Kathianne
12-13-2012, 05:31 AM
I read this last week as I was rushing to school, was going to post but thought, I'm not reading this correctly. Forgot about re-reading when I got home.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/opinion/sunday/kristof-profiting-from-a-childs-illiteracy.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
<nyt_headline version="1.0" type=" ">Profiting From a Child’s Illiteracy</nyt_headline><nyt_byline> By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/nicholasdkristof/index.html) </nyt_byline> Published: December 7, 2012
THIS is what poverty sometimes looks like in America: parents here in Appalachian hill country pulling their children out of literacy classes. Moms and dads fear that if kids learn to read, they are less likely to qualify for a monthly check for having an intellectual disability.
Many people in hillside mobile homes here are poor and desperate, and a $698 monthly check (http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/quickfacts/prog_highlights/RatesLimits2012.pdf) per child from the Supplemental Security Income program goes a long way — and those checks continue until the child turns 18.
“The kids get taken out of the program because the parents are going to lose the check,” said Billie Oaks, who runs a literacy program here in Breathitt County, a poor part of Kentucky. “It’s heartbreaking.”
This is painful for a liberal to admit, but conservatives have a point when they suggest that America’s safety net can sometimes entangle people in a soul-crushing dependency. Our poverty programs do rescue many people, but other times they backfire.
...
This morning ran into this column by Ed Morrissey and I guess I did read it right:
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2012/12/12/Time-to-Stop-Social-Safety-Net-Child-Abuse.aspx#page1
Time to Stop Social Safety Net Child Abuse
There are few columnists in the US that regularly speak to poverty and exploitation as consistently and as effectively as Nicholas Kristof. The New York Times columnist regularly travels the world, landing in places that most people would work hard to avoid, to highlight atrocities committed against the most vulnerable. While conservatives might balk at Kristof’s conclusions and policy preferences – as I often do – there is no question about his commitment and honesty in speaking on behalf of the downtrodden.
That context is what made Kristof’s column last week (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/opinion/sunday/kristof-profiting-from-a-childs-illiteracy.html?pagewanted=all)all the more remarkable. Instead of traveling to Somalia or another war-torn piece of geography to find poverty and a lack of response, Kristof went to Appalachia to see what poverty looks like in the US, and how government programs respond to it. His conclusion should make people across the political spectrum sit up and take notice:
“This is painful for a liberal to admit, but conservatives have a point when they suggest that America’s safety net can sometimes entangle people in a soul-crushing dependency. Our poverty programs do rescue many people, but other times they backfire.”
Kristof finds a number of cases where well-intentioned social-service programs produce perverse incentives that work to keep people in poverty rather than lift them out. Briefly, from a column that should be read carefully in full, those examples include a financial incentive to keep children illiterate, welfare benefits that punish marriage, and the ease in which children move from poverty programs to disability programs as adults.
...
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/opinion/sunday/kristof-profiting-from-a-childs-illiteracy.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
<nyt_headline version="1.0" type=" ">Profiting From a Child’s Illiteracy</nyt_headline><nyt_byline> By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/nicholasdkristof/index.html) </nyt_byline> Published: December 7, 2012
THIS is what poverty sometimes looks like in America: parents here in Appalachian hill country pulling their children out of literacy classes. Moms and dads fear that if kids learn to read, they are less likely to qualify for a monthly check for having an intellectual disability.
Many people in hillside mobile homes here are poor and desperate, and a $698 monthly check (http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/quickfacts/prog_highlights/RatesLimits2012.pdf) per child from the Supplemental Security Income program goes a long way — and those checks continue until the child turns 18.
“The kids get taken out of the program because the parents are going to lose the check,” said Billie Oaks, who runs a literacy program here in Breathitt County, a poor part of Kentucky. “It’s heartbreaking.”
This is painful for a liberal to admit, but conservatives have a point when they suggest that America’s safety net can sometimes entangle people in a soul-crushing dependency. Our poverty programs do rescue many people, but other times they backfire.
...
This morning ran into this column by Ed Morrissey and I guess I did read it right:
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2012/12/12/Time-to-Stop-Social-Safety-Net-Child-Abuse.aspx#page1
Time to Stop Social Safety Net Child Abuse
There are few columnists in the US that regularly speak to poverty and exploitation as consistently and as effectively as Nicholas Kristof. The New York Times columnist regularly travels the world, landing in places that most people would work hard to avoid, to highlight atrocities committed against the most vulnerable. While conservatives might balk at Kristof’s conclusions and policy preferences – as I often do – there is no question about his commitment and honesty in speaking on behalf of the downtrodden.
That context is what made Kristof’s column last week (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/opinion/sunday/kristof-profiting-from-a-childs-illiteracy.html?pagewanted=all)all the more remarkable. Instead of traveling to Somalia or another war-torn piece of geography to find poverty and a lack of response, Kristof went to Appalachia to see what poverty looks like in the US, and how government programs respond to it. His conclusion should make people across the political spectrum sit up and take notice:
“This is painful for a liberal to admit, but conservatives have a point when they suggest that America’s safety net can sometimes entangle people in a soul-crushing dependency. Our poverty programs do rescue many people, but other times they backfire.”
Kristof finds a number of cases where well-intentioned social-service programs produce perverse incentives that work to keep people in poverty rather than lift them out. Briefly, from a column that should be read carefully in full, those examples include a financial incentive to keep children illiterate, welfare benefits that punish marriage, and the ease in which children move from poverty programs to disability programs as adults.
...