De Blasio Will Have A Hard Time Fighting Poverty

See De Blasio’s Long Odds by Ross Douthat of the NY Times, 1-4-14. Excerpts:

"to build the kind of welfare state — European, Scandinavian — that seems to really level incomes, you need lots of tax dollars from the non-rich. Yet the current Democratic coalition has been built on a promise to never raise taxes on anyone making under $250,000 ... or maybe $400,000 ... or possibly $500,000, the threshold de Blasio chose."

"there is international data — dubbed “the Great Gatsby curve” by the economist Alan Krueger — suggesting a link between inequality and immobility. But within the United States, that link turns out to be much less readily apparent."

"Using data from an ambitious research project on social mobility, the Manhattan Institute’s Scott Winship and the Heritage Foundation’s Donald Schneider recently tried to recreate the “Gatsby curve” for U.S. job markets. Instead, they found little-to-no correlation between inequality and mobility across different regions of the country.

And New York illustrates their point, because the city’s extreme income inequality hasn’t led to extreme immobility. In fact, compared with nationwide trends, New Yorkers born into poverty have an above-average chance of rising into the middle class. (And New Yorkers born into affluence have an above-average chance of dropping to the bottom.)"

"De Blasio’s signature proposal, universal pre-K, is a more ambiguous case. Most research indicates that early childhood education doesn’t have the benefits to children’s prospects that its advocates suggest. But it’s possible the program could increase the mobility of parents, by lowering costs and stress for two-earner and single-parent households."