Who really needs the stimulus?
President-elect Obama's stimulus package calls for billions to be spent on infrastructure projects. But commentator Angela Glover Blackwell says to make the most out of the money -- and build up overlooked communities -- it needs to be invested in the right projects.
Angela Glover Blackwell, founder and COO of Policylink (Angela Glover Blackwell)
More on Commentaries, America's Financial Crisis
TEXT OF STORY
Bob Moon: These days the first thing "dire straits" brings to mind isn't the name of a band from the 1980s. There is no money for nothing. President-elect Obama has brought the phrase back to its more literal meaning this week. He's used it time and again to describe the state of the nation's economy. And he used it again today in reaction to the latest grim unemployment news from the government.
The Labor Department counted more than half a million workers slashed from payrolls last month. That pushed the unemployment rate to 7.2 percent. It was bad enough at 6.8 percent the month before. Mr. Obama says the jobless news adds urgency to getting his $800 billion stimulus plan passed by Congress.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, though, have been questioning proposed tax cuts and seemingly endless government spending. But according to commentator Angela Glover Blackwell, no one is talking about the people who need it most.
Angela Glover Blackwell: To jolt the economy back to life, the Obama Administration is ready to spend $500 billion or more on infrastructure projects. I'm glad the thinking is big, but it also needs to be different. If we do this right, this stimulus package can boost America's economy for the long-run and be the greatest anti-poverty tool this country has seen in generations.
For decades, the current system has poured money into new highways to far-off suburbs, enabling even more sprawl and making us even more dependent on our cars. That kind of thinking just doesn't work anymore. America needs smarter, more targeted spending in people, places and projects that gets a solid return on our investment and actually builds up communities too often left behind. But how do we do that?
First, we need to invest where people live. More than two-thirds of Americans, including the vast majority of the nation's poor, live in the top 100 metro regions. These urban areas and inner-ring suburbs are the economic and social engines of the nation. We can have an immediate and sustainable impact by rebuilding their schools, parks and transit systems. When we invest in public transit, we connect working families to the good jobs they need. When we lay new broadband lines in poor communities, we can unleash a new wave entrepreneurs and small-business owners who have been cut off from the digital revolution. When we encourage the construction of new grocery stores in communities long-abandoned by national chains, we put people to work, we improve healthy eating and we bring economic vitality to overlooked communities.
And when we build any project, we can set aside one or two percent of the cost to create job training programs. Developing a pipeline of ready and able workers is vital, and a wonderful chance to expand opportunity for low-income young people. But none of this will happen if we spend the stimulus money the way we've been doing for years. We need to make this chance count. Smart, targeted infrastructure projects are precisely the stimulus we need to help millions of Americans realize their true potential.
Moon: Angela Glover Blackwell is founder and COO of Policylink in Washington, D.C.
Comments
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01/12/2009
I agree with money spent in public transportation and schools, and internet connectivity because they create more value over the long run. However, grocery stores should be left to the private sector as they already do a decent job and have a healthy competition. Maybe, combating crime in poor communities would make businesses there more viable and grocery stores and pharmacies will start coming. Whatever is done with that money should create jobs or value for the long run (internet connectivity, entrepreneur ventures), or save money (energy efficiency, public transit).
From Hideaway, TX, 01/09/2009
On Marketplace this evening (1/9/2009), Ms. Angela Glover Blackwell made excellent points regarding the focus of any upcoming federal stimulus package as most appropriately directed toward the urban infrastructure as opposed to outlying areas of the country. However, I believe that she missed two especially important constraints on the success of her proposal. I speak to these as a first career police officer and a second career criminal justice professor.
In relation to re-establishing neighborhood grocery stores, that is, small businesses in general which are, or were, collectively the largest employer of youth in our country, the pressure from huge chain stores is but one edge of a two-side sword that wiped them out of the local neighborhoods in the first place—the other edge is crime. Crime drove many small businesses out of neighborhoods long before Wal-Mart moved in. Until urban residents, particularly in poverty neighborhoods, stand up to the criminal element by demanding from and joining with their police in weed and seed kinds of programs already available and of proven success, the small business owner still has no chance of survival and possible patrons will still be afraid to venture out of their locked and barred homes. For additional resources to produce successful and long-lasting improvements, the people receiving the resources must stand up and be part of the solution—there must be, as the Habitat for Humanity demands, considerable “sweat equity!”
In relation to rebuilding inner city schools, Ms. Blackwell left me with the impression she meant the physical plant. The far greater need for change lies in the quality of teaching. Teacher training programs appear to have among the lowest graduate school entrance requirements of any of the professions. The old computer programming adage “garbage in/garbage out” is perfectly applicable here. As a college professor for over 20 years, I have observed the steady decline in students’ basic skills—they are no longer intellectually challenged and they suffer from cognitive atrophy; they rebel against the introduction of rigor and the professoriate is relegated not to the advancement of their knowledge but to remediation of their deficiencies. What we need are more school superintendents like Michele Rhee in the District of Columbia (see Time, v.172, n.23 [12/8/2008], p. 36 ff.). (And we need to take more parents to detention than their children, but that’s an editorial all in itself.)
Peter W. Phillips, Ph.D.
Hideaway, Texas
From Chicago, IL, 01/09/2009
Since Obama is citing the layoffs as the reason for the urgent need he should target projects geared toward the recently laid off people. I think it is always great to train young people, but let's get the moms and dads back to work first. Then I suggest that the people who benefit from getting back to work should be required to perform some kind of community service in the form of mentoring and training young innercity and poor young people to prepare them for these kinds of jobs. Grocery stores in the inner city are definitely worthwhile projects as are also improving the transit system. I think there are critical infrastructure that also needs to be fixed to avoid bridges from collapsing. The thing I agree with you the most is that the money should be targeted to those who need it. But right now those people are both in the inner city and also in the suburbs. Whenever I hear of big road projects though, I always think of lots of government pork. And I sure hope that doesn't happen with this stimulus package. Obama's got to get this thing right. He just can't blow on corporate self-interests like they did with the first half.
From Elk Grove Village, IL, 01/09/2009
Hear hear, Angela. You tell 'em. Now, what are the chances of getting Obama and his economic team to listen to and heed your words? I believe Mr. Obama's heart is in the right place, but given the time he has spent in Chicago, he of all people should know that it's not Chicago's highways, but its woefully inadequate public transportation system, that needs help. And if our goal is truly to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, why on earth would we focus on improving roads? We should avoid projects that promote automobile use and instead focus on improving the utility, reach, and cost-effectiveness of public transportation, which democratizes transportation and expands people's ability to live where they choose.
I currently live in the suburbs, but I've lived in enough cities to know that your observations about the shortage of decent grocery stores (esp. in low-income neighborhoods) are on target. And given that many of the jobs that have been cut during the past year have been unskilled and semi-skilled jobs, businesses like supermarkets are ideal sources of the kinds of jobs we need to create.
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