In my prior entry, I discussed the remarkable disparity between wealth and poverty in the US, but particularly in New Jersey. Income inadequacy in New Jersey stands at over 21% of the state’s population, or more than 1.8 million people. Even more alarming, almost 340,000 people, 4% of the population, experiences severe poverty measured by an annual income of less than half the official poverty level. At the same time, New Jersey’s Gross State Product stands at approximately $453 billion and the state enjoys one of the highest per capita incomes in the world.

A fundamental question that we should ask is whether the poor are accountable for their circumstances and, if so, what is the best policy response to poverty: Benign neglect?

The theory of “Social Darwinism”, which was popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, posits that the weak are diminished and their cultures delimited, while the strong grow in power and in cultural influence over the weak. Largely discredited, the underpinnings of this belief persist in concepts of personal accountability, the belief that “people must be personally accountable for themselves and their actions.”

It is important to recognize what accountability is not. If something has gone awry, it does not mean that there is someone to blame; that someone is responsible. Accountability is accepting that it does not necessarily involve assessing blame.

Personal responsibility involves an individual’s striving to be independent of others for his or her future. Each individual is in control of her or his actions and destiny. Others cannot live our lives for us.

Concepts of personal accountability are inextricably connected with the American tradition of individualism: Being responsible is being pro-active, making choices consciously and carefully, and accepting accountability for them.

It is a valuable concept especially if consideration is given to individual circumstances and the social conditions into which we are all born.

Milton Friedman posited that, “The free market is the only mechanism that has ever been discovered for achieving participatory democracy.” And yet, it appears inevitable that the distortions in the free market that Adam Smith and Milton Friedman warned against would lead to a circumstance in which the markets are not totally free and in which certain elements of society would remain largely confined to their status quo.

An example is the history of African-Americans who have had to overcome a legacy of slavery and disempowerment. It was not until this century that we could begin to see the beginning of the end of that terrible legacy and the mainstreaming of African-Americans into American society.

In recent speeches and testimony before Congress, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, Ben Bernanke, has argued that, the most important factor in rising inequality is the rising skill premium, the increased return to education.

Based on his assessment, we could assume that the 25 percent of American workers who have the skills to take advantage of new technology and globalization will move ahead of the 75 percent who don’t have these skills.

Others suggest that the sub-set of the “movers” is actually much smaller. A research paper by Ian Dew-Becker and Robert Gordon of Northwestern University, “Where Did the Productivity Go,” argues that a small sub-set of the population is experiencing great gains, while a much larger sub-set is gaining significantly less and some not at all. They argue that between 1972 and 2001 the wage and salary income of Americans in the top 10 percentile of the income distribution rose 34 percent, or about 1 percent per year. For the same time period, the income of Americans in the top 1% rose 87 percent; income at the top 0.10th percentile rose by 181 percent; and income at the top 0.01th percentile rose by 497%.

The lesson is simple: The wealthiest in our society continue to compile the assets and tools to continue to distance themselves from the larger population. And this is occurring when less resources—like educational programs and interventions at an early age to promote health and learning—are being made available to make it feasible for those left behind to begin to catch up.

It all started with market imperfections like segregation, discrimination and barriers to access to capital, education, equal social and employment opportunity, and other wealth-generating resources.

In such a circumstance, seeking to hold the poor accountable for their own condition sounds too much like blaming the victim.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 21st, 2007 at 9:41 am and is filed under Business, General, Politics, Education, New Jersey, Blogroll. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.