bob@pedsgd.UUCP (Robert A. Weiler) (09/04/85)
Organization : Perkin-Elmer DSG, Tinton Falls NJ Keywords: In article <28200052@inmet.UUCP> nrh@inmet.UUCP writes: >>/* Written 10:28 am Aug 19, 1985 by pedsgd!bob in inmet:net.politics.t */ >>In article <28200051@inmet.UUCP> nrh@inmet.UUCP writes: >>>If you want a lot of evidence for this, I suggest you read Charles >>>Murray's "Losing Ground". In brief, the welfare state has harmed those >> >>I must get a copy of this book I guess. As refutation, Teddy White in >>"The Making of the President 1972" claims that the average income for >>blacks rose dramtically under the Great Society. I can ferret out the >>exact numbers if you want. Apparently they came from the 1970 census, >>but its hard to tell. On the down side, the number of broken homes >>also rose dramatically. > >I'd be very interested in precisely what is claimed. Take a look at >page 62 of Murray's book -- a graph there shows a steep plunge in >poverty for "blacks & others" (non-whites) from 1960-1970, and then >an erratic hovering around 30% from 1970-1980. > Ok, I've found it. 'The Making of the President - 1972' pg 189. Quoted without permission: Conscience, violence, and determined government action had in the sixties finally begun to open opportunities for some black people, and the numbers reflected that too. Median Negro family income had risen by 50 percent in terms of constant dollars in the course of the sixties - to $6,520 a year per family in 1970. Only 9 percent of black families had earned more than $10,000 a year in 1960 - by 1970, 24 percent earned more than that. And *young* black families ( those under thirty-five ) were now averaging $8,900 a year, or 91 percent of white income in the same age group. Education of sorts was finally being delivered to American blacks in big cities - 56 percent of all young black adults (between twenty-five and twenty-nine years old) had completed high school, as contrasted with 38 percent ten years earlier. By the fall of 1972, the 727,000 young blacks in college where more than double the number in college in 1964 - and they were 9 percent of all American college students; black illiteracy, counting those over fourteen years old, had dropped in a decade from 7.5 percent to 3.6 percent. He goes on to describe the cost in broken homes. However, if we are to judge the Great Society in economic and education factors, the figures given indicate to me remarkable success. If Mr Murray is arguing otherwise, either he or Mr White have made an error, and you'll have to choose who you believe. BTW, Mr White considers the Great Society a failure because of its affect on cities and broken black families, so there is reason to believe his numbers are accurate; he has no bone to pick. Bob Weiler.
josh@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU (J Storrs Hall) (09/06/85)
In article <259@pedsgd.UUCP> bob@pedsgd.UUCP (Robert A. Weiler) writes: > 'The Making of the President - 1972' pg 189.: > Median Negro family income had risen by 50 percent... > ... And *young* black families ( those under thirty-five ) > were now averaging $8,900 a year, or 91 percent of white > income in the same age group. ... > >... If Mr Murray >is arguing otherwise, either he or Mr White have made an error, >and you'll have to choose who you believe. >Bob Weiler. As usual, the actual situation is (was) more complex than Usenet cheapthought allows for. White's figures, and others usually used to show the "success" of the Great Society, are perfectly compatible with Murray's, and as far as I know, all of them are literally factual. What White (and Weiler) do is show the optimistic aggregates that resulted from the righ getting richer, and ignore that the poor were getting poorer. Murray makes a point of showing that the top two fifths of blacks did very well from the Great Society, but that it put a cap on the bottom fifth, whom it locked permanently into poverty. --JoSH