A program from Amagin, Erie, Pennsylvania
Funding for this program was provided by:
(crowd cheering)
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: "I say to you today my friends, let freedom ring!
the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire, let
freedom ring."
CHARLES MURRAY: If you take a close look at
the poverty figures, the most ironic and I
think tragic conclusion that you reach is:
that we were winning the war on poverty in
this country until shortly after Lyndon Johnson
declared war on it.
KING: "From the mighty mountains of New York,
let freedom ring from the heights of the Alleghenies
of Pennsylvania."
DONALD EBERLE: Labor unions have used their
power over the years to support policies and
programs here in Washington that have the
effect of excluding blacks.
KING: 'Let freedom ring from every hill and
molehill of Mississippi, from every mountainside."
GEORGE GILDER: Some 55% of all black children
in America are now born out of wedlock.
KING: Free at last, free at last, thank God
almighty, we are free at last.
WALTER WILLIAMS: 1963: a time of incredible
optimism for black people. The civil rights
movement was about to achieve its greatest
triumphs. A great war on poverty had been
declared. But something went wrong.
They say the road to hell is paved with good
intentions. This might be that road. It’s
covered thick with good intentions. In the
mid-1960s and throughout the ‘70s and early
‘80s federal and state governments poured
immense energy and well over a trillion dollars
into the task of relieving poverty and promoting
equality. The result: a complete failure.
For many blacks at the lower end of the economic
spectrum, the future looks more hopeless today
than it did twenty years ago.
More black teenagers and young adults are
unemployed. More black families depend on
welfare. Fewer black children are getting
a decent education. In some inner cities,
more than 70% of black babies are born out
of wedlock. More black youngsters commit crimes.
More black people are victims of crimes.
My name is Dr. Walter Williams, and I’m
an economist. I have spent much of my life
studying the causes of poverty. I broke out
of the North Philadelphia ghetto nearly thirty
years ago, and so did most of my friends.
But today, fewer young blacks are escaping
places like this. I want to spend the next
thirty minutes exploring the reasons why.
For believe it or not, to a considerable extent,
the government is the culprit. It is the government,
with its hundreds of billions of dollars.
It is the government, with its thousands of
programs. It is the government, with its endless
good intentions.
(opening music)
Government anti-poverty programs have often
ended up locking people into poverty. To see
how, let’s begin where everybody begins:
in school.
This is the first place I ever did that – Benjamin
Franklin High School in North Philly. Franklin
was mostly black when I was a student here
in 1954. It has always had its problems financially
and academically. But I got a solid education
here, and so did my classmates. Most of my
classmates read at or above grade level. They
came to school, they did their homework, and
they behaved. But as in most schools all over
America, things at Franklin got worse in the
‘60s and ‘70s. Test scores plummeted.
Many Franklin students do work far below high
school level. More students get diplomas,
but those diplomas are worth less. And discipline
got so bad that at Franklin, as in most nearby
schools, security guards patrol the hallways.
LAWRENCE UZZEL: In the early 1960s the federal
government was putting less than a billion
dollars a year into elementary and secondary
education. Since 1964 federal spending on
elementary and secondary schools has gone
up more than 900% and during that very period,
education has gone downhill by every conceivable
objective measurement of real academic performance.
WILLIAMS: The 1960s were a time of great hope
for public education. Not only was federal
money coming in, most black people believed
that integration and the civil rights movement
would put black parents in greater control
of their children’s education. It didn’t
work out that way.
UZZEL: Twenty years ago, more than half of
every dollar spent on education went to classroom
teachers, but today the fastest growth area
in education is administrators, researchers,
consultants – people who often don’t even
set foot in a classroom – and we are now
spending less than forty cents out of every
dollar on classroom teachers. There is a parasitic
structure that has come into being that has
nothing to do with the interaction between
teacher and child in the classroom.
WILLIAMS: Can we really blame government for
the nationwide decline in education? Can we
blame the Vietnam War, or the turmoil of the
‘60s, or lingering discrimination? Unfortunately
not…while public schools are falling apart,
non-public schools are maintaining their standards.
Schools like this one, Ivy Leaf of Philadelphia,
just a few miles from Benjamin Franklin. Ivy
Leaf spends far less in educating their children,
yet 80% of their children score higher than
the national norm on standardized reading
and math tests.
MOTHER: When my daughter was in the public
schools, my husband and I felt that she was
not being challenged enough, so we took her
out and put her in Ivy Leaf. And we are very
happy and she is very happy because not only
is she making good grades, she also has self-confidence
and she is showing some leadership qualities.
JOAN RATTERWAY: Within the last two years,
the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise
has been working on a study trying to identify
where are the independent schools, especially
those schools that cater primarily to minority
students. We found a great number that were
stable, successful in producing achieving
students. Independent schools were doing a
much better job than public schools on the
average.
WILLIAMS: Public schools are bad for black
people today for the same reasons they were
bad thirty years ago under segregation. Black
parents did not control the public schools
then, and black parents do not control the
public schools today.
Some people have been fighting to give parents
that control.
JAY PARKER: A few years ago here in Washington, D.C.,
proponents of the Tuition Tax Credit
bill worked hard to push forth this initiative,
which will simply allow in the city poor parents
to have freedom of choice for their kids to
attend the school of their choice. Whether
it’s a public or non-public school, they
simply wanted to make sure that their kids
got a quality education. And this tuition
tax credit scheme is nothing more than a device
through which the individual parent would
receive a tax credit on their income tax by
taking that money allowed by the public education
system. That was soundly defeated here in
Washington, D.C. simply because the education
establishment… vehemently opposed it, because
they did not want the intercity parents to
have freedom of choice. Many of the politicians
who got involved in this fight against tuition
tax credits actually have their kids in non-public
schools, in exclusive private schools if you
will. And it’s an absolute tragedy
WILLIAMS: Tuition tax credits wouldn’t provide
a utopia but they would give poor parents
the power to choose a school like Ivy Leaf,
rather than see their children condemned to
a third-rate public school.
PARKER: As long as they have the best for
their kids they simply don’t care about
the others.
WILLIAMS: So what happens to kids who leave
third-rate public schools for the job market?
They run into yet another government imposed
road black…the minimum wage.
I used to work in a store like this. I didn’t
need a ladder back then, either. I was fifteen
at the time, but I had been working since
I was ten, as a shoeshine boy, dishwasher,
fruit picker, and other odd jobs. But I wasn’t
the exception. My whole crowd worked. Back
in those days, just about any kid who looked
for a job could find one. Today, in ghettos
like I grew up in, 70% of black children who
look for jobs cannot find them. That’s a
shame, because a first job means much more
than pocket change. It’s a chance for a
start, maybe in a store like this.
GROCER: Most of the kids that you give jobs
to, they hold them for a long period of time
here, you know, and I wish I could give more
kids jobs because I have kids constantly coming
up to me asking me for jobs, you know, and
I can’t give them the jobs that I wish I
could give them.
WILLIAMS: For a small employer to hire a young,
inexperienced worker is a risk. The grocer
who hired me could afford that risk; I only
earned a dollar an hour. But that’s all
I was worth. I didn’t have any experience
or skills. Today, with an effective minimum
wage of nearly $4.00 an hour, the risk of
hiring a young, inexperienced worker may be
too expensive to take.
GROCER: If there were a lower minimum wage
I could hire maybe two or three more.
WILLIAMS: The Minimum Wage Law is a perfect
example of the pattern afflicting poor black
people today. The government, in an attempt
to protect poor people, often creates new obstacles
for them. In the 1950s, the minimum wage was
only a dollar an hour. Given the price level
at that time. that meant there was virtually
no minimum. Starting in 1961, Congress began
to push the minimum wage higher. In effect,
the law forced teenagers to ask for more than
they were worth. As it became more expensive
to hire young workers, black teenage unemployment
soared. By 1982, the effective minimum wage,
including Social Security and other payroll
taxes was almost $4.00 an hour, and black teenage
unemployment stood at nearly 50%. Other factors
contributed, but the minimum wage did a lot
of the damage.
The minimum wage may seem like a small thing,
but if government had prevented me from working
as a teenager, as it prevents so many kids
today, it might have altered the entire course
of my life. If at the crucial time I had gotten
into the habits of the street, rather than
the habits of working, I hate to think where
I might be today.
Of course many black people have made it in
recent years, especially those who have finished
college and entered their professions. But
many others on the lower end of the scale,
trying to get solid blue collar careers, have
run into government road blocks that work
just like the Minimum Wage Law.
I drove a cab back in 1957 for awhile. I made
about $125.00 a week. Drivers in Philly now
tell me they make about $250.00 a week.
If they own their own cabs they can make almost
twice as much, and be in business for themselves.
But what stops them? It’s the thousands
of federal and state regulations that are
imposed on the U.S. economy.
In Philly, the number of cab licenses is restricted
by law. That makes them scarce and expensive
– almost $20,000.00 apiece at last count.
If you can’t come up with the 20-grand,
forget about driving for yourself. In Washington,
D.C. you can get a cab license for less than
$50.00. As a result, 90% of the D.C. cabbies
own their own cabs, compared to less than
50% in Philly. Fares are lower, the drivers
keep more- and of course, more people can
get work as drivers.
CAB DRIVER: If a cab driver had to pay $20,000
for a cab here the poor cab drivers couldn’t
drive a cab.
WILLIAMS: There are 10,000 cabs in D.C.. Over
70% are owned by blacks. In New York and Philadelphia
blacks own less than 20% of the cabs. Government
licensing closes the door to economic opportunity.
Nearly a thousand occupations in the United
States exclude people who do not have licenses.
Sometimes the licenses cost money. Sometimes
they require the applicant to pass complicated
tests that have little to do with the job.
Sometimes, getting a license requires a friend
in the business. All those licensing laws
do just one thing – keep outsiders out.
Those outsiders are often members of minority
groups.
EBERLE: Back during the ‘30s and ‘40s
there were practices that were rampant in
the South, particularly in the former slave-holding
states, where blacks were specifically excluded
by predominantly white unions. Example: electricians’
unions, plumbers’ unions, railroad firemen’s
unions, and at that time the records of history
will demonstrate that it was the purpose of
white unions to exclude blacks and minorities
in general from the workplace. In fact there
were statements specifically made in connection
with occupational licensing regulations that
if this law is successful it will have the
effect of reducing to a minimum the involvement
of blacks, or Negroes, as they were called
then, in the workplace.
WILLIAMS: This is the Mount Zion United Methodist
Church in Washington, D.C.. Back in 1880, when
Washington was still a segregated city, this
beautiful building was built by black artisans,
black plumbers, carpenters, and masons. And
mind you, all working under black supervision.
So are many other important public buildings
in this city and in cities throughout the
South. Today that sounds remarkable. Even
now, black people have a hard time breaking
into the skilled construction trades. The
fact is, in the late 1880s, black people were
better represented in many of the skilled
trades than they are today.
Today, such blatant racism is illegal and
many union leaders would like to see more
black workers in union jobs. But again, good
intentions don’t always produce good results.
EBERLE: The effect of the government endorsing
collective bargaining and the closed shop
concept within the union movement was that
it basically locked in place, to a large degree,
for a generation or two to come, white domination
of unions, and when you confer upon a union,
in effect, monopoly rights to bargain collectively
for the entire work force… they, in effect,
can lay out the conditions: they can set the
price for their labor, and they can control
entrance to that particular industry.
WILLIAMS: Restrictive labor laws are just
like minimum wages in some ways. In effect,
they force inexperienced workers to charge
more for their labor, and thus keep them from
competing for jobs. There are many examples,
but one of the most infamous is the Davis-Bacon
Act, passed in the racist days of 1931, but
still enforced today.
MARK DE BERNARDO: The Davis-Bacon Act is a
50-year-old law, passed during the Depression.
The purpose of which was to prevent employers
from undercutting wages at a time when it
was very much a seller’s market of employment,
a very high unemployment rate, and it was
a worker protection act. Now it’s very much
outdated today, because the Davis-Bacon Act,
50 years later, has become a union protection
act. The net effect of the Davis-Bacon Act
today is that it favors union construction
firms.
WILLIAMS: Most blacks are in non-union construction
firms or are independent tradesmen. Davis-Bacon
excludes them from most government contracts.
Of course, the government also has programs
that help black people get jobs. Between 1960
and 1980, the government spent almost 90 billion
dollars on job training and jobs programs.
Thirty million people went through those programs.
The result: unemployment among the targeted
groups went up, not down.
Good intentions just don’t cut it. It is
morally outrageous for government to be cutting
off the ambitions of those trying to climb
the middle rungs of the economic ladder, whether
as cab drivers, construction workers, masons,
or manicurists. After all, hope is the most
important thing that people can have. But
what good is hope when people try to break
out of poverty, just to find that the rules
of the game are stacked against them?
And where do people end up, after the government
denies them chances for a decent education
or a decent job? In the clutches of the worse
government roadblock of them all, the dependency
of the welfare system.
This is where we lived…the Richard Allen
Project of North Philadelphia. My father deserted
us when I was three, so occasionally my mother
had to take welfare. But she didn’t like it,
so she took work as a domestic servant
whenever she could. Back then, welfare wasn’t
a way of life. My mother only received $25.00
a week. Almost any job paid more than that.
So even if she wanted to stay on welfare,
she had very little incentive to do so.
CHARLES MURRAY: The changes in welfare benefits
during the 1960s were quite large. If you
take the case of a woman going on AFDC in
a typical industrial state – I’ll take
Pennsylvania as an example – in 1960 she
would have gotten about $23.00 which in 1980
purchasing power was about $63.00. By 1970,
she could have gotten benefits conservatively
estimated, not tapping all the possible sources
of support but a minimal package that would
amount to about $134.00 in 1980 purchasing
power. By way of comparison, a minimum wage
job in 1960 only paid $111.00 in 1980 purchasing
power. In other words, in 1970 the AFDC plus
other forms of benefits were providing purchasing
power somewhat greater than you could make
by working forty hours a week at a minimum
wage job only ten years earlier.
WILLIAMS: I came from a broken home, but in
my day that was unusual. Black families were
almost as stable as white families. The black
family did not start falling apart until the
1960s as more blacks were lured into the welfare
culture.
GILDER: …and this came in two ways. One
way was it prevented the formation of families,
that is, fostered illegitimacy. And it’s
easy to understand how this happened. Just
imagine that you were a 16-year-old girl in
some ghetto apartment. You scarcely know your
father, he occasionally visits; perhaps he’s
drunk a lot of the time. He doesn’t have
a job. Your mother is under terrible stress
trying to discipline her boys who are often
out in the streets in gangs. The neighborhood
is rife with crime. Within the household itself,
there is serious tensions between you and your
mother. It’s just a very difficult and trying
way of life. And the government, however,
offers a deal to this 16-year-old girl. It
says you can leave all this. You can have
liberation, an apartment of your own. You
can have access to some seventeen different
social programs. You can have free medical
care, free legal assistance if you need it.
You can have several hundred dollars a month
free. All on one condition: and that one condition
is- that you have an illegitimate child. And
this isn’t a racial problem…it’s nothing
to do with blacks as a race. Indeed, in Sweden
where they have an even more ample welfare
state, 40% of all Swedish children are born
out of wedlock.
WILLIAMS: In my day, no able-bodied adult
male could receive welfare or even live in
a household that received welfare. We were
lucky. There was no way we could be sucked
into the welfare trap.
MURRAY: When you talk about young men getting
into the working market, labor force, during
the 1960s, I think one of the saddest stories
is that they were told not to do those things
which were eventually going to bring them
out of poverty permanently; which is to say
that a young man, before the advent of a lot
of these changes, not only had to hang onto
that “dead-end” job; by hanging on to
it he was also establishing a record as a
reliable worker, and as time went on, he had
more and more chances to establish a more
secure job and get a better income. Once it
became more rational for him to drift in and
out of the labor market, having a job for
a while, and then not having a job... and putting
together a package of welfare benefits, perhaps
getting some money from a woman he was living
with, perhaps getting some money in the underground
economy, that would increase his income in
the short term but when he got to be 23, 24
years old, he had already labeled himself,
in his own eyes and in the eyes of the labor
market as an unreliable worker, who is qualified
only for the worst possible jobs.
GILDER: In other words, the welfare state
tells you that you’re optional, that all
your struggles, all your labors in the work
force, are unnecessary, that as a matter of
fact, that you can support your wife and children
best by leaving them. That’s the deal that
the welfare state offers the man in the ghetto.
And not surprisingly, over the years increasing
numbers of men have left their families in
the ghetto.
WILLIAMS: Back in my day, to be called a welfare
kid was almost as bad as being called a nigger.
But because of so-called welfare reforms,
many of the kids who live here know nothing
else. They may never learn to pull themselves
out of poverty one step at a time. Like some
giant drug pusher, their government has lured
them into dependency on a system that will
maintain them in permanent poverty. In every
respect, welfare reform has backfired. Twenty
years after we declared war on poverty, poverty
has won.
Restrictive labor laws, minimum wages, public
schools, jobs programs and a maze of welfare
programs have all been prescribed as weapons
in the war against poverty. But poverty is
winning.
These people are poor…but they don’t have
to stay poor, for they’re intelligent, honest
and potentially hard-working persons. Can
they make it on their own? Given the right
kind of help, of course they can. The solution
is quite simple. Give parents greater control
over their children’s education by setting
up a tuition tax credit or voucher system
which will broaden parental choice by introducing
competition, and in turn revitalize our public
and non-public schools. Remove the burden
of the minimum wage from youngsters. Teenagers
need early work experiences to learn the world
of work. And yes…make mistakes while they’re
young.
That way they become more valuable as adult
workers. Eliminate government roadblocks
that prevent fledgling entrepreneurs from
starting their own business. Enact a compassionate
welfare system such as the negative income
tax that removes demeaning dependency and
disincentives. America’s long tradition
of converting poor people into middle class
people can be extended to today’s poor by
giving them the right to make their own decisions.
As Martin Luther King said, “let freedom
ring.” Let it ring in the schools, the job
markets and the neighborhoods across the land.
And then we can all be free, free at last.
(closing music)
