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After looking across the pond for his congestion pricing scheme (London introduced congestion pricing in 2003 and extended it westward this February), Mayor Bloomberg is travelling south of the border to Mexico on a fact-finding trip to fight poverty. The subject of the mayor's journey is a program dubbed Conditional Cash in the U.S., but called Oportunidades in Mexico. Oportunidades pays poor Mexican women unrestricted cash bonuses for behaving in a manner that officials hope will break that country's persistent cycle of poverty. Goals that must be met include regular school attendance by a family's children, showing up for scheduled medical appointments, and following dietary guidelines that may include feeding children necessary dietary supplements. Compliant women must then travel once a month to a distribution center where they are paid an amount of money dependent on their circumstances, such as how many children they have. Oportunidades is not an employment program, but an effort to increase people's social capital by inculcating self-beneficial values and behavior.
Mayor Bloomberg wants to adopt a similar program in New York City by the end of the year. Gothamist wrote about the pilot program called Opportunity NYC last month. It will be initially funded by private donations, but Bloomberg hopes that if it proves successful the government will step in with funding. From The New York Times:
Under the New York plan, which is still being developed, poor families would be paid up to $5,000 a year to meet goals like attending parent-teacher conferences, getting regular medical checkups and holding down a full-time job. Participants would get their money through automatic deposits, not by attending a large gathering.A pilot program is scheduled to begin in September with 2,500 randomly selected families whose progress will be measured against 2,500 families who will not receive the benefits. The pilot program will be privately financed. The city has already raised $42 million of the $50 million needed to cover the initial costs. If it is successful, Mr. Bloomberg hopes that public money will eventually go into it.
This is certainly a novel approach to battling poverty. Conservative critics of past welfare programs have accused them of encouraging self-destructive behavior and fostering harmful values, e.g., multiple births by unwed mothers, discouraging marriage, and fiscally punishing people who seek employment. It's possible a program specifically designed to encourage positive behavior and values in order to help the poor may gain widespread support.
(Photo by Marco Ugarte, AP Stringer)
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can we just trade all our homeless and people who don't want to work for the mexicans that do?
This just wreaks of Orwell in ways that make me shudder.
"Hey - thanks for washing your hands after using the bathroom. Here's five bucks!"
I work in a major hospital where we just gave out prizes to people who were observed consistently washing their hands between patient care visits and then nominated for their hand washing success... incentives aren't necessarily a bad thing to inculcate good practices, are they?
I do know what you mean, anonymass, though.
anonymass, that's just dumb. orwell would be "since you didn't wash your hands we will have rats chew on your face until you've been properly reeducated."
yes, this is paternalistic, but almost all government policies are, and its certainly no more so than tax deductions for mortgage interest. but no, its not coercive - nobody's making you wash your hands and participation is entirely voluntary.
Actually, the Congestion Charge was introduced in London in February 2003. It was increased in July 2005 and the western extension came in to effect in February 2007.
Thank you Austin. I made a note of it.
Oddly, the Bloomberg Administration plan to pay the poor for behaving seems to address a issue which -- so far as I know -- has not been shown to be a problem. The $50 Million program would pay people rewards for keeping doctors appts., ensuring that children attend school, do homework etc. The largest amount of money the 2,500 participating family could earn would be $5,000; meaning that the total for the poor is $12,5 million and what appears to be an overhead cost of $37.5 Million. If these figures and calculations are accurate (the figures come from NYC the calculations from arithmetic -- also courtesy of NYC; check for yourself), it would be the most flabby program on record.
Let's see...
Pay people money for doing things they get for free. Parent-teacher conf & attend the PS? Free for them, paid for with my tax $, though my kids never miss school & go to a local private.
Medical appts? Free on their Medicaid (with free shots, meds, tests) paid for with my tax $ while I pay a bundle for health insurance that covers little).
Dietary guidlines? Maybe if the little piggers didn't spend all their time in McD's or spending their food stamps on crap.
Let's see, you live in free public housing, have multiple little piggies by multiple fathers (this creates problems arranging your multiple free transports to various correctional facilities to visit the "fathers of your children"), eat off food stamps, get free medical care, meds, tests, daycare, everything.
You don't even have to speak English and neither do your kids.
And you can still bitch about how access-a-ride was late getting you to your methadone program.
How about this program gets tied to a negative drug & pregnancy test?
How about some of these "private" sources kick in & give we working people a $5000 tax reduction for doing what it means to be human and a parent.
Wasn't it great when the Berlin Wall came down and we thought communism was dead? This is worse than a socialist state. A plutocracy with a privileged parasitic population. Pay the parasites. Plutocrats will get big deductions for their "private" contributions. Another beaurocracy. NY Post 2010: "Multiple employees indicted in program ripoff".
Give me a break.
Bofug
I think I missed this part the first time around (bold emphasis mine) but I feel even sicker about this having digested it:
"Under the New York plan, which is still being developed, poor families would be paid up to $5,000 a year to meet goals like attending parent-teacher conferences, getting regular medical checkups and holding down a full-time job. "
I can't be the only one who sees absolute LUNACY in that, right?
I just hope Bloomberg intends to fund this Pavlovian program with his rich pals' money should it ever become more than a pilot program because all it will do is further erode what's left of the middle class in New York.
Bofug,
Have you spent any time in the poor neighborhoods of NYC? Have you had any exposure to the children of these communities? The generalizations you make are disturbing.
Public housing is not free. It actually does cost money to live in the projects believe it or not. Not every person that lives there is a drug addict either.
Take a walk through East New York, Flatbush, Crown Heights, etc... tell me how many healthy food options you find. It wasn't until recently that fruit was put into corner stores in these areas.
As a school teacher in Bed-Stuy, your comments are offensive and ignorant to me. I understand the angle you are approaching this issue from, however, you seem naive and come across ignorant (despite sounding intelligent) with your sweeping generalizations. A vast majority of my students live in public housing with their mothers, fathers, or mothers and fathers. Their parents do not have multiple children with multiple partners. Very few of their parents are unable to speak English (I can only remember 1).
You're obviously one of the privileged in this country. I'm glad your child is fortunate enough to go to a private school. There are many problems with the public school system. However, I sure hope you're willing to teach your kid that there are people growing up in the same country that they do, not even half as fortunate as they are and while some of this is a result of choice, we are also a product of our environment and some environments are in dire need of help.
While not everything about these types of programs is sound, we have to proactively address these problems. I am in complete support of a novel way of doing so.
MD,
I am qualified to speak to this issued, having worked in schools in several of the most disadvantaged communities across the five boroughs.
However, qualifications aside, there is something very wrong with this at root level. This program incentivizes extreme dependence when what we should bring to these communities is the exact opposite. If you offer rewards for a given behavior over time and then stop those rewards (because let's face it - this kind of program cannot continue forever for many reasons), what then happens to behavior?
People who don't bring enough self-preservation and self-motiviation to the table to do some of these very basic things are, I'm sorry to say, not worth saving. There are legions of well-intentioned folks out there who do care enough about their personal integrity and the well-being of their families but just lack the resources for whatever reason. I would argue that *those* are the people who deserve our help, not the kind of person who needs to be incentivized into keeping a full-time job.
I swear to God that concept makes me nauseous.
I already pay state tax, federal tax, city tax, property tax, sales tax, tax and fees on things i buy from the city that i pay taxes to (drivers license, registration, this, that)... I have two kids that I am busting my but to provide for and saving money, the way I should be, for college. It's hard.
I have two things to say about this:
1) Is this a good idea? Sure. But, I don't want to pay for it. It's not I'm Mayor Bloomberg with billions to spare. If he wants to tax the super rich and then give out these entitlements, then fine. I do think there are some issues that have to worked out.
2) My parents originate from a thrid world nation with no plumbing, no hot water, dirt roads, and all that other good stuff. They came here with NOTHING. My father worked as a dishwasher, cook, and waiter and currently works as a banquet waiter at a big hotel. We had as many has 8 people living in a 500 sq ft apartment in soho because my dad sponsored so many people into this country. All this and somehow... i got my ass whopped when i played hookie. My parents could have done a little better, they could have been more involved, but hey, they are from a distant land trying to make it in unfamiliar territory. I graduated college. My sister did. My brothers both decided to go the Army, one will be out next month and is heading to college, the other is extending his service. My parents never took handouts, I don't know why. No food stamps, no welfare, just my dad busting his a$$.
Cycle of poverty? Please, spare me. Work hard, send your kids to school, take them to the doctor, what is hard about that, that a dangling carrot is needed? I'm sick of all these entitlements for the poor while the middle-class get to foot the bill.
I wish someone would give me for $5000 to send my boys to school and to the doctor. I could use it. I mean, these people that get the $5000 would also get grants and financial aid for their kids college tuition while I have to save like crazy to pay for it myself.
I'm sure it's not easy being poor. I know once you are poor it's very hard to break out of it. I think universal health-care is a must. I think everyone that is willing to work should be able to find a job, and I think no one should be homeless. If you're poor you can get health-care without insurance and without having to pay a dime, you can get foodstamps, you can get housing assistance, you can get job assistance. Now, on top of all this, we'll give the poor money for what they know they should be doing?
I understand what many of you have to say, however I think I understand what Mayor Bloomberg is trying to do. It was stated that the poor can get all this help by just being poor, this is true. Many people do not get past the helping programs (hand-outs) because if they make to much they will get cut off. This could very well end up being the same with this pilot program of Mayor Bloomberg's but we need to try something. If we keep doing what we are doing we will keep getting what we have been getting, right? Well, maybe it is time to make a change and try something new. I don't know any more than the rest of you but I give Mayor Bloomberg two thumbs up for trying something. Maybe by working his program for a short period of time we will have more people off the monthly helping programs and have them helping themselves daily. It will be interesting to see how things really come out. The way it was figured does have me concerned. When it takes more to run a program than the program its self there is a problem, I hope the figures are wrong. We have supported some really lame ideas so I say let's support this program for at least 3 (three) years to see how things go. If anyone has a better idea then I think the mayor would love to hear it.