide good defense attorneys for indigent defendants, how to curtail global warming, how to clean up air and water, how to make workplaces safer, how to reduce suicides (gun control), how to treat mental illness, and on and on.

Accumulated knowledge about poverty is not put to good use. We know how to alleviate housing problems in America; it’s a matter of money. We know how to eliminate malnutrition—also a matter of money. We know how to raise workers’ skills and make work pay enough to sustain a family. We know how to provide decent medical care. We know how to improve education. True, some of our abilities diminish along the more difficult part of the spectrum—we are confounded by child abuse, drug abuse, gang violence, racism, white supremacy, and harmful parenting. But we know how to ease many other hardships.

Why don’t we apply our knowledge? For at least two main reasons. One is the lack of will. We’re not good at playing the long game by paying for remedies that don’t show immediate results. We are stricken with impatience; deferred gratification is not our thing. We elect timid officials, not true leaders who dare to educate and inspire. Alarmist sound bites about higher taxes strike a chord. Blaming the victims is a professional pastime on the political right.

Another reason is widespread unawareness. In some quarters, experts are derided as elitist and disparaging. Research isn’t sufficiently shared among disciplines, so the silos of information don’t get blended and communicated to the general population. Specialists’ insights are often left hidden in obscure corners of the scientific or academic world. As a result, known lines of cause and effect are invisible.

An important illustration of the failing is the relationship between housing, malnutrition, brain development, and lifelong cognitive impairment that leads to learning disabilities and school dropouts. The chain reaction is well understood by experts but hardly at all by legislators who vote on housing subsidies, much less by the public at large.

It works this way: Take a low-income family way down on the waiting list for the inadequate government programs that reduce housing costs. On the open market, the family might pay 50 to 60 percent of monthly earnings for rent. That is not an optional expense. You have to pay the rent. You have to pay for electricity, heat, and phone. If you’re part of the vast majority of Americans who have to drive to get to work, you have to make the car payments and the insurance premiums. These are not choices. They cannot be squeezed. What can be squeezed is the part of the monthly budget for food.

And that is what many poor families confront. Research on low-income households has found a high correlation between a lack of housing subsidies and malnourished children.

Malnutrition impairs the immune system, making kids more susceptible to illness.

More seriously, decades of study by neuroscientists have shown that malnutrition during critical periods of brain development—notably the last two trimesters of a woman’s pregnancy and the first two or three years of a child’s life—can cause lifelong cognitive damage. The early deprivation can leave indelible marks even if it is followed by years of improved nutrition. Teenagers who suffered iron deficiency during periods of critical brain development score lower in math and written expression, motor function, spatial memory, and selective recall. They display more social problems, attention deficit, anxiety, and depression.

Facing such disabilities, they are candidates for the ranks of school dropouts, who earn less money, pay less in taxes, suffer more health problems, and encounter the criminal justice system at higher rates. Food insecurity now hits an estimated 27 percent of American adults without a high school diploma, compared with only 5 percent of college graduates.  

Obviously, not all cognitive deficits can be traced back to inadequate housing subsidies. But inadequate income can be felt indirectly as well. Childhood food allergies cannot be addressed without access to well-stocked grocery stores, which are sparse in poor neighborhoods that are often called “food deserts,” where 19 million Americans now live.

Nursing a child’s food intake cannot be done well without consistent adult supervision, often lacking when parents work odd hours for low wages and rely on neighbors or relatives as caregivers. New immigrants are sometimes fooled by advertising into thinking of American junk food—Coke and chips, for example—as nutritious. All this and more is witnessed by doctors and nutritionists in America’s malnutrition clinics. Yes, there are malnutrition clinics in the United States of America.

And the pandemic has only made the situation worse. With people out of work and schools closed, depriving kids of school lunches, a companion epidemic of food shortages has spread ominously. The incidence of households reporting inadequate food has risen from 10.5 percent in 2019 to estimates of 23 percent or more. Among families with children, rates are 27.5 to 29.5 percent, affecting over 13.9 million kids.

Do we not know the devastating brain damage being done to children? Yes, we know. That is, neuroscientists know, pediatricians know, some of us who have being paying attention know. If those who make policy knew, the idealist would say, we would spend more on housing. We would spend more on SNAP, formerly known as food stamps, which is underfunded and a perpetual target of Republicans. (Trump tightened the rules and reduced some benefits, which President Biden has reinstated.) If we were true to what we like to believe about ourselves, we would not be consigning millions of children to lifetime cognitive impairment.

When government fails, the society fails. That sets up a circular pattern, for alienated citizens tend to drift toward populist demagogues such as Trump, who devastated government agencies designed to render help. Republicans who cultivate distaste for government, and who deprive government of the tools necessary for effectiveness, reinforce the syndrome that will elevate the next Trump—on the backs of those who go hungry today. 

Next: Private efforts to Make America Competent

6 comments:

  1. This is a great piece, Dave. I think you articulate so well one of the big problems in trying to improve our society. It seems there are so many people who blithely subscribe to being Willfully Ignorant about all of this. Many are, of course, Republicans. (Like Aesop's Scorpion who hitches a ride with the Good Frog, who, midway, is stung to death by the Scorpion. "I can't help it, it's in my nature," explains the Scorpion! Yep! - That's Republicans for you.) It seems that some people - make that many - lack compassion along with common sense and are unable to care about others or to support kind, productive programs - even if, down the road, the programs clearly save lives and money. It astounds me that so many people can be so callous and short-sighted - not to mention, self-defeating!
    I really appreciate your attempt to address this wanton proclivity; it doesn't serve our society well at all. Quite the opposite.
    I thank you for writing this piece. I wish everyone could - would - read it - especially people working with Biden now. Perhaps it would help encourage them to install the productive, progressive programs that our country needs now - so very badly!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Many people tell themselves they made it, and are making it, on their own; so should everyone else. (They don't recognize the government benefits they receive in the form of tax deductions, not to mention the roads they or their employers use, the schools they attended, etc.). To hell with public assistance programs, which they don't want to pay for.
    They tell themselves public assistance discourages work, the type of work they are doing themselves every day. But our economy is engineered with the assumption that unemployment will, indeed should, remain somewhere above zero. Otherwise we'll have inflation and other economic effects.

    If you engineer an economy that will exclude some from the workforce, how can you NOT provide them public assistance?

    At the end of the day, people are overly optimistic about their own efforts and achievements and don't want to pay what it takes to create a just and humane society. So they elect leaders who often intentionally tie the hands of government agencies who might address these issues.

    We don't just have "climate change deniers." We have deniers of many of our nation's problems, from systemic racism and sexism to unemployment and hunger, and on and on. If you don't like the solution to a problem, you deny the problem exists and go on your merry way.

    I'm not sure how we change this but fixing our election system so we get real representation in Congress would be a good start. Gerrymandering, the electoral college, and campaign finance all need reform. In my opinion, we can't address real substantive issues until we repair the system itself.

    ReplyDelete
  3. When I've given speeches about poverty, I've often asked audiences at the end how many of them would be willing to pay more taxes to address the problems of the poor. In virtually every group, whether college students, lawyers, or business executives, the vast majority raise their hands. I don't think that's because I'm so persuasive. I think that more Americans than politicians realize are concerned about those issues. I've also then asked how many of those who've raised their hands have told their elected officials about their views. Hardly any hands go up. That's the problem: the gap between those who are willing to see their taxes raised for a good purpose and those who actually tell that to their representatives.

    ReplyDelete
  4. As much as I hate to make this suggestion, perhaps attendees at your speeches on poverty are a self-selecting group and not representative of the wider public. Folks who would attend a speech on poverty might be more likely to raise their hands than the average person out there.

    ReplyDelete
  5. That's surely true in most cases. But some are captive audiences--the entire first-year classes at colleges that have adopted THE WORKING POOR as common reading, for example, who represent a variety of political views mostly inherited from their parents. (But who don't yet pay taxes, I admit.) I've also had the reaction from Chambers of Commerce and Rotary Clubs whose members are in business, and bar associations with cross sections of lawyers. So while the audiences are biased samples, and my sociology professors would not approve of my making too much out such unrepresentative groups, I still think there's more distress about American poverty than the usual political labels would have us assume.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Actually, we have the state the Powers That Be want and have corrupted nearly all of our elected officials to get. These are the people the GOP and so-called corporate Democrats serve instead of seeing the nation.
    It follows from the PTB's priorities that there is no good reason not have a living wage for all people working a full time job. There is no reason why people with full time jobs need public assistance, easy (but not cheap) credit and/or additional employment to make a living -- yet ~25% of working people need at least one of those aids -- and the professional classes are right with them in getting screwed with politicians' support. But the PTB are that greedy and their elected puppets are beholden to them. But then again, for the PTB, the reliance on credit is fine because it not only saves them the money of paying a living wage but then enriches them the profits of lending instead of paying. (Bonus: More and more of our long-term shrinking GDP is growing debt. And that debt is part of GDP is a little perverse economically.)
    As for the Covid response: It's not any sort of issue of can't do it but a complete lack of interest in doing anything more than ensuring that financial interests come out okay from the pandemic if not enriched.

    ReplyDelete