Challenge 69: The urban crisis; #3 (Reel 2)

We can fight the war in Vietnam I think which is a tragedy. I think we should be able to do this within the economic limits of our societies I got to in a moment. Twenty billion dollars. But the good thing about the council's guaranteed income is that it would not simply apply to poor people. Because it would be a guaranteed income and then if you want to have to work. You wouldn't have 100 percent of what you may get taken away from you. When you got your job and you got your first dollar above the guaranteed income so to speak you'd get to keep 90 cents of it. And then at a certain point 80 cents then at a certain point 70 and so forth and so on. And the result of grading it in this way. Is that under the council's scheme there would be income supplement for Americans some supplement. Getting smaller of course but some supplement for people with incomes up to $6000 a year. That is to say it would not simply extend to the poor. But to one number equal to the poor who are not currently defined as cool. Now one of the reasons I think that's a very important feature and a good feature of this

program. Is that we should get away from the idea that we have discriminatory problems in favor of the poor which don't help the rest of the society. And politically speaking it is always necessary to emphasize. That by ending poverty in America you are going to raise up the entire society. And in this specific program by ending poverty in America by day having an income supplement of this time you are not simply going to appeal to poor people but let us say to a lot of people who are attracted to vote to George for George Wallace. It's all out of society is doing everything for poor people. We haven't done. Those. Wallace voters thought that Lyndon Johnson with carrying out those promises. Which he wasn't really doing. But I want to do something for the for those people because those people have very real problems too. There is not in this society simply affluence here and poverty here. There is poverty and then there is near poverty which is 12 million people. And there are

all kinds of gradations and when you look at the government's figures just published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics last year of what it takes to have a modest but adequate income. In an urban center in the United States the figure is nine thousand one hundred dollars on the national average. Two thirds of Americans don't have enough money for a modest but adequate income. Therefore I want to program that is not simply a program to help the poor but a program which helps the poor in a great many people or not for. And that's I think a very good feature of the one program advocated by the Council of Economic Advisors. Now a second proposal which I am tentatively against not passionately but tentatively again. He is one identified very much with Daniel Patrick. Moynihan who is now working for President Nixon. And it's the idea of children's allowance.

Practically every advanced industrial state in the world. Gives a family an allowance for each child. That exists for example in Canada right across the border from the United States. Now this is sometimes attacked on the grounds that if you had a children's alone. It would motivate people in particularly poor people to have more children. And that this is not a good aim of public policy. I agree that it's not a good aim of public policy. Absolutely. But it turns out that in countries which have a family allowance it does not seem to have worked as an incentive for people to have children doesn't increase the birth rate. So I don't object to it on that front. What I do object. Is that it would cost according to James Tobin in the Brookings Institution Vol. agenda for the nation which was just published. It would cost 65 billion dollars. And most of it would not go to poor people. So you see it would go to everybody. And I don't believe at this point we should have such a missive program with such a minimal direct

benefit to the poor. I am at this point for having programs which give something to a good many people who are not poor but which give the most to those with the greatest need. And my most fundamental criticism of the children's allowance is that it does not do that. A third thing that we can do to deal with the problem of providing income. Is to reform our Social Security system. Right now that Social Security system is rated on a regressive tax as I said before that is to say my Social Security is cheap insurance. And the Social Security of a poor person is expensive insurance. The reason is that in the federal income tax in theory although not so much in fact in theory the more income you have the more tax you pay. In Social Security that's true only up to a point. And at that point I forget exactly where it is now around $8000 I believe roughly at that point a person with an income of a million dollars a year pays the same amount as also Security taxes a person

with $8000 a year. Which means the site is getting a bargain in percentage terms from the federal government. Moreover our Social Security is often eaten away by inflation. The Wall Street Journal has suggested that all of the increases in Medicare. Since the act was passed have been eaten up by increases in doctors and hospitals fees. Therefore one of the ways to get at Martin Luther King's Idea. Of a guaranteed income through Social Security this dealing primarily with people who are over 65 would be to reform the system. To take it out of the area of regressive taxation and make it part of the federal income tax. And secondly to have Social Security with a built in escalator. So that Social Security goes up automatically with the cost of living. Not a word so it can't be destroyed by inflation and secondly this is an idea that's already in effect in West Germany. To increase Social Security according to the percentage of the gross national product increases.

What you're doing there is you're saying that aging people's pensions are not simply going to remain stationary while the economy gets bigger. But their pensions will grow as the gross national product grows. And I think we have the those two escalators that would be a way. To deal with the problem of income. Now there's the problem of work and Martin King talked about but not of the talked about. I think it is. Talked about. Very hard to concentrate one's mind on social problems. Martin King talked about a right to work. That idea was first advocated by Franklin Roosevelt in the campaign in 1944 and it was cut to pieces by a conservative congress in 1945 and six. And we've never really had it. And what it says is this. That we pass a law and say it is the citizen's right to have a job. And if the private economy does not

guarantee him that right the public economy is legally obliged to do so. Now one formulation of this notion which you might have heard recently is that the government should be the employer of last resort the citizen can't find a job in the last resort the government has to give them a job. I'm not for that. I believe right now in a good many cases the government should be an employer or a first resort. That is to say it should go out and compete with the private sector. Because I believe we have so many social needs and poor people can make such a contribution to our society. We should put them to work. The National Commission on technology automation and economic progress in 1966. Said that there are five million 200000 jobs. Which poor people in America can do tomorrow morning without any further training. Jobs in education beautification health care and the like. Jobs that would raise the entire level of the society job which would not create an inflationary

pressure because it would be creating a new good. And I think that's what we should do. We should seize the opportunity to create those jobs we discovered for example. That you don't have to have a Ph.D. to be a teacher's aide. If you are a woman with an instinctive feeling for children you're able to blow noses and take kids to the bathroom and put their snowsuits on. And that helps the teacher to teach. And while you're being a teacher's aide you can be taking courses and trying to move up from that rather primitive participation in the educational process. For more serious and even eventually to an academic participation. What I am saying in terms of the idea of a right to work. Is we should not regard that having a right to work as a burden imposed on the society. But as an opportunity of the society to create a better America for our people. Better health. More beauty better education. So forth and so

on. Now two final points on the program. One regards how has their ideas around for having a supplement so that people can get in the housing market. Now you've got to understand that we define poverty in America today in terms of food. That's the basis of our definition. If we defined it in terms of housing there would be many more poor people in America. Because it's harder to be you. Well how is that America than it is to be well fed. The poverty and housing is greater than the poverty and food of. Slums in dilapidation or relatively speaking worse than hunger. And therefore housing has a particular problem. And even if you had a guaranteed income for the poor who can up work. And a guaranteed job for the poor who are able to work. Unless you have a gigantic housing program that will do in the area housing has been the rents up.

Because there's just not enough decent housing in this country. And therefore in addition to things like income programs and work programs. We have to create decent housing. Now let me very briefly tell you the sad ridiculous plight we're in. In 1949. The leading Republican conservative of his generation. Robert half. Said I believe in free enterprise. I am a conservative I believe passionately in capitalism but I see the private sector as not providing decent housing for the poor and therefore I have precisely as a conservative I'm in favor of public housing. OK. This is the Barry Goldwater of his day Barry Goldwater with brains I would even it. And so Taft sponsored the Taft Wagner. I wonder how as an act of 1949 the great postwar housing. Last year we passed another Housing Act. And you know what the aim of our nineteen hundred

and sixty year Housing Act is to fulfill the aim of the 940 million Housing Act. Because we are now 20 years behind Robert Taft in goal you can believe that. So last year we said OK we'll do finally 20 years to life. We are going to increase our production of low cost housing by 1000 percent per year. Build six million units of housing. In 10 years. I have a secret. We're not. There was an article in The New York Times last Sunday. It's not a very well kept secret or I'm not revealing anything out of a school. Everybody knows we're not going to appropriate the money. Congress has no intention of doing. Their part that I am suggesting is that unless we have a reversal here unless we have a massive and planned social investment. Or even guaranteeing worker or guaranteeing income will not solve the problem of the slump. And finally I think given the fact that.

Richard Nixon is not exactly a roaring leftwinger Congress the United States is perhaps even less left wing than Richard Nixon. If you want to take a modest place to start on all of these programs. One that you could act on now although I believe we have to plan on these other ideas now. I think the simplest place to start is that we should demand that there be national minimum standards of welfare for poor people in the United States funded by the federal government. And that we not have the situation. By golly I don't do that to be took a dive into my glass of water. That is a right wing beat up that we end the situation whereby the welfare system. Acts as one of the transmission sending people from the rural backwoods to the

big city because they can get a better deal on welfare and I think that pragmatic miserable cash and carry argument. Is one that perhaps even this Congress will. And there is already pressure from governors from mayors all of whom realize that the housing welfare burden is literally becoming intolerable to do something like that. So secondly what I'm saying. There are programs. I guaranteed income but not in Friedman's guaranteed income which substitutes for the welfare state rather a guaranteed income as a supplement for. I suggest that children's allowances is not really the best idea that we must reform the Social Security system and build an escalator so that aging people have a really secure and decent basis for life. I suggest that we should have a guaranteed right to work in which in many instances the government will become an employer or a first resort utilizing the enormous talent of poor people to build the society more decently and I suggest that in terms of all of these programs that in the area of the slums

there has to be massive planned social investment or raising income will simply build up the cost of inadequate housing. Finally I suggest to you that the immediate place where we can start on these ideas would be perhaps a federal. Minimum standard of welfare funded by the federal government so that this outrageous. Disproportion between Mississippi and Connecticut does not exist and all Americans receive the same minimally adequate welfare. Finally let me talk about the politics of all this. You have to understand economically that we now have a new mathematics. The American gross national product in 1972. According to President Johnson's cabinet courting Coordinating Committee on post-Vietnam expenditure reported just two months ago. In 1972 we were going to have a gross national product of one point one trillion dollars. We now have an economy that grows in a single year by as much as the total sum of the

gross national product during the years of the Depression. Think of that in one single year we grow. By as much as the totality of a depression your gross national product. We don't have a society to give you an idea of the new mathematics the fact. That money is not what it used to be because there was so much more of it. We now have a society in which one corporation called General Motors. Has the 18th largest gross national product in the earth. That is this a General Motors has a larger national annual product than almost all of the countries in the United Nation. There are in the first 30 gross national product on the Earth five American corporations. Under those circumstances we can do things that would have been absolutely utopian a generation ago. And completely impossible 100 years ago. On very conservative calculations on assuming are rather high on unnecessarily high

level of military expenditure Johnson's cabinet Coordinating Committee says there will be a 1972 twenty two billion extra dollars around to do something with the war in Vietnam and this year. And every year thereafter there will be seven to eight billion dollars more. Fortune magazine which is not to my knowledge a radical publication project magazine in the March issue. Advocates that the United States of America in the 1970s increased its social expenditures by fifty seven billion dollars a year. And they do so on the computation that in fiscal year 1980 the dividend growth without any increase in taxation and removing the surtax the dividend and growth is comparable now will be 90 billion dollars. That is the 57 billion dollar increase in social spending that money left over to spend on luxuries if you will.

So therefore what I am saying is we have money. In this new member matics of the American economy. And when you say that that is an absurdity under Franklin Roosevelt when the fifty or sixty one of one point one for when I'm climbing becomes something easy to do. Notice that 20 billion dollars would be less than a quarter. Of the dividends which Fortune magazine predicts for 900 a guaranteed work program according the Council of Economic Advisors would cost between 2 and 10 billion dollars. I'm suggesting that Martin Luther King's program. Has cost that out by the Council of Economic Advisors this year will cost 30 billion dollars and a top estimate which is less than we now invest in Vietnam. And if we can invest billions in killing people in Southeast Asia. Can we not invest in helping people live in the United States of America in the world. The answer is obviously yes.

Ah. Ah but here's the catch. These resources are enormous but they are not infinite and there is no guarantee. That they will be used on a good program. Once the war in Vietnam. Because there will be at least two claimants for all that money. To groups that are going to try to get. One group is composed of what John Kenneth Galbraith calls the reactionary Keynesian. You see everybody's a Keynesian. And of a Neanderthal or from somewhere but of no consequence politically speaking everybody including big business in America completely understands that the government has to intervene in the economy. Nora body says when the war in Vietnam ends we should just do away with thirty five forty billion dollars worth of spending and say goodbye. Everybody understands that we have to have a substitute for that. The question now is not whether the government shall

intervene in the economy which was the great debate of the 1930s. The question now is how will the government intervene into the economy. That's the question the one thing. And one way is to do was President Johnson did with his tax cut. To stimulate the economy by a tax cut. Which since it is geared according to the income levels of the society benefits seven seven eighths of the benefit go to the top one of the richest people in the country which is what happened inside the US. And moreover the government stimulus is then spent according to the private desires of individuals. Rather than for democratically determine social needs. The great debate of the seventies I suggest is not whether the government shall intervene but how. And on the one side there are going to be the reactionary tax cuts Keynesians who want to emphasize private consumption private choices in the private proportions that

already exist. And on the other side will be the social Keynesian. Who will want to use this enormous fiscal dividend for the kinds of programs that I've been describing. That is going to be a political debate. Up here with political debate and for the good side is not guaranteed to win at all. When only by organizing mobilizing politically to win. And the second claiming. Is now being debated out in one of the most fateful discussions we are having this year the discussion over the anti-ballistic missile system. Because it's extraordinary the senator signing and has always been associated as sort of on your core Senator pro-military Senator that the Senate was the one who was pointing this out. The military's record when it starts a system a modest little system out there on the plane is just a guide a guard a few minute men filed for a mere five billion dollars. Is that those original estimates have a habit of

increasing by two three and four hundred percent. And Simon actually suggests that it is conceivable that one makes a decision to start off with a hidden system. Maybe I'm one maybe on a slippery slope which leads to an expenditure of 400 billion dollars on a fixed system. And eventually leads the expenditure of more money on the national debt of the United States of America. If we make that kind of a decision now you have a military claim on the fiscal dividend when it will not simply re-ask All right the Cold War and all of that. But it also will probably be the beginning of the end of any economic hope for the kind of programs I'm talking about. And that's why I would suggest to you politically speaking. That the question of the ABM is not simply a question of war and peace. It is certainly that. But it is also a question of whether we will deal with poverty as we should. Because the

one main thing that destroyed Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty. The one main thing that ruined so many of our high hopes that were had back in 1964 was the escalation of the war in Vietnam. And if we now perhaps with the hope of peace and we. Decide to use that money on a further escalation not just the war in Vietnam but of a Cold War from the entire world that could destroy the hope of any war and poverty for generations to come. So I'm saying as my final point. That there is enormous wealth in the society and done enough wealth. To pay right now. At less than the cost of Vietnam for guaranteeing our right to work or a decent income. Only 30 billion dollars is not that much in terms of a trillion dollar plus economy. Which is going to have a 90 billion dollar fiscal dividend according to Fortune magazine and one thousand eighty. We can do these things. But we are not guaranteed to do them and we will only do them if there was a real political struggle

against reactionary Keynesians and against the military industrial complex. So I'm suggesting in song. That the dimensions of poverty. Are much more complicated than many Americans who think the poverty is a problem of people who don't like the work and people who like to cheat. Much more complicated than that. Poor people work and work hard. Poor people on welfare the majority of them are not on welfare and those who are. Sure there's a little cheating of even I'm told cheating in the middle class among the wealthy on income taxes. I'm sure there's a little cheating but the reality is that there's not much to cheat about. Those programs are so inadequate. I'm suggesting that in response to that situation we should follow the advice of Martin Luther King and have an economic bill of rights guaranteeing a right to work our right to an income. Secondly I suggest to you that a guaranteed income of a type affecting not just the poor but many others in American society would be a good thing. That the Right to Work program which would put people to work raising the quality of health education beauty etc. the United

States would be a very good thing. I'm suggesting that perhaps we can start on a national welfare minimum funded by the federal government a federally established minimum. And finally I'm saying to you that these things will require a political struggle that will not just happen. And what I would conclude with is this. I think that many Americans. Think of the problem of the poor as a burden upon the rest of the society and that's wrong. Because I think of these programs and the kinds of programs that I'm talking about. As a way to make a better America not simply for poor people but for all Americans. And I am saying therefore that when you reach out and touch the problem of poverty. You are not simply acting on noblesse old billies you are not simply being charitable and nice to people who are at a disadvantage. You may be doing that and you should want to do that. But more than that there is there in

using the resources of these people which we now squander. There is there the opportunity to build a better America for us all. I. You have just heard an address by Michael Harrington author of The Accidental century and the other America speaking on the topic. The welfare system and the crisis of the unemployed. Mr. Harrington spoke at the Wake Forest University's symposium on contemporary American affairs challenge 69. The theme of this year's symposium was the urban crisis the student's response. Next week Dr. Benjamin demat a professor at Amherst and specialist in education for the underprivileged will speak on the crisis of inadequate education challenge 69 was produced entirely by Wake Forest University students. The executive

director of challenge 69 was Norman Murdock the assistant director was I'll show and this radio series was produced by the staff of station WFTV Af-Am Wake Forest University Radio in Winston-Salem North Carolina. This is an E.R. the national educational radio network.