Intuit Publishing Company

An Intuit Creative Idea Manifested

Study on the Economics of Poverty

Prepared by Dot Smith, MA Economics

Commissioned by

Richard L. Kirksey, Jr. Memorial Foundation

On behalf of Mr. Lyndon Deshard Mosley

Donzell Lewis

Nathaniel Jamal Abraham

Andre' Burgess

Should Santa Be Stopped By Newtie and Lott?

by Dot M. Smith

Every year, around the middle of November, it never fails, like a pesky perennial, my depression rears its ugly head. Psychologically, the whole Thanksgiving/Christmas fiasco looms large as a reason for dread. In combination, these two (2) days create the longest commercially induced season of financial distress for poor American families. Growing up in the trenches of northwest Mississippi and western Tennessee, mired in abject poverty, one gains a unique bottom up perspective of these holiday celebrations, a viewpoint unvarnished by internationally publicized American economic prosperity. Thanksgiving and Christmas always present an economic crisis for those trapped in American poverty. As far back as I can remember, even in the early fifties, when poor families did not own televisions, children were indoctrinated into believing commercial Christmas lies. Today, Thanksgiving launches the retail season of frenzy, demeaning our most sacred of religious days with promises of gifts from Santa Claus, largesse most poor kids never witness at all. Like millions of poor kids, I believed, prayed and sang a constant litany: Oh, what wondrous possibilities, if only dear Santa could rescue momma, daddy, the boys, Erma and me from the daily drudgery and constant poverty! Leading to Christmas, this prayerful litany, uttered by innocent lips, slips into cold silence on Christmas. Without a doubt, it is absolute psychological devastation to be young, gifted, poor, black and overlooked by Santa Claus.

Unwittingly indoctrinated to double think, a child's prayers intensify during the weeks leading to Christmas. Millions of "good" little girls and boys flip through circulars and catalogs, wishing for toys, clothing, shoes and the brightly colored bric-a-brac that seems to attract all children. The real irony here is: Poor parents try to caution their children to cool irrational exuberance for Santa Claus' too costly trinkets, but social indoctrination through public education reinforces his existence. By preying on those too young to comprehend the financial wherewithal to manifest Santa Claus, social forces exert a concerted effort to make him real. And, those forces are extremely successful, because not only is Santa Claus real, for the very young he is Christmas. Consequently, poor folks are socially coerced into participating and perpetuating the commercial holiday hoax to sell Americans more junk. In fostering the lies, oftentimes for months, poor parents struggle with apprehension over failing to realize their children's commercialized expectations. While trying to teach the true meaning of our Christian holiday celebration, these poor parents must endure the hurt, disappointment, yes, and sadness drenching their children's eyes. For their children, sometimes, poor parents risk financial ruin, even commit property crimes.

Many poor people, burdened by the commercial and psychological demands, elect to check out by choosing suicide over an economically deprived existence, or being cast in the role of criminal. The number of suicides escalates dramatically during Christmas holidays. Like trash piled high on Boxing Day, poor corpses from America's gutters are callously swept away to morgues for incineration across our powerful Christian nation. Most poor parents neither abdicate responsibility for their offspring, lie in the gutter and die at the public's expense, nor do they become criminals. They labor tirelessly from sun up to sun down for minimum wage and less as sharecroppers to feed, clothe and shelter their families, sacrificing everything to help businessmen and the government turn a larger profit. For most of the twentieth century, with subsistence wages one person would be hard pressed to survive on in America, most poor parents hung tough, making unbelievable sacrifices for the smallest chance of their children's survival. Despite their every effort on minimum wages or something lower, Christmas-time generally falls short of fulfilling wishes whispered between colorful catalog pages. More important though, the entire process of living in poverty lends one a feel for the true meaning of Christ's life of unselfish human kindness and the priceless gift of giving. Poor people learn the spiritual essence of Christmas firsthand, but at an early age, poor children are left distrusting Santa Claus. Most of all, poor children learn early in life that the spirit does not always appease an empty stomach. Being poor in America requires consistent hard work, a privilege to pay taxes and exist among its impoverished masses.

Granted: my perspective is the product of a Judeo-Christian upbringing honed by survival in an economically deprived American family. Those more fortunate and others courting denial will not cognize the glaring dichotomy between what our nation claims to be, for public consumption, and the private economic reality for those trapped in American poverty. A nation of mass contradictions many Americans are just plain hypocrites, overdosing daily on double think. Sacrilegiously, Americans deliberately confuse Christmas and the birth of Christ with Santa Claus to sell more useless consumer garbage. Instead of telling the truth, we nationally lie to our kids allowing them to believe Santa exists, then failing too many by not producing jolly old St. Nick to logically foster the myth. Double think allows us to continue mouthing the commercial rhetoric.

Because Santa is a demanding fiscal creature, society does poor families a horrendous disservice by perpetuating this sick hoax on little kids. It's no wonder I am unable to overcome the psychological devastation of his failure to timely materialize with the goodies I requested. Okay! So, we did not have a chimney! Its absence did not hinder Santa's entrance! The front door was never locked against Santa on Christmas Eve! Forcing poor children to double think has psychological consequences. The fact is a childhood without Santa Claus for those who believe the commercialized Christmas lies has significant repercussions; its continual persistence is a true testament to the strength of my Claus indoctrination, my impoverished American-style Judeo-Christian upbringing, and the special place of Christmas in the life of every Christian. So, annually, I lay aside logic and succumb to a bout of depression.

As a mature adult far removed from childish things, I no longer expect Santa to appear magically down the chimney. More than three decades ago, I stopped wishing for the brightly colored new toys pressed between glossy catalogue pages. Now, I focus on more mundane things. At Thanksgiving/Christmas, I refrain for shopping, usually adding one or more unscrupulous retailers to the places to boycott. I pray for world peace, an end to criminal injustice and senseless crime, eradication of poverty, disease and race discrimination- - the cursed plagues of my lifetime. I wish for the same things most folks claim to want. Yet, the mundane things I wish for are apparently beyond the pale of human kindness, and St Nick's famous flying reindeers, too. So, I become more upset the closer to the actual holiday we get.

The Thanksgiving/Christmas malaise deepens as politicians and others sporting conscience for public consumption capture the perfect photo moment, while they make the annual politically correct gesture to feed and clothe the poor and homeless. As if hunger and the need for clothing and shelter only confronts the poor twice a year, Thanksgiving and Christmas day, beaming politicians and wealthy philanthropists gather at black tie affairs to show how Christian they are in supporting this annual feed the hungry and homeless media feeding frenzy. What tripe! Such minutia should be dismissed for what it is --- commercial hype! Who are we fooling here? Moreover, exactly what organized religion do the rich and their paid politicians practice that justifies and condones such an absurd approach to poverty? Whatever their religion, the disgraceful annual charity show for public consumption epitomizes the pragmatic religious practice of conservative America. Because for the remaining three hundred sixty-three (363) days of the year, these same rich folks and politicians ignore and/or exacerbate the miserable conditions confronting poor working families and others trapped in poverty. These very same humanitarian Christians spend trillions on bombs, bullets, guns, planes, tanks, or millions of dollars on "studies" on hunger and homelessness, rather than investing a dime in human capital to eradicate poverty. They are without a doubt a conniving bunch of un-Christian hypocrites. Forgive me Lord! But you know Father, at Thanksgiving and during Christmas time they simply make me sick!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In more ways than one, this year has been unusual, because of the length, strength and endurance of my malaise; my annual distress began much earlier than normal. Indeed, it began the first of the year. Okay! It never ended! I am certain the cause for the depths of my despair lies in what I see as the national political morass that ominously shrouds our nation more thickly than ever before. It is characterized by a glaring lack of integrity among those currently controlling our government. This deplorable situation gives rise to legitimate questions regarding the viability of the entire democratic process. Like broken ornaments, tainted by bipartisan spending excesses and shadowy evasive circumventions of the law, legitimate voter access to those elected to represent us is so diminished it is, in effect, useless! Current campaign financing schemes render voter participation practically pointless, unless of course, the voter has the deep pockets of a Tamraz to purchase outright access! On top of this national disgrace, our duly elected federal, state and local officials, as well as prospective candidates, openly flaunt their prowess at stealing the taxpayers blind, as though receiving a public mandate. By courting an impressive array of vested interests from construction and insurance companies to temporary agencies, public officials pass favorable ordinances, zoning laws and award contracts that scream conflicts of interest. With impunity, elected crooks and their campaign supporters rob the taxpaying public blind. Like fake Christmas trees that are shinier, bigger and more cluttered with garbage each year, the cost of government soars with little to show for the increased outlays. Atlanta, Georgia is a prime example of municipal fiscal mismanagement and irresponsibility that is tantamount to outright thievery!

One wonders who oversees and enforces the racketeering laws that are supposed to prevent this type of profiteering at taxpayers' expense. Ironically, these brazen criminals are like the Every Ready bunny, they just keep on stealing and never getting punished. Is this acceptable behavior from elected public officials? By allowing these crooks to continue running things, while engaged in overt theft, we transmit a dangerous message to our young people. But then, America expects her children to double think like adults and subordinate conscience to embrace those pragmatic American family values espoused by the conservative right. Consequently, our kids must rationalize the convoluted logic that allows the tobacco industry to sell its deadly drug with a government subsidy, while ruining the lives of young poor black men by forcing them to languish in jail for far less serious offenses against the public. What could be more offensive than maiming and killing millions? They are all breaking the law, politicians and unethical business people. The jails should be overflowing with R.J. Reynolds' lawyers and executives, but these are rich white-collar criminals with the dollars to command political access and buy American justice. Those who can afford to grease the wheels of justice avoid punishment and profit from their crimes. Ask O.J. Simpson! Whether innocent or guilty, without those dimes he dropped to line some pockets, "The Juice" would be locked up doing hard time or awaiting capital punishment, not golfing on a back nine. O.J. belongs to a class with pockets deep enough to afford the high price of American justice.

The political and criminal injustices in America are enough to bring about a full blown year-round bout of depression, rather than the old annual six (6) weeks long malaise beginning around the middle of November. So, here is the first of the dreaded month, and already, I am mired in voter apathy and immersed in a serious state of depression, exacerbated by an entire year of contending with a bevy of powerful paid Stooges, like Mississippi's Lott and Georgia's Newtie, the Gingrich Who Stole Christmas. Indeed, if these sanctimonious paid stooges truly represent the Scrooges of the conservative religious right, Christmas will be privatized and contracted out of America altogether on a set of Fast-tracks. America's leadership, those responsible for writing, acquiescing and enforcing the dubious tenets of the Contract with America, has signed a new gentleman's agreement, one with obvious Nazi anti-Christian overtones. Like organized labor and its courtship with NAFTA, this tainted recipe for Christmas pudding leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. It warrants a better taste test on several of its crucial ingredients, especially public education, criminal justice, affirmative action and welfare to workfare.

On the critical ingredient of public education, these gentlemen employ a plethora of convoluted economic jargon about creating competition to aid the public school system. Based on a static model of free enterprise, market forces, "an invisible hand," miraculously lead to improvements in the public school system. Using this economic rhetoric, the conservative Congress introduced legislation undermining support for public education. By pushing for federal subsidies for wealthy private supporters, conservatives can abdicate national responsibility for the public school system. Left to the poor and minorities unable to afford or unwanted in private schools, the public education system can be outsourced and placed completely out of sight. This is reminiscent of Atlanta's approach to its homeless and the Atlanta Mission that is trying to address their most basic daily needs. The city's businessmen would like to see the Mission's services for men moved to pave the way for commercial development, including middle-class housing. Middle-class minded Atlantans expected to move into the area overdose daily on double think; they believe money and things are more important than human beings. The sight of poor and homeless people drowning in hopelessness brings dis-ease and offends their pseudo-elitist sensibilities.

While Atlanta's snobbish elite may succeed in making the Mission move, America can not afford to allow Congress to treat its children in such an offensive manner. Our children are the best and brightest hope for the future of all men; this means all our children. Consequently, we cannot allow conservative demagogues to destroy the public education system by viewing it as a business run to turn a profit in a fictitious free enterprise system. All children deserve a quality education that will equip them with the tools to effectively compete in an increasingly complex global economy, not just those whose parents are wealthy enough to afford to purchase Christmas presents to keep Santa alive. Arming our children with a first rate education is the greatest gift we can place beneath any child's Christmas tree; it is an investment any advanced society should gladly make, because a strong public education system is the first line of national defense. Our children are the nation's most valuable resource. Instead of viewing all our children as gifts to be treasured and enriched, politicians like Lott and Gingrich mouth economic rhetoric to promote the interest of a narrow constituency at the expense of the majority of children, indeed, at the expense of the greater good of the country.

Why? It is simple really. In bi-partisan harmony, when money talks, Congress walks! All in a days work, just another vote and a barrel of pork! On this occasion, it is a federal subsidy for the haves who want to or have already bailed out of public schools, which are perceived as failing, in favor of private ones. To salt the public's wounds, taxpayers supporting public schools are asked to pave the way for their exodus by picking up part of the tab for private school tuition. Are private schools better than public ones? The jury is still out; no one seems to know for sure. However, they are perceived as superior. So, at least psychologically, private school attendees enjoy an economic advantage over their public school counterparts. In theory, this unfair market advantage spurs competition; but, this is not reality. If the economic advantage already enjoyed by wealthy children is not sufficient to prompt Congress to increase funding for public education to level the playing field, providing them with an even greater advantage will accomplish little beyond greater socioeconomic and political inequalities. Conservative jargon regurgitated ad nauseam in the media supporting private school vouchers lacks any creditable theoretical economic base, moreover, it is irrelevant for real world conditions. Only an unclad emperor who believes himself clothed or a fool would suggest we selectively educate our children, unless we have a plan afoot to neutralize those we neglect to equip with the tools to compete in a global economy.

On stirring in its welfare to workfare ingredient, the conservative plan seems to manifest itself as an effort to help welfare recipients break the cycle of government dependence. I am all for reducing the number of people dependent on public assistance through training and education that move people into productive and rewarding lifestyles. If the conservative demagogues currently running this country continue to function as guiding influences, an entire cross-section of the American population will be reduced to Neo-Nazi slavery. What is a slave you may rightly ask? Well, according to Mr. Willie Lynch, a master at creating a being called the "Negro," a properly conditioned slave is an unfortunate victim. Like Germany's Jews, slaves are so brutalized, they will step into the gas chamber, toil without compensation in work camps, like state, federal and private prisons or other questionable operations, such as Mississippi's catfish farms, modern-day Lott death camps, where welfare to workfare mothers can be slaved for a $1.00 an hour. One dollar is all the employer's contribution toward the minimum wage the worker receives; the federal government provides the farmer a $4.15 per hour tax credit to bring the worker's wage to the $5.15 per hour minimum. Come on now, who are we really helping here, the fish cut slinging welfare mother or the respected businessman providing this valuable job opportunity? Conservatives employ such asinine reasoning to justify any action to aid business and the wealthy through public dole never mind who is harmed in the process. If it accomplishes their mission, all is well with the world. By any means necessary is truly pragmatic Newtie and the Lotts of the world's moral and ethical credo, because any quip will drip from their lips while making a little more dough mouthing that senseless gibberish attending their Neo-Nazi Contract.

Short-sighted programs, like the catfish farm advocated and staunchly supported by Mississippi's Lott, do not address the real world dilemma posed by the welfare to workfare concept. Nothing is being done to prepare those gut slinging catfish farm, working mothers to effectively compete in a highly skilled labor market. Obviously, empowerment is not an ingredient in the Contract's plot. Can you imagine such an environment affording education and training opportunities to empower these individuals toward self-sufficiency, a step above poverty? Ironically, to attain even this marginal level of employment, a position devoid of positive sensory enrichment and rife with hopeless economic enslavement, the hapless recipient must first willingly agree to relinquish any and all human dignity. The welfare recipient must first agree to be a Neo-American slave valued by prospective employers at less than minimum wage.

Proper conditioning to ensure an appropriate level of employee servility and acceptance is assured through other federally subsidized programs like STRIVE. 60 Minutes did a lengthy piece on this intensive three-week welfare to workfare training program ostensibly designed to prepare welfare recipients for gainful employment in the private or public sectors. Writing for Time Magazine on-line, John Greenwald did an insightful piece on getting people off the public dole. Each program assumed the individual needed reforming to fit a particular image. Successful matriculation entailed altering the individual's normal self-concept to conform to a conservative white Anglo-Saxon perception of acceptable dress, mannerisms and grooming. In addition, the prospective ex-welfare recipient is required to relinquish all claims to dignity and basic human rights to escape public assistance for subsistence or slave wages, other names for the minimum, recently raised a quarter to $5.15 an hour. Jobs offered by these welfare to workfare schemes, especially to blacks slaving in enclaves of inequity like Mississippi, are the lowest paid and most menial labor positions imaginable. STRIVE creates slaves by programming people to accept any working conditions and psychological abuse to survive; STRIVE induces and/or reinforces conditioned subordinate psychology (CSP), the slave mentality. CSP conditioning is essential for instilling unthinking compliance and docility, it induces behaviors that assures the continued profitable operation of a system based on economic exploitation and racial and ethnic disparities. CSP neutralizes people the system elects not to equip with the wherewithal to compete for a decent living wage.

A classic example of how CSP unconsciously affects the individual's self concept can be readily discerned in a series of articles published by the Atlanta Journal/Constitution beginning in late October, 1997. The articles provided a unique examination of the racial issues dividing and strangely uniting blacks and whites in the Southern Mecca, some how dubiously labelled, the "City too busy to hate." While Michael Lomax, Andrew Young, Maynard Jackson, Marvin Arrington and Bill Campbell can joke about getting gussied up and being the few ink spots marring local white Atlanta black tie affairs, in every instance of the races coming together, it seems blacks strive to imitate whites to gain acceptance. Even the white wives and girlfriends enjoy a pathetic laugh about the almost obsessive tendency of their black mates to subjugate their natural African attributes. Without a doubt, if imitation is indeed the sincerest form of flattery, the Atlanta Journal showed Atlanta blacks are bending over backwards to look white, a consequence of conditioned subordinate psychology (CSP). Whenever black parents prefer their daughter's hair straighten, CSP is alive and strives in metro Atlanta. It permeates the corridors of City Hall and abounds in the half-white enclaves of wannabees living on the periphery of the Atlanta social elite.

Take in a black hair show, and vicariously experience what is meant by the lengths to which African Americans (blacks) will go to make themselves more white, and somehow more acceptable. Only then does one come to appreciate Spike Lee's assessment of some blacks in labeling them wannabees and jigaboos. It defies logic, but like Santa Claus and Christmas, blacks invest an astronomical amount on cosmetics in an attempt to purge the black from their souls. The Herculean effort created a booming billion dollar chemical industry aimed at cosmetically rendering blacks acceptable to whites. Ironically, the industry that brings this "white beauty in a bottle" is akin to the tobacco industry; it is a murderer. Long term exposure to the chemicals used to dye, fry, straighten or otherwise artificially manipulate naturally curly hair and cover up African features carries with it the risk of rare cancers. Courting the risk of death, self-mutation for acceptance is commonplace among Atlanta's black community, CSP's modern day victims. By no means am I suggesting Atlanta's blacks are any different from blacks all across the country, because to tell the truth, there are "colored" folks everywhere trying to be white. All over America, African slave descendants suffer from the centuries' old slave heritage of conditioned subordinate psychology; we have yet to get beyond being made Negroes, so there are millions of Uncle Toms and Aunt Thomasinas running around brown nosing for points. Acts of self-mutilation are screams for acceptance. It is much like praying Santa will magically appear on Christmas Eve down a chimney that does not exist. For African Americans, CSP is a pox on the race, a curse and a national disgrace. Unfortunately for blacks, it is a terrific weapon for instilling servility, like Jews led to slaughter, CPS assures blacks' participation in self-destruction.

Programs like STRIVE reinforce CSP. Coupled with its counterpart, linear secularism, CSP thrives in the Mississippi delta where employee rights are publicly trampled by bigoted employers operating with superior economic advantage, government subsidies and the threat of severing all claims to subsistence. These racists can laud it over under-privileged people little moved from the original sin of slavery and sharecropping in Mississippi, the state's not so distant past and on-going legacy. Only an anti-Christian Nazi could support slinging fish guts on a Mississippi catfish farm for minimum wages as a viable welfare program to address the needs of poor mothers and their children. Is Mississippi the brush America wishes to use to paint the face of welfare to workfare and American family values? Can we afford a country run by a Nazi oriented agenda? Apparently, the answer is a resounding yes! According to the Atlanta Journal/Constitution, other states are actually looking to Mississippi as the national model of welfare reform success. Mississippi, the bastion of Confederate hatred and misguided southern pride, ranks at the bottom of most measures of socioeconomic and political welfare. Yet, it is leading our Christian nation in this mission. What is wrong with that picture? Lotts! With the leader of the Sons and Daughters of the Confederacy sounding the charge for reform, the state's slave legacy and devote advocacy of racism are what make this skewed picture so repugnant.

As a welfare economist, I am appalled America would openly follow the Ku Klux Klan. Just think about it, in this, the greatest nation known to man, the richest country in the world where a cup of coffee or a coke costs a $1.00 in most restaurants. How does one support a family on $5.15 an hour? You don't; the family goes without a lot; things like Christmas presents and new clothes are foregone for the Christmas chicken in the pot. Childcare you dare wonder? Who cares if poor children go without nurturing, unsupervised and unfed? The mothers no doubt. But how does a welfare mother address child care concerns, transportation and more without funds and an employer who values her at a buck an hour? He could as soon as buy a coke as agree to a day off for a mother with a sick child, and that's no joke! If you think this doesn't happen, you don't know Mississippi, home of slain civil rights worker, Medgar Evers! I know Mississippi, because I was born on the farm where my folks sharecropped, the land their fore parents slaved on prior to the Emancipation Proclamation. I am intimately acquainted with the vagaries of Mississippi. So, how do these mothers deal with their employers? Timidly, out of fear they will be unable to feed their babies otherwise. Now you tell me, what do these programs really offer the recipients beyond the guarantee of inclusion among the working poor, a modern day euphemism for slavery? Subjectively, the answer is not a blessed thing beyond a vicious cycle of more of the same! These programs do not empower individuals and raise them out of poverty. Instead, they guarantee continued American slavery.

A more objective economic analysis offers a similar conclusion. Employing the Smith paradigm for examining the welfare consequences of public policy, we can assess the impact of these programs by measuring movements in the Chasm of Inequity, the unexplained economic welfare gap between whites and minorities in America. Based on Smith's model, economic welfare is defined as income, and, because the income from wages makes up the largest component of national income, it is appropriate to look at wage income for measuring the individual economic welfare. And, because most of us live in families, it is fitting that Smith's model employs median family income data in examining national economic policies affecting the Chasm of Inequality. The economic gap can be graphically depicted utilizing Bureau of Labor statistics for median family incomes and the unemployment rates of whites and minorities. In the illustrations below, the income and unemployment data for blacks are utilized. The unexplained economic welfare gap, depicted using unemployment rates, shows the inverse relationship between income and unemployment and offers insight into what the Smith paradigm calls the infamous "Three-Fifths Compromise" income phenomena. Unemployment rates for blacks average twice that of their white counterparts; their median family incomes move between the narrow band of .50 to .62 of whites over the period covered by BLS data from 1967-1995. The "Three-Fifths Compromise" dates back to slavery, when southern slave states bargained with northern free states to allow slaves to be valued at three-fifths a free white man for the purpose of determining a slave's value in the market for human capital. (Note: Figures 1 and 2 below provide pictorial representations of the disparities in unemployment and the attending median family income or economic welfare gap for selective years 1967-1995. See Smith T.H.I.N.C.: The Chrysalis of Evolution, Intuit Publishing Co., 1997 for an analysis of the Chasm of Inequality.)

Essentially, according to the Smith paradigm, the difference between white and minority family median income, a function of the unemployment rate, is a by-product of institutionalized racism. Given geographical location, age, education, and marital status, the variables influencing income from wages, the economic gap is so stable it defies market force explanation. Economists point to something more than an "invisible hand" at work in the American market for black human capital. In addition to the institutionalized invisible hand, other labor-force conditions affect employment and income opportunities for poor families. The growth and prominence of temporary agencies and part-time employment, illegal immigrants, privatization, technological changes, outsourcing and downsizing in the private and public sectors have led to a substantial decrease in the jobs available for the working poor. So, despite a period of sustained economic growth for the country, the conditions of poverty facing the working poor have become direr as the nation adheres to the propaganda of the Contract with America.

As an economic welfare test, Smith's inequality model is useful as an evaluation method, a useful tool for examining the impact of various programs on welfare. Programs decreasing the welfare gap receive positive ratings, because they increase national economic welfare. On the other hand, programs increasing the gap receive negative scores, because they lower national economic welfare. Negative ratings imply the programs simply redistribute wealth to the wealthy.

Figure 1

One can readily see how negative scores are awarded to programs like Lott's Mississippi welfare to workfare hoax. It subsidies a few shoddy businessmen, rather than making a genuine humane investment in the state's human capital. Public education is a positive program, because it enriches human capital, strengthens the national defense and helps increase national economic welfare. The Smith paradigm is a useful tool for examining the economic welfare implications of all kinds of redistribution measures undertaken by federal, state and local governing bodies. It has been especially helpful in examining the dispensation of urban redevelopment funds ear-marked to mitigate pervasive poverty and unemployment in major inner cities.

It can also be used to study the economic consequences of the conservative recipe for American criminal justice. One consequence of American inequities, poverty and unemployment is crime. Crime statistics show that over 40% of the federal prison population is black. According to census data, blacks represent only 13% of the population. A whopping 65% of the inmates in state prisons belong to a racial or ethnic minority. Disproportionate to their number in the population, black young men are imprisoned for petty drug and property crimes more often and for longer sentences than white counterparts. Doubly victimized by this racist society in which tobacco entrepreneurs in suits are rewarded for selling death, blacks are pitted against police brutality in their neighborhoods daily just because they are black. Failed by a public education system that does not recognize the needs of children burdened by the legacy of slavery and poverty, denied education and training once incarcerated without hope of rehabilitation, so they end up doing more time through recidivism. They return to prison, because what propelled them there, poverty, unemployment, a lack of education and training, does not change. So, young black men become trapped in a vicious cycle; providing cheap labor to grease the money wheel of a Nazi conceived security industry.

If objectively examined, a sustainable case of genocide against the United States can be made based solely on the society's treatment of young black American males. In time, the United States will be called to question before the International Court of Justice. The reason for this assessment is found in the definition of genocide as adopted by the United Nations' General Assembly. "Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethical, racial or religious group, as such: a) killing members of the group: b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in apart; d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; e) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group." Using the Smith paradigm to analyze criminal justice as applied to young black American males, a credible economic case can made for such an indictment. Utilizing appropriate crime statistics and economic data, one can examine the economic impact of criminal justice policies aimed at getting young men unwanted in the economic mainstream out of sight and into cages. If America embraces conservative criminal justice, we will be raising taxes to build prisons to house our children of all ages.

The Contract with America is the single most damning bit of evidence supporting a case of genocide. It is the conservative blueprint to guarantee certain segments of the population does not survive and/or is otherwise neutralized. The Contract specifies how conservatives intend to deal with young uneducated and unskilled black males wanting inclusion in the prosperity of America. Because conservatives do not wish to utilize resources enriching them, as one would valuable assets, they instead are actively engaged in internal warfare. The aim of course is to rid the countryside of their presence and avail their labor, wholly caged asses, to be slaved at the caprice of the security industry. By locking them up early and often for an amalgamation of petty criminal offenses, the justice system ensures a certain level of enforced slavery. What a wonderful way to dry up competition, decrease lifetime earnings potential and reduce reproductive ability. America's criminal justice, as dispensed to young black men, creates a permanent negative paradigm shift for the individual and their families, widening the inequality gap and reducing economic welfare. Because the impact is permanent, it places the individual at risk of existing below the official poverty level. Changes in economic welfare that places the individual in such a detrimental position permanently widens the Chasm of Inequality. If the conditions causing a permanent increase in the welfare gap are deliberate socio-political and economic policy, the Smith paradigm views the negative shift as genocide, according to the U.N. definition.

On affirmative action, the Neo-Nazi Contract with America advocates absolute annihilation. This questionable ingredient is based on retrenchment intended to recoup any economic gains real or imagined, black Americans achieved since 1965. These self-righteous hypocrites believe this country should not discriminate, when it favorably impacts someone else, but embrace and practice it daily in their own self-interest. The proliferation of reverse discrimination and unwarranted preferences cases supported by conservatives, moderates and even liberal whites aptly demonstrate have short-sighted this nation pretends to be. What warped mentality and ignorance of history allows one to suggest that today's affirmative action measures are somehow synonymous with the economic devastation of slavery and the ongoing racial discrimination against its descendants? This view further suggests, slavery and the ensuing centuries of institutionalized racism do not impact the lives of black Americans today. Given such a perspective, it is possible to leap to the erroneous conclusion that blacks overcame the dehumanization of slavery without the benefit of reparations or reasonable rehabilitation.

As a realistic view of black Americans, for this little scenario to play out, blacks should be revered and ranked among the mythological gods of folklore. To the contrary, based on personal experimentation, nothing in the black human condition and current predicament lends credence to a super human scenario. In fact, there is no socio-political and economic evidence available that sufficiently supports the assumption that slaves roared back from the absolute economic depravity of human bondage and the subsequent documented socio-political and economic discrimination to level an uneven economic playing field. As a group, without reparations and rehabilitation, the descendants of ex-slaves, routinely discriminated against today, have not leveled the economic playing field; it remains grossly uneven. To place the disparity in appropriate perspective, the economic welfare gap that exists between whites and blacks in the land of plenty is historic dating back to slavery. It is real irony that the nation would invest such lofty expectations on the ability of the descendants of slaves in such a competitive climate. It is much like the double think needed to believe St. Nick and his reindeer drawn sleigh overcome gravity to reach rooftops to drop toys and his fat ass down a chimney!

Jews should give thanks daily they were not subjected to this "pull yourself up by the bootstrap philosophy" without the benefit of reparations following the Holocaust. Moreover, even with the economic benefits of reparation and rehabilitation, Jews and their descendants did not overcome the holocaust's horrendous impact. Jewish progeny still suffer from the experience; it is an important part of Jewish history passed on to each generation, less time washes it from their collective memory. Given this recent historical example, it is asinine and unreal to assume the posture and espouse the notion that the prolonged inhumane devastation of slavery, and the routine economic restrictions imposed on the advancement of black Americans can be overcome without reparations.

In the late sixties, social unrest and a war requiring lots of young black soldiers to die in the killing fields of Vietnam helped to usher in affirmative action. Designed to provide some assistance in relieving social tension, affirmative action justified sending black men and boys to die in a war waged on foreign soil for a country refusing to extend blacks the most basic rights of citizenry at home. In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson used the term affirmative action in an Executive Order aimed at promoting equal opportunity. The Executive Order required federal contractors to "take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to race, creed, color, or national origin." Two years later in 1967, the President expanded the order to include women. Typical of the unjust economic plight of blacks in this country, affirmative action did more to improve the economic condition of white women than the descendants of slavery. As a minority, white women, less educated than their black counterparts, advanced faster, becoming part of the good old boy network of racial bias permeating the American workplace. In today's office environment, white women discriminate against black women, as often, if not, more frequently than white men. This assessment is based solely on a fourteen year personal experience in both the private and public sectors working with white men and women, as well as other racial and ethnic minorities. However, statistically, we know white women fare far better than their black counterparts in the labor market, the same condition is apparent when comparing white men to their minority counterparts, especially blacks.

A lawsuit against affirmative action, destined to be heard by the Supreme Court, aptly demonstrates the precarious position of black women and men in a labor market that values black economic contribution at less than its white counterpart's. The Supreme Court bound case involves two Piscataway High School teachers vying for retention. Only one can be retained, because of a fiscal strain. Parting with tradition, the high school chose to retain the black teacher. Predictably, the white woman sued alleging reverse racial discrimination. The travesty here is that while the two teachers were hired at the same time, their qualifications are not the same, even though they are being viewed as "equally" qualified. Holding a master's degree is equal in this case to a bachelor's, because the black teacher holds the master's. It is this type of flagrantly biased evaluations of black human capital that makes possible the persistent economic gap in black and white economic welfare. Racial and ethnic discrimination guarantee blacks and the working poor remain trapped in America's Chasm of Inequality.

Policy-makers sprouting nonsensical phrases about a now leveled economic playing field to justify abandoning affirmative action should be brought to task and forced to provide some Janet Reno inspected credible evidence. In viewing affirmative action through Smith's paradigm, a nominal economic change, a minuscule tightening of the economic welfare gap, is discerned. That is, if we credit affirmation action with all the positive advances made by black families since 1965. There goes the "bootstrap" notion. With erratic movements over a narrow band, the per capita income of blacks to whites moved a total of eight percentage points from .54 in 1967 to the .62 of white median family income recorded for 1995. (Note: The graphic representation below utilizes per capital incomes for families, i.e., 2 or more persons, over selected years 1967-1995, along with the official poverty level for families over the same period.). In viewing these data graphically alongside the appropriate poverty level statistics, one can visually appreciate affirmative action as a standard of living or bread and butter survival issue for most black Americans trying to throw off the oppressive economic mantle of slavery and its attending racial discrimination. Invoking the Smith paradigm, if subsistence equals sixty percent of white wages, them minority family income is too low to foster savings and investment to spur economic growth and development. In earning just a living wage, without intervention, a family of minorities is doomed to poverty. The American welfare gap can only be affected through policies that lead to permanent shifts in Smith's paradigm, such as a quality public education system and economic reparations to overcome historic discrimination.

The Smith paradigm advances a notion of perpetual poverty that explains how, without intervention or reparations, slavery descendants and minorities discriminated against in the market for human capital become trapped in poverty. Perpetual poverty can be viewed in a simplistic equation where national income equals minority and white median family incomes (NI = MFI + WFI), where MFI = .60ww (white wages) and WFI = ww + .4ww. In a static economy, NI = (ww + .4ww ) + .60ww. For those earning a subsistence wage, savings and investment are non-existent. If the relationship between these economic groups start from unequal positions, there

Figure 3

is no logical base for assuming the disadvantaged will be able to level the economic playing field, particularly in cases where racial discrimination is institutionalized. Given the above equation to represent the two components of national income, if only one group can afford to save and invest, the group will naturally enjoy a superior economic advantage in successive revolutions of the economic wheel amassing more wealth with each spin. Without social intervention to correct grievous imbalances, conditions for blacks and the poor would be intolerable in America. And, sadly for America, the country seems headed blindly back to a time when the imbalances reigned free, when Jim Crow ruled the land of liberty.

Newtie's Contract dictates a return this country's pre-1965 heyday, a year the black American per capita income fell below the official poverty level. Poor people forced by prejudices institutionalized to exist below the official poverty level are necessarily the unwitting victims of genocide. This is the fate awaiting black Americans and poor people under the infamous Contract with America. In 1971, black America per capita income exceed the official poverty level for the first time, rising to just one percent above the poverty level; that same year the white per capital income was 76% above the poverty level. In the intervening years, black American per capita income to the poverty level rose to its 1995 high of 49% above poverty, while white per capita soared to 2.4 times greater than the national poverty level or 140%. Clearly, black Americans have a long way to go before realizing economic equity. If affirmative action is credited with the eight percentage-points improvement in the economic welfare gap that has occurred since 1965, then more not less needs to be done. Even with affirmative action, the white standard of living out paced that of black Americans. Now is not the time to retrench, but do more to make the promise of America a reality for its black citizens, the working poor and others left out of the American economic mainstream. Without social policies that redistribute national income and wealth, like affirmation action and public education, blacks and the working poor are forever trapped in the Chasm of Inequality, like shiny discarded and crumpled Christmas wrapping paper, no longer part of the economic equation for growth and development and wealth creation. If affirmative action is abandoned, pushed by the wayside, then black Americans have a legitimate right to demand reparations to mitigate past economic exploitation. How will poor black American families ever afford Santa for their children? Or should the jolly old gent be dismissed from our collective psyche, like the dehumanization of centuries of slavery? Retailers would surely protest and launch an expensive national campaign to reverse the discrimination against Christmas and Santa Claus!

As we prepare to commemorate and celebrate the birth of Christ, it is appropriate to take stock of where the nation has been and contemplate where it is headed. We righteously claim to be a nation of tolerant Christians, yet ethical questions cloud the nation's charted course. It is impossible to comprehend how a truly Christian nation can support the conservative agenda. From its stand on public education and affirmative action to criminal injustice and welfare to workfare, the conservative Contract with America has Neo-Nazi overtones America can ill afford to embrace on the eve of this new millennium. In an age characterized by rapid changes in technology and global communication demanding a diverse interplay of national, ethnic and racial groups, adhering to an agenda based on exclusion and maintaining an inequitable status quo is not only short-sighted, asinine and counterproductive, it is inhumane and globally destructive. For the sake of its future, America must part company with the ominous Christmas pudding ingredients being stirred in the economic mix by conservatives with narrow-minded un-Christian agendas.

In the final analysis, the true measure of any society is how well or poorly it chooses to treat the most disadvantaged among its members. More than anyone else in the twentieth century, Mother Teresa epitomized the Christian concept of service to mankind. Mother was a true Promise Keeper, maybe that is why we so deeply mourn her passage. There are too few genuine promise keepers in America who actually assumes hands-on approaches to addressing the needs of those most economically disadvantaged among us. A true Christian, living out the life of Jesus Christ, Mother ministered to the poor and homeless, the very people Atlanta city officials and the conservative agenda would push from sight and out of mind as things offensive to their delicate sensibilities. By enforcing business demanded quality of life ordinances that would run the homeless off the streets and ban street merchants from trying to make a living, Mother will no doubt agree with me: Atlanta, indeed America, must do penance to redeem herself of this anti-Christian posture. And, until this redemption occurs, Thanksgiving/Christmas in America will continue to be a painfully depressing chore for welfare economists, blacks and the poor who live the gross socio-political and economic disparities.

Conservative retrenchment efforts to move America backwards are clearly part and parcel of the infamous Contract with America Neo-Nazi plot. Rather than move this nation towards a more equitable society where the parents of poor girls and boys can purchase a few Christmas toys and provide essential nourishment for strong and healthy children, we appear charted on a course destined to endanger more children than it actually helps. America, this is truly a sad state of affairs for a country that is known for its wealth and bounty. Meager Thanksgiving/Christmas spreads should not be viewed by poor parents along with Santa with certain dread. By leaving the working poor and black Americans with the crumbs that fall from the bountiful table of American prosperity, the rest of the nation runs the risk of supping with the devil. As a nation of professed Christians, before we sit down to devour another dinner, we should ask ourselves is it enough the poor gets the crumbs? How can Americans clothed and well fed this Christmas be assured next year Southern confederate sore losers like Lott will not add more caustic vinegar to America's Christmas pudding, the meal's piece de resistance. Simply by widening their insidious plot, the Neo-Nazis can include those comfortable middle class minded whites, preachers, jigaboos, wannabees and the rest of the lot espousing senseless conservative rhetoric like Georgia's aspiring governors, Republicans representative including, yes you guessed, our very own Newtie, leader of the Neo-Nazi plot. America needs to wake up and tear up that obnoxious document. Until we lock the Contract's proponents up and throw away the key, I will include in my prayers the wish that suicide assistant, Kervokian, will help kill some more sick people real soon and sell Newtie tooters human hearts. If we get lucky, maybe one day someone will find a way to sharecrop consciences. One can only hope! In the meantime, we are left to wonder will the paid political Stooges, like Mississippi's Lott and Newtie, the Gingrich Who Stole Christmas, permanently pink slip old St. Nick, and outsource his tiny reindeers for target practice during deer hunting season in Georgia? In America, it is little wonder glad tidings and Christmas cheer are synonymous with boxes brightly wrapped in paper made in China, festive packages stuffed with tissue-covered favors for the wealthy and political elite. For the poor, it's another cold and wet November with Christmas just around the corner, a hot meal for two (2) days, if the press coverage is favorable, and maybe a sturdy cardboard box to block the homeless chill of living on Main Street. At Thanksgiving/Christmas, for America's soul, I weep.

These are excerpts from Dot's Story: The Economic Consequences of Being Black in American Society. For Yohannes Sharriff Smith's letter, which accompanied this report to the United Nations, click on Letter to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Anan

 Original 1982 Economic Research: Published Mid-South Journal of Economics1982

THINC  ||  The DISH