John Fromm Is Alive and Well

It takes Melissa Boteach quite a while to get around to her prescriptions for reducing poverty in her post at RealClearPolicy. Here they are:

Instead, we should build off of the momentum in states and localities that are alleviating poverty and investing in families, which, not coincidentally, can also significantly reduce the chronic stress associated with a wide variety of illness affecting life expectancy. As noted by the Washington Post in its coverage of the Chetty study, “Among the 100 largest commuting zones ranked by the researchers, six of the top eight for low-income life expectancies are in California” — a state that has pursued many policies that mitigate the stresses associated with poverty, such as paid parental leave, a higher minimum wage, and investments in early care and education.

A serious agenda to cut poverty and promote economic opportunity would include these policies and more, investing in job creation, expanding access to high-quality childcare, and increasing opportunities for post-secondary education and training. It would help families manage work and caregiving through paid family leave and fair, flexible, and predictable work schedules; it would protect and strengthen the safety net, which is currently reducing poverty by nearly half. Finally, it would invest in high-poverty neighborhoods, as well as remove barriers to opportunity for Americans with criminal records.

or, in other words, she’s promoting the same cargo cult, post hoc propter hoc reasoning that is all too common nowadays. More jobs that truly require post-secondary degrees will do more to reduce poverty than throwing money down the rat hole of subsidizing higher education.

Most of the rest of her prescriptions are just different ways of saying that the compensation paid for jobs should be higher. I agree. It would be in a tighter labor market.