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PARTISAN REVIEW
have for a long time been talking of welfare reform. The left wants to
raise welfare benefits, sometimes the right does, too. Welfare as you
know goes primarily to mothers and children, children whose fathers
have either died-that's not too common-or left. The details of
welfare reform have gotten complicated, but mostly the proposals
consist of raising the benefits, nationalizing them so they are the same
in Mississippi as in New York, making them more a matter of righ t,
reducing the aspect of detailed investigation insofar as it still exists,
and introducing some element of incentive to work or to get off welfare
by reducing benefits only gradually as the recipients earn income, so
that earned income does not simply substitute for welfare.
If
it does do
that, if your welfare goes down a thousand dollars every time you earn
a thousand dollars-which is called a hundred percent tax rate-what
are you gelling? And so all agree, whether fervent advocates of the
expansion of welfare benefits, or their opponents, that the one hundred
percent tax is not a good idea.
Now the problem with welfare reform is that it raises benefits in
many states above what poorly skilled workers can earn.
If
going on
welfare is a rational response to a situation in which if you work or stay
with your husband you get x, and if you don't, you get x plus y in
addition, that 's not a very good reform. The problem is that in the
argument over welfare reform, the left thought that it was not enough
to provide x plus y, but that we should provide x plus 2y.
Ideologies seem to become relevant to the problems of welfare only
insofar as they prevent people from looking at the facts. Another,
and local, example-subsidized housing. We have an area in Boston,
the South End, of red brick townhouses which people with sufficient
energy or money are rehabilitating. It also has many housing projects;
another is planned. I was asked by a lawyer who represents those who
opposed the new housing project-the rehabilitating home owners-to
testify against it before a federal judge. I asked on what grounds. They
told me that the federal government requires an environmental impact
statement for each federally funded program, and there had been no
such statement for this project. I said that I thought the law was to
protect us against smoke, noise, and dirt, and not against low-income
tenants. They told me that a federal judge in New York had already
ruled that it could be so used, and was required for low-rent housing
projects. But standing by one of my few modest principles, that is, that
judges should not expand the law and take it into their own hands , I
said I would not testify on that ground. Then they said it also destroys
historic buildings. Well, that interested me more. But when I saw the
