WHAT KATRINA REFUGEES NEED MOST? JOBS!
Many American refugees from Katrina are already arriving in other cities. I know of three shelters in Texas already, in Houston, San Antonio and the covered Burger Statium here in Austin. Arkansas has some too, and more are coming.
As an old hand at helping poor people move up out of bad situations, I want to make a suggestion to all those trying to help these storm victims. Whether they were poor or not before, most of them are now. What they need is to get back on their feet somehow, soon. Handouts just won't achieve that. They need jobs. The only way out of such a deep hole is to work your way out. That can only start with a job.
But aren't they too stressed, too depressed, too much in shock and grief? Actually, a job would help them with all that. The great psychologist Rollo May said that the only cure for grief is time and work. Work is healing! Being unemployed often leads to feeling worthless. A job brings confidence, a sense of being worth something. It faces us toward the future and brings hope. And the money to apply toward our hopes.
But do we have enough jobs for them in America? Before I stop laughing at the idea, let me put on my old economist's hat for a minute. Yes - there are plenty of jobs in America! Presently we are at 5% unemployment, or more-than-full employment. Full employment is defined as about 5.6% unemployment. (That level is where those who want to work are working, except for those temporarily moving from one job to another. For instance, worker B is busy applying for the job worker C just left, while worker A is preparing to apply for the job worker B just left. This movement between jobs is called "frictional unemployment." It is a normal part of the work world, involving about 5.6% of the workforce at any one time. It is not the same as true unemployment. That is why 5.6% unemployment is considered "full employment.")
The U.S. economy, after all, is the one that has somehow absorbed around 11 million illegal immigrants into the job market, yet still has more-than-full employment! It is the economy that continually outsources more and more jobs overseas, while still continuing to increase the total jobs in the U.S. It is the economy that bounced back from a 2000 recession made sharply deeper after 9/11, in just 2 to 3 years. It happens to be the economy that fuels all the other economies in the world. And we don't have enough jobs to employ all these refugees?
Excuse me, but that is just silly. If anyone tries to make such a claim, the only rational response would be mirth and amazement. After all, there were only some 500,000 people in all of New Orleans. That many would not make a serious dimple in our workforce.
As an example, when the unemployment rate was much higher, at 7-8% in California during 1988-92, we made the homeless families in our shelter get jobs. Impossible? Heartless? Well, not one of them (out of a few thousand) failed to get a job. Please!
A big risk is that the Katrina homeless may never want to leave their new shelters. After the great earthquake of 1989 in the California Bay Area, some of our San Jose Family Shelter staff went to Watsonville to see what was happening in the tent city there. We had trouble believing what we learned. After a year in the tent city, everything was ready for them to leave. And they did not want to leave! Some were planning to actually refuse to go.
Why? They had become dependent. They had gotten used to having food, water, shelter, everything they needed, brought directly to them. They did not have to lift a finger for any of it. They also had formed a new, though artificial, community. They did not want to leave it.
Who are the thousands needing help because of Katrina? They are most likely to be the very poorest of New Orleans and the other stricken communities. The more prosperous, the ones with cars, are most of the ones who got out on time.
New Orleans was already thought of as socially "the last helpless city in American." (See Nicole Galinas, former resident of New Orleans, at City Journal, http://www.city-journal.org/.) It had a crime rate 10 times higher than the rest of America. She writes of an economy completely dependent on tourism, with no real competent government or civil infrastructure. The best and most affluent corporations and people had fled for years, leaving behind a population largely dependent on the government. The 10% or so who stayed in New Orleans to wait out the hurricane were largely the ones without cars, mostly from this dependent population. (HT to James Tarranto, Best of the Web Today, Wall Street Journal, 9-1-05.)
These Katrina refugees need jobs. They need, not further dependency, but independence. Those who help them can help the able-bodied among them best by prodding them into jobs, and by requiring them to work in order to continue to receive help. Anything short of that will also fall short of true compassion for these stricken people.
There is a guidebook for helping the poor in this way. I wrote it out of my long experience, but never published it. Right now, I pledge to get it up online, where anyone can read it for free, just as fast as I can. Anyone planning to work with Katrina refugees is going to need it, or something like it! Until then, God bless all of you as you try to help your neighbors - the refugees from Katrina.
As an old hand at helping poor people move up out of bad situations, I want to make a suggestion to all those trying to help these storm victims. Whether they were poor or not before, most of them are now. What they need is to get back on their feet somehow, soon. Handouts just won't achieve that. They need jobs. The only way out of such a deep hole is to work your way out. That can only start with a job.
But aren't they too stressed, too depressed, too much in shock and grief? Actually, a job would help them with all that. The great psychologist Rollo May said that the only cure for grief is time and work. Work is healing! Being unemployed often leads to feeling worthless. A job brings confidence, a sense of being worth something. It faces us toward the future and brings hope. And the money to apply toward our hopes.
But do we have enough jobs for them in America? Before I stop laughing at the idea, let me put on my old economist's hat for a minute. Yes - there are plenty of jobs in America! Presently we are at 5% unemployment, or more-than-full employment. Full employment is defined as about 5.6% unemployment. (That level is where those who want to work are working, except for those temporarily moving from one job to another. For instance, worker B is busy applying for the job worker C just left, while worker A is preparing to apply for the job worker B just left. This movement between jobs is called "frictional unemployment." It is a normal part of the work world, involving about 5.6% of the workforce at any one time. It is not the same as true unemployment. That is why 5.6% unemployment is considered "full employment.")
The U.S. economy, after all, is the one that has somehow absorbed around 11 million illegal immigrants into the job market, yet still has more-than-full employment! It is the economy that continually outsources more and more jobs overseas, while still continuing to increase the total jobs in the U.S. It is the economy that bounced back from a 2000 recession made sharply deeper after 9/11, in just 2 to 3 years. It happens to be the economy that fuels all the other economies in the world. And we don't have enough jobs to employ all these refugees?
Excuse me, but that is just silly. If anyone tries to make such a claim, the only rational response would be mirth and amazement. After all, there were only some 500,000 people in all of New Orleans. That many would not make a serious dimple in our workforce.
As an example, when the unemployment rate was much higher, at 7-8% in California during 1988-92, we made the homeless families in our shelter get jobs. Impossible? Heartless? Well, not one of them (out of a few thousand) failed to get a job. Please!
A big risk is that the Katrina homeless may never want to leave their new shelters. After the great earthquake of 1989 in the California Bay Area, some of our San Jose Family Shelter staff went to Watsonville to see what was happening in the tent city there. We had trouble believing what we learned. After a year in the tent city, everything was ready for them to leave. And they did not want to leave! Some were planning to actually refuse to go.
Why? They had become dependent. They had gotten used to having food, water, shelter, everything they needed, brought directly to them. They did not have to lift a finger for any of it. They also had formed a new, though artificial, community. They did not want to leave it.
Who are the thousands needing help because of Katrina? They are most likely to be the very poorest of New Orleans and the other stricken communities. The more prosperous, the ones with cars, are most of the ones who got out on time.
New Orleans was already thought of as socially "the last helpless city in American." (See Nicole Galinas, former resident of New Orleans, at City Journal, http://www.city-journal.org/.) It had a crime rate 10 times higher than the rest of America. She writes of an economy completely dependent on tourism, with no real competent government or civil infrastructure. The best and most affluent corporations and people had fled for years, leaving behind a population largely dependent on the government. The 10% or so who stayed in New Orleans to wait out the hurricane were largely the ones without cars, mostly from this dependent population. (HT to James Tarranto, Best of the Web Today, Wall Street Journal, 9-1-05.)
These Katrina refugees need jobs. They need, not further dependency, but independence. Those who help them can help the able-bodied among them best by prodding them into jobs, and by requiring them to work in order to continue to receive help. Anything short of that will also fall short of true compassion for these stricken people.
There is a guidebook for helping the poor in this way. I wrote it out of my long experience, but never published it. Right now, I pledge to get it up online, where anyone can read it for free, just as fast as I can. Anyone planning to work with Katrina refugees is going to need it, or something like it! Until then, God bless all of you as you try to help your neighbors - the refugees from Katrina.
posted by Old Neocon at 10:10 PM
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