Vox and 538 got into “a nerd fight” about aggregating information on websites. (It’s actually a really important fight.)
How many adjuncts are receiving public assistance? Quite a bit.
Good post by Megan about forces that make Free Range parenting so hard.
Apt. 11d 
I used to work in affordable housing. I think any (honest) social services professional will tell you that quite a lot of public assistance goes to what we called “poor by choice.” Among other things, they have the social capital and executive function to learn about the programs and navigate them. In NYC, the “poor by choice” category mostly encompasses aspiring writers and performers, but adjunct professors also quality.
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Just out of curiosity, how long is one allowed to try to achieve some sort of success by not maximizing current earning potential before it becomes “choosing poverty”?
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Is there any data, to support the “social service professional’s anecdote that quite a lot of public assistance goes to the “poor by choice”?
The adjunct article is based on analysis from a report by the labor center at Berkeley: http://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/pdf/2015/the-high-public-cost-of-low-wages.pdf.
The article pulls out fast food workers, child care workers, and home health care workers and adjuncts as jobs in which a high percent of the recipients receive government assistance (52, 46, 48, 25%, respectively). One can do a back of the envelope calculation of the numbers of people in each of these jobs and calculate that 96% of the group are working in fast food, child care, or home health.
Of course, there are lots of other working poor receiving assistance (34 million receive medicaid, and the article did not analyze subsidized housing. focusing on Medicaid, TANF, EITC, and SNAP).
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Is there any data, to support the “social service professional’s anecdote that quite a lot of public assistance goes to the “poor by choice”?
No. Unless you define “choice” as “not having foresight as good as Y81’s hindsight.
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Hmm, so Wal-Mart and all the other retailers are insignificant? It’s mostly wealthy people and state governments (the employers of child care and home health care workers)? I would not have known that.
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Hmm, so Wal-Mart and all the other retailers are insignificant?
Working there is not appreciably different from being poor, unless you happen to own them.
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To spell it out more completely, if your alternative is work in Walmart or try a less than certain chance of succeeding at something else, assuming failure won’t cause you to starve, the probability of success at that alternative can be very, very low before working at Walmart becomes the rational choice.
(If you read that and think the problem is that we don’t let more people starve, take it to Crooked Timber where that kind of nonsense gets a response.)
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I’m confused. I thought MH said that 96% of the working poor receiving public assistance are working in fast food, home health care, or child care. Doesn’t that mean that very few of the working poor receiving public assistance are working in retail? That is not what I would have gathered from reading the popular press, which generally points to greedy big box retailers, not greedy matrons and social services agencies, as the ones being unjustly subsidized by public assistance for their workers.
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What? Where did I say that.
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I’m sorry, wrong initials. bj said that 96% of the workers receiving public assistance work in industries other than retail. I commented that I found that result surprising, because retailers are often claimed to be big offenders in this category. MH responded that I wanted more people to starve–not sure how someone got that out of what I said, but some people think vituperation is always the right answer.
Not a very productive conversation. I will abandon it.
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This week, I’m catching up on chores and coming up with ideas for the next articles. One of my ideas was a memoir-ish piece on how Steve and I ended up on WIC, while we were adjuncts. That topic is on the bottom of the list, because of the predictable, nasty personal comments.
Thanks for that link. If I write this piece, I would want to add those numbers for context.
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yes, I’m guessing there would be nasty comments.
Although quibbling about back of the envelope numbers is probably unproductive, 96% of medicaid /chip recipients are not fast food/child care//home health. Those jobs would comprise about 6 million of the 34 million working medicaid recipients, and were chosen in the article because nearly 50% of the workers receive government assistance. Presumably retail is something less than 50%, though it could be something more than 25% (the article doesn’t seem to pull out retail specifically).
Walmart says about 45+% of employee’s children are on Medicaid (the Berkeley study included a worker as receiving government benefits if any member of the family received benefits. With about 2 million employees, Walmart would contribute nearly a million to the 34 million numbers. Retail is about 4.5 million (according to the bureau of labor stats), so just Walmart (not including any other retailers whose employees receive assistance) puts us at retail workers having at least 22% receiving assistance.
(note that these numbers are guestimates, ’cause some of them might be apples/oranges — for example) I don’t know who is counting part time employees and the like.
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Well, NYC is probably a different kettle of fish than we are used to elsewhere in the US.
Remember, Charlie Rangel somehow managed to hog a rent-stabilized apartment for over a decade and used it as a campaign headquarters.
http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypolitics/rep-charlie-rangel-fined-23k-rent-stabilized-harlem-digs-campaign-hq-updated-blog-entry-1.1689693
A more complete account:
“While aggressive evictions are reducing the number of rent-stabilized apartments in New York, Representative Charles B. Rangel is enjoying four of them, including three adjacent units on the 16th floor overlooking Upper Manhattan in a building owned by one of New York’s premier real estate developers.
“Mr. Rangel, the powerful Democrat who is chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, uses his fourth apartment, six floors below, as a campaign office, despite state and city regulations that require rent-stabilized apartments to be used as a primary residence.
“Mr. Rangel, who has a net worth of $566,000 to $1.2 million, according to Congressional disclosure records, paid a total rent of $3,894 monthly in 2007 for the four apartments at Lenox Terrace, a 1,700-unit luxury development of six towers, with doormen, that is described in real estate publications as Harlem’s most prestigious address.”
Presumably that’s the sort of abusive situation y81 has in mind–well-connected people figuring out how to hoover up scarce cheap housing.
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Re: free range parenting
I don’t think that kidnapping is even the issue.
Drivers are a much bigger problem. They simply aren’t expecting kid-sized pedestrians walking by themselves across the street. Combine that with the fact that bigger kids today can be virtually guaranteed to be wearing headphones or glued to their phone screen, and you have a recipe for tragedy.
We were hoping to turn our oldest loose this summer to walk a couple blocks for frozen yogurt (maybe with her somewhat younger brother) but then earlier this year, we had a near miss. I was walking my two older kids to school and we were in a crosswalk when a teenage driver in a BIG truck hit my older child and clipped my middle child while the driver was making a left turn at a four-way stop with the morning sun in his eyes. (He said he didn’t see us at all.) There was relatively little physical damage (some bruising and a lot of abrasions all over one kid), but it’s soured me on walking the kids to school, as any of us could have been killed, crippled, or brain damaged in that incident, had circumstances been slightly different. I used to drive, park, and then walk them to two different school buildings and it was quite a nice little walk for all of us, but ever since the accident, I’m really spooked and I’ve been mainly driving the kids.
So, I think I’ll pass on the free range parenting.
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Drivers are a much bigger problem. They simply aren’t expecting kid-sized pedestrians walking by themselves across the street.
Cars are my big worry. I do see other parents letting kids about my son’s age walk to the bus stop alone, but I’m too afraid of the drivers. Based on the number of times I’ve almost been hit, they don’t even see adults. And if they don’t see you and you slap their car, they threaten to call the cops on you.
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And now I read the second paragraph. Ugh. My sympathies. That must have been awful. I hope you got some useful help from the cops.
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Kid had the best possible landing for the hit she took. It could have been 1,000,000X worse.
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Cars are what scare me, too. I loved Venice for its absence of cars. Cars are dreadfully dangerous. I do think slowing them down a lot helps, and I live in a city that’s making that possible with annoying features like one lane blocks at intersections, wide bike lanes, and speeding cameras near schools.
In addition to not being seen, the kids lack the experience to understand how to be sufficiently defensive in their walking, judging their speed, the car’s point of view and speed and driving ability. I think a key to free range parenting is that you have to free range with them while they acquire these skills.
I let my kids walk to the park. The 14yo is pretty much free to walk anywhere. She’s very responsible and very cautious, so I think that plays a role in my decision making. She also looks older so no one is going to question her. She and the 11 yo are allowed to roam fairly free. The 11 yo only in our immediate neighborhood and we have lots of conversations about crossing streets and I’ve walked all the routes with him, and tried to talk about things like drivers doing things they aren’t supposed to.
I would have been completely freaked out by a child being hit by a car, and probably would have reacted similarly. But, not having had that happen, I think my fear of cars is insufficient to keep them in boxes all the time.
In the MM piece, I think the transfer of information is playing a big role in parental decision making (though the lack of at home parents & communities of children who roam together also plays a role). For example, I’m now going to worry about AmyP’s incident, and, before the internet, I certainly wouldn’t have heard about it.
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bj said:
“In addition to not being seen, the kids lack the experience to understand how to be sufficiently defensive in their walking, judging their speed, the car’s point of view and speed and driving ability.”
And unfortunately, the same is true even of college kids. They’re wearing headphones, crossing while looking at phones, stepping straight into the street without checking for traffic, etc. And worst of all are college runners–they often run straight into the street without first checking out the intersection conditions.
Maybe this is the consequence of not acquiring street smarts while living at home?
“The 11 yo only in our immediate neighborhood and we have lots of conversations about crossing streets and I’ve walked all the routes with him, and tried to talk about things like drivers doing things they aren’t supposed to.”
Very good.
After our accident (which was downtown), I’ve been realizing that the two-block frozen yogurt route that I’d been planning on having the kids do near home/campus this summer had some hidden hazards that I hadn’t noticed. There are cars parked all over near intersections, which makes it almost impossible to see if it’s safe to cross. Unfortunately, a safe route is probably twice as long as the obvious one.
The college drivers are also kind of a menace.
After our accident, my husband and I were having a hard look at our school route options, and I ultimately decided that there was probably a continuing risk of not being seen by drivers making a left turn in that location with the sun in their eyes at that time of day (just before 8 AM).
I’ve also realized that lateness is a risk factor. We were late (or about to be late) the morning of the accident, so I was less careful and the driver was even later and even less careful. I think just having a few minutes to spare can improve the quality of decision making.
“For example, I’m now going to worry about AmyP’s incident, and, before the internet, I certainly wouldn’t have heard about it.”
And likewise, after our accident, I was chatting online with a forum buddy in the Atlanta area, and one of her former students (a child of almost the exactly the same age as my daughter) had been killed in a hit-and-run a few blocks from home, just a few minutes after talking to their mom.
So, it’s the cable news effect–we all know every single horrible thing that has happened to anybody.
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Hmm, I never worried much about traffic in NYC. Speeds are pretty low and every crosswalk has a stoplight. I’m sure Little Miss y81 started jaywalking at some point, but when she started, we yelled at her so much that I’m sure she was good for a while. I think she was 11(?–could be off by a year) when she started traveling to school by herself, and was also allowed to travel where she wanted, during the daytime.
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I think NYC is more walkable than a lot of suburban areas, precisely because people do walk.
I don’t worry about kidnappers at all, but spouse sometimes seems to, especially about the 14 yo.
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Though rare, stranger abductions of young girls (rarely boys) for sex do happen. That hideous Cleveland (?) case couple-three years ago hit the papers, and the young woman rescued in Antioch Ca from the guy who had abducted her years earlier near Lake Tahoe. A few cases like that hit the paper, and we are willing to drive our 13 yo girl three blocks through our generally safe neighborhood to her friend’s house. And then, all the other parents are doing the same, so if we don’t, our tender young sprout is the only target for whatever perv may be out there.
That, and the Megan listings of every convicted offender within ten blocks of us, that feeds fear too. And the Etan Patz case is back in the paper. Lower risk than being struck by lightning, probably, but we are sissies.
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Cars are way more dangerous. I’m guessing that abductions of 13yo are less common than assaults of middle-aged women.
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Speaking of over-protectiveness, my husband was just reading me the instructions for our new hammock. One of the lines that caught my attention was, “Never leave children under 16 unattended near the hammock.”
!!!!
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That is one of those instructions that is purely for liability purposes, not expected to be followed. As long as moronic judges allow juries to hear cases involving things like getting burned by the hot coffee you spill on yourself, and moronic juries award millions in such cases, instructions like that will continue to proliferate.
But obviously–I think this was one of McMegan’s points–liability concerns are one factor causing overprotectiveness, as some people internalize the inanity of our legal system, rather than treating it with the contempt it deserves.
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y81, you being a lawyer and all, “the inanity of our legal system, rather than treating it with the contempt it deserves.” is kinda precious. I like it!
As I said, we did NOT raise free range children, we did what our neighborhood models of parenthood did. Which was, hover. Well, you know, the lone zebra on the savannah is lion lunch. A zebra in a herd of a thousand has a one in a thousand chance of being lunch. So if all the other parents are hovering, the Jesse Timmendequas of our nabe will see only our child as his Megan Kankas. Yes, getting killed by a stranger is sort of like being struck by lightning. But we didn’t fight the social norms in our area.
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“But we didn’t fight the social norms in our area.”
Plus, if other parents see you as a negligent weirdo, there may be other costs to your child.
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Just for the record:
* McDonald’s mandated that franchises serve coffee at a temperature that was far higher than restaurant standards, and 45 to 50 degrees hotter than coffee served at home. In fact the temperature that McDonald’s mandated franchises keep its coffee at was closer to boiling than to the temperature people usually drink coffee at.
* The risk of severe burns (in the plaintiff’s case, third-degree burns to the genital area) increases rapidly with temperature, such that a spill at normal coffee temperatures would be annoying, while a spill at the temperature McDonald’s required was much more likely to cause harm. (“liquids, at 180 degrees, will cause a full thickness burn to human skin in two to seven seconds … [but] as the temperature decreases toward 155 degrees, the extent of the burn relative to that temperature decreases exponentially.”)
* In fact, discovery revealed more than 700 claims of burns that had been made to the company. Despite this, McDonald’s did not require its franchises to serve coffee at restaurant norms.
* The plaintiff originally asked for far less, to cover medical expenses. McDonald’s refused both settlement offers and an mediator’s offer.
* The original sum awarded by the jury was approximately two days’ of coffee revenue. The judge reduced that to approximately half a day of coffee revenue.
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Katharine Beals’ moderately autistic son has been accepted to college. But is he ready?
http://oilf.blogspot.com/2015/04/but-is-he-really-ready-for-college.html
“Perhaps, then, J isn’t ready for college. But what is the alternative? If he’s not mature enough for college, he’s certainly not mature enough for the work place. He could theoretically stay in high school until he’s 21, but he’s taken all there is in the way of math and computer science classes, and we don’t want those skills, his most promising ones, to stagnate. Does it really make sense for him to ride out the next few years of his life in a holding pattern until he (eventually, hopefully) crosses some threshold of emotional maturity, when what he needs is a structured setting in which to further develop his most promising skills?
“So, yes, he is ready for college. He is ready, in particular, for the best college he got into: one with an autism support program and minimal distribution requirements. One that, equally importantly, is within walking distance of home–where he will continue to live, and where, yes, we will be monitoring him very closely and continuing to give him all the external incentives it takes for him to continue to succeed.”
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I wonder how much knowledge of the kids with special needs like these makes a difference, too. There are kids who need various forms of hovering and even a typical kid might need a particular kind, but I think it’s not unusual for folks to think that they have to provide the supports all the other kids have, even if their kid doesn’t need them.
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I not only allowed my children to walk the streets alone, I encouraged them to! I even let them play outside in an area known to harbor wild animals, without parental presence.
Fear of an extremely unlikely event has shortened many children’s lifespans. The long-term damage from a lack of outdoor exercise far outstrips any collective danger. Complications of diabetes, obesity, etc. kill millions, but are not perceived to be a threat.
In my opinion, being seen as a “negligent weirdo” by helicopter parents is a feature, not a bug. It is very freeing to decide not to live up to others’ expectations, but rather to live up to our own.
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“The long-term damage from a lack of outdoor exercise far outstrips any collective danger”
Yup. Though in the hyper-vigilant high SES community, this is at least partially addressed by organized sports, to which one drives kids 1 hour each way. Which turns into a problem when they grow up, and don’t have time for four hours to do an organized sport, but, don’t walk to the grocery store.
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