Aggressive Policing Creating Cycle of Dependence?

Aggressive Policing Creating Cycle of Dependence?
(AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)

I was jolted by the familiar echo, reading Chris Arnade’s “Cops and Teachers,” of an argument I’ve made a thousand times. It was an obviously conservative point, turned suddenly into a refutation of a popular conservative stance.

Speaking in the context of safety-net policy, I often try to distinguish between policies that maintain households in poverty and ones that might help to move them out of it. We can ensure that most people’s basic needs are met through $1 trillion in annual mean-tested transfers and benefits each year, but if another $1 trillion is required the next year, and every year thereafter, we are treading water at best. While some argue that we have succeeded marvelously at lifting nearly everyone above the “consumption poverty line,” and point to rising household incomes “after taxes and transfers,” I believe we should focus on whether our trajectory moves us away from such dependence; on that count we are failing.

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