Bribery Strikes Out

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TheHeretic -> Bribery Strikes Out (4/9/2010 6:56:39 PM)
This is a long-ish read, but fascinating. It seems New York City has a pilot program going that simply bribes welfare recipients to behave in a responsible way, and it still isn't working. Opportunity NYC - Family Rewards A few choice snips: Randomly selected low-income parents of elementary- and middle-school students in Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Manhattan are paid $25 each month that their child has a 95 percent school attendance record; high school students with a low-income parent in the program receive $50 a month for a similar attendance rate. Elementary- and middle-school students who make progress on annual academic tests net their parents $300 and $350, respectively. High school students get $600 each year that they accumulate 11 course credits (the bare minimum to stay on track to graduate) and another $600 for each New York State Regents exam that they pass. Parents are paid $25 for attending a parent-teacher conference or discussing their child’s test results with a teacher; they receive $50 for getting their child a library card. Taking advantage of taxpayer-subsidized Medicaid services, such as free medical checkups, brings a $200 annual windfall; simply maintaining free Medicaid insurance earns the recipient $20 a month. Working full-time earns an additional $150 a month beyond the existing salary. Seeking education and training while working at least ten hours a week could net a parent $3,000 over three years. Contrary to the expectations of both its supporters and critics, the Bloomberg experiment had almost no effect on its participants’ behavior. Last month, MDRC (a welfare-research organization that operates the Family Rewards demonstration) published an interim report on the program’s first two years; the findings were stunning. The program had no effect on students’ attendance rates compared with those of students in the control group; it had no effect on average test scores or academic proficiency rates; it had no effect on high school students’ overall accumulation of course credits or successfully passed Regents exams; it had only a negligible effect on the rate at which parents sought a free annual checkup for themselves or their children compared with parents in the control group; and it had a negative effect on the rate at which parents sought education or training for themselves. Two possible policy conclusions follow from the hypothesis that social and cognitive disorganization prevented participants from exploiting the reward structure. The first is: Do nothing. If paying a mother to take her nine-year-old to school every day induces no behavior change in her, it may be time to give up the notion that government programs can erase social and economic stratification. There is a substratum at the bottom of society that will never be raised up by outside intervention. “The premise of conditional cash transfers is that the stresses of poverty cause people to make choices that are not in their long-term interest,” MDRC president Gordon Berlin said at the press conference announcing the interim results. He may have it backward. It is the inability of some people to make choices in their long-term interest that causes poverty, as sociologist Edward Banfield argued four decades ago in The Unheavenly City. The poor have short time horizons, Banfield wrote, the rich, very long ones. No external force can change those psychological dispositions.

Real0ne -> RE: Bribery Strikes Out (4/9/2010 6:58:29 PM)
challenge: Name one thing government has NOT turned into a total abortion? Just one.

DCWoody -> RE: Bribery Strikes Out (4/9/2010 7:02:21 PM)
They do a similar thing over here....money goes straight to the kids, if they attend....officially it's for textbooks/busfares et...and much of it probably does get spent on that. Difference over here, it works...lower skiving rates. Although....officially, that's not what it's for of course. I'm torn on it myself.

TheHeretic -> RE: Bribery Strikes Out (4/9/2010 7:03:06 PM)
The Interstate freeway system. Want to go for three, Real?

Sanity -> RE: Bribery Strikes Out (4/9/2010 7:20:10 PM)
I drove through two stretches today that are constantly torn up, one of them has been under construction for going on twenty friggin' years. The freeway was so bad between Nampa and Boise before they tore it up this last time to redo it that there were weekly rollovers that were tragic on account of how bad the surface was... after two such wrecks in one single afternoon I was ticketed for turning around in the median even though I had been stuck there in the mid summer heat for going on four fucking hours. Its almost enough to make me go all kinds of right wing militia on their ass [:@] quote: ORIGINAL: TheHeretic The Interstate freeway system. Want to go for three, Real?

TheHeretic -> RE: Bribery Strikes Out (4/9/2010 7:28:13 PM)
Back to the topic, Sanity. I know you are capable of it, even if others aren't [;)]

Real0ne -> RE: Bribery Strikes Out (4/9/2010 7:43:30 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: TheHeretic The Interstate freeway system. Want to go for three, Real? ok if we want to keep it bounded to the intelligence level of fucking up boiling water, then I suppose there are several entries.

FirmhandKY -> RE: Bribery Strikes Out (4/9/2010 8:03:13 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: TheHeretic This is a long-ish read, but fascinating. It seems New York City has a pilot program going that simply bribes welfare recipients to behave in a responsible way, and it still isn't working. Opportunity NYC - Family Rewards A few choice snips: Randomly selected low-income parents of elementary- and middle-school students in Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Manhattan are paid $25 each month that their child has a 95 percent school attendance record; high school students with a low-income parent in the program receive $50 a month for a similar attendance rate. Elementary- and middle-school students who make progress on annual academic tests net their parents $300 and $350, respectively. High school students get $600 each year that they accumulate 11 course credits (the bare minimum to stay on track to graduate) and another $600 for each New York State Regents exam that they pass. Parents are paid $25 for attending a parent-teacher conference or discussing their child’s test results with a teacher; they receive $50 for getting their child a library card. Taking advantage of taxpayer-subsidized Medicaid services, such as free medical checkups, brings a $200 annual windfall; simply maintaining free Medicaid insurance earns the recipient $20 a month. Working full-time earns an additional $150 a month beyond the existing salary. Seeking education and training while working at least ten hours a week could net a parent $3,000 over three years. Contrary to the expectations of both its supporters and critics, the Bloomberg experiment had almost no effect on its participants’ behavior. Last month, MDRC (a welfare-research organization that operates the Family Rewards demonstration) published an interim report on the program’s first two years; the findings were stunning. The program had no effect on students’ attendance rates compared with those of students in the control group; it had no effect on average test scores or academic proficiency rates; it had no effect on high school students’ overall accumulation of course credits or successfully passed Regents exams; it had only a negligible effect on the rate at which parents sought a free annual checkup for themselves or their children compared with parents in the control group; and it had a negative effect on the rate at which parents sought education or training for themselves. Two possible policy conclusions follow from the hypothesis that social and cognitive disorganization prevented participants from exploiting the reward structure. The first is: Do nothing. If paying a mother to take her nine-year-old to school every day induces no behavior change in her, it may be time to give up the notion that government programs can erase social and economic stratification. There is a substratum at the bottom of society that will never be raised up by outside intervention. “The premise of conditional cash transfers is that the stresses of poverty cause people to make choices that are not in their long-term interest,” MDRC president Gordon Berlin said at the press conference announcing the interim results. He may have it backward. It is the inability of some people to make choices in their long-term interest that causes poverty, as sociologist Edward Banfield argued four decades ago in The Unheavenly City. The poor have short time horizons, Banfield wrote, the rich, very long ones. No external force can change those psychological dispositions. Interesting article. Three points: 1. The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. (Mark 14:7 NIV 1984) 2. Perhaps the monetary rewards were not sufficiently high to alter the behavior. What's $25 over a month? Hell, that's not even a carton of cigarettes, or much more than the cost of a case of beer. 3. If by the time you are in high school, if you don't have the habit of attendance, and studying, the odds are you won't ever get them. If someone has the ability to plan long term and engage in delayed gratification, they likely don't qualify for this program, anyway. Firm

TheHeretic -> RE: Bribery Strikes Out (4/9/2010 8:04:09 PM)
Start your own thread then, Real. This is a nice article that seems to be saying that poor people in our country are poor because they are too fucking lazy, stupid, and incompetent to be any other way. Surely you have some thoughts on that?

Real0ne -> RE: Bribery Strikes Out (4/9/2010 8:11:37 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: TheHeretic Start your own thread then, Real. This is a nice article that seems to be saying that poor people in our country are poor because they are too fucking lazy, stupid, and incompetent to be any other way. Surely you have some thoughts on that? well I guess the secret is out.... 25% of america is to damn dumb to even write their own name and 50% can hardly hold down a job at mickey D's. The government are crooks, the middle class are MSM educated and the only place you find real talent is in government. but they are crooks. oh well.

LadyEllen -> RE: Bribery Strikes Out (4/9/2010 8:45:45 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: TheHeretic Start your own thread then, Real. This is a nice article that seems to be saying that poor people in our country are poor because they are too fucking lazy, stupid, and incompetent to be any other way. Surely you have some thoughts on that? When my husband and I lived in India in the 30s it was just the same. It didnt matter how long or hard one beat the natives, they simply failed or refused to improve. We returned to Britain in the 50s and found it a wonderful relief. But I can see now that society here has become as it was in India. And it is for this reason that I shall be standing as the most elderly, and dare I say the wisest, candidate for the Conservative party in the General Election next month, on a platform of working for the right of the elite to dole out beatings much like we did in India and the rest of the Empire, back in the days when the poor knew what was good for them. I understand that they let these people vote here too though, so for the moment I shall campaign as a Cameron Conservative in our changed party, (what a hoot!). Perhaps you might not mention the above comments to others just yet, except you know, when the servants are out of earshot? Lady Ellen Worthington-Smythe Royal Tunbridge Wells

TheHeretic -> RE: Bribery Strikes Out (4/9/2010 8:51:35 PM)
From the article, LadyE; the results buttress the message of welfare reform: the poor need strong paternalism and clear moral guidance. Welfare mothers started working not because it was for the first time in their economic interest to do so, but because welfare bureaucrats made it clear that they were expected to work, according to Mead. KIPP charter schools succeed with students because they don’t give them a choice about how to behave. Though Mead finds the improved performance of already proficient ninth-graders in Family Rewards intriguing, he finds more in the study that supports the necessity of wraparound paternalistic intervention. Though the welfare system has exhausted its leverage over welfare mothers once they go to work, the last hope for turning around underclass behavior may be to convert every inner-city school into a KIPP-type academy with minute-by-minute structure and explicit, nonnegotiable rules and expectations.

LadyEllen -> RE: Bribery Strikes Out (4/9/2010 10:07:00 PM)
If you want to talk about it seriously Rich, I think its most often a mistake (though just as often necessary to administer any mechanism across a multitude of cases) to apply the same strategy to all. Some people are going to react to the carrot and others to the stick and still others to a combination. A few will not react at all and its arguable that this is because they are lazy, incompetent or stupid when we dont know the full details of their backgrounds and life circumstances; if your mom is on crack because she's so emotionally/psychologically fucked up thats how she copes with life then these "bribes" are not going to work except to support her. Having said that though its clear to me that there are (here) a small percentage of "problem families" where it would make not one jot of difference what one did, because they simply dont wish to exist in the system. Thats a cultural problem rather than anything else - people refusing to be in any way associated with civic society, apart from taking what they can get of course. Yes, I'd like to see these people sorted out, but thats a difficult task in a free society and one which in its prescription must necessarily sweep up many more than those targeted for sanction. E

TheHeretic -> RE: Bribery Strikes Out (4/9/2010 10:41:26 PM)
I'm pretty much always up for a serious discussion on these issues, LadyE. How many times do I need to drag out the safety net vs. hammock analogy? Personally, I prefer a pretty liberal safety net at the entry level, but with strict time limits before one has to declare themselves a ward of the state to keep receiving assistance. The rules and requirements at that point will provide the kick in the ass some need to get going again, and for those who simply can't get themselves together, provides the kind of environmental structure that prevents this becoming a multi-generational way of life..

LadyEllen -> RE: Bribery Strikes Out (4/9/2010 10:49:38 PM)
Oh I'd agree with that way of thinking Rich, except that whilst I may be able to trust you with such a policy, I simply cannot trust those here (and find no reason to trust anyone in politics there) to employ it as stated for the right reasons rather than to look to make political capital out of it to some other and nefarious purpose - thus my attempt at a comic take off of a typical grass roots Conservative over here. Plus which I'm sorry to say that my experience is that "lifestyle claimants" is not the easy question it at first may appear to be - I live surrounded by them (25% unemployed here in the good times) and the one thing in common they all seem to have is some circumstance or other, past or present, that totally mitigates against any of them holding a job - if that is they had any chance of even acquiring one. I'm a charitable sort - but I wouldnt employ any one of them to do so much as push a broom. E

DarkSteven -> RE: Bribery Strikes Out (4/9/2010 11:06:43 PM)
Rich, the article implied but did not mention the main point... LBJ passed the Great Society programs back in the 1960s, and we've had longterm welfare recipients (i.e., low income folks) ever since. After 45+ years, we as a society have no clue what motivates them, and have just run an experiment to prove that money doesn't work.

TheHeretic -> RE: Bribery Strikes Out (4/10/2010 8:49:20 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: LadyEllen Plus which I'm sorry to say that my experience is that "lifestyle claimants" is not the easy question it at first may appear to be - I live surrounded by them (25% unemployed here in the good times) and the one thing in common they all seem to have is some circumstance or other, past or present, that totally mitigates against any of them holding a job - if that is they had any chance of even acquiring one. I'm a charitable sort - but I wouldnt employ any one of them to do so much as push a broom. E True, LadyE. We have to acknowledge that a biggie among those crippling circumstances is the entitlement mentality that has been spawned and nurtured by government's good intentions. It seems we have to find some way to separate the people who cannot, from the ones who don't think they should have to. I've tossed out one idea for how we can do that, but I'm open to others. It turns out though, that bribing people to be responsible doesn't work.

kiwisub12 -> RE: Bribery Strikes Out (4/10/2010 11:22:29 AM)
Heck, i think we should pay people to be neutered - no income cap, just make those puppies sterile , male and female, no age limit either way. Its cheaper not to raise children, than to raise them. I also think that if the government is going to pay women to have children there should be a limit - as in, full benefits for one - after all , anyone can make a mistake, half benefits for the second, and if you want benefits for the third, you have to be steralized. One mistake - sure, two - ok, but dubious, third mistake - is not a mistake and since they are not able to take care of the problem, the government will. and for all those bleeding heart liberals (of which i am usually one) - i support fully the right of any woman to have as many kids as they want - just not on my buck. If they want the money i work hard and long for, they have to have limits imposed. This way they have a choice - welfare money - or not. There is nothing written anywhere that allows people to breed like bunnies when they can't afford it. I had two kids because that is what i could afford, and the fact that i was sensible enough to realise it makes me more responsible than someone who has two kids and no job or skills to finance it. If the truth be know, i would have liked to have had 6 and been a stay-at-home mum - BUT the money wasn't there.

slvemike4u -> RE: Bribery Strikes Out (4/10/2010 11:27:29 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Sanity I drove through two stretches today that are constantly torn up, one of them has been under construction for going on twenty friggin' years. The freeway was so bad between Nampa and Boise before they tore it up this last time to redo it that there were weekly rollovers that were tragic on account of how bad the surface was... after two such wrecks in one single afternoon I was ticketed for turning around in the median even though I had been stuck there in the mid summer heat for going on four fucking hours. Its almost enough to make me go all kinds of right wing militia on their ass [:@] quote: ORIGINAL: TheHeretic The Interstate freeway system. Want to go for three, Real? Sorry Rich,I decided to edit rather than derail.....[:D]

BeingChewsie -> RE: Bribery Strikes Out (4/10/2010 11:29:22 AM)
If you are interested in knowing more about KIPP and their mission, Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers has a whole section on KIPP. It is pretty amazing program but in the same way throwing money at them doesn't help, neither does KIPP if a student really doesn't want it. Part of the success of KIPP is the very long school days and 3-4 hours of homework each night. Most students get home around 7PM, and do homework until 10 or 11PM. They begin their day often before 6AM. They have two hours of math instruction a day, required chorus, and strict rules on behavior. There has to be a part of you that wants it to succeed at KIPP( that is probably true of many of the charter schools in poor inner city areas). These children already have a leg up on their peers, all they need is a place that helps them follow-through. My feeling is the children who were not willing to do it for money, will be unlikely to do it at a place like KIPP. Let's face it, places like KIPP and other Charter schools based on similar models require perseverance, determination, and drive. You can teach that to a certain extent but it does seem to be inborn in people who are successful in life. When I look at KIPP in the Bronx for example, 16% of all middle school students are performing at or above grade level in math, at KIPP 84% of students are performing at or above grade level after 2 years in the program. That is pretty amazing, but I don't think that would work with -every- single child, there are just some who won't put forth the effort. There is a high school charter school in Chicago that just reported that all their students were accepted to a four year college, that is pretty significant when you consider Chicago has a 40% grad rate for African-American boys and only 50% of those grads go on to college. Program is similar to the KIPP model. Once again I think these children have a leg up, no matter how small it seems, they at least had parents who put forth enough effort to enter into a lottery to get them a slot in the school. I agree with your position that more money is not the answer, bribery is not the answer, maybe stricter rules, greater access to solid educational models like KIPP can catch a few more that are currently slipping through the cracks but we will always have those who will not help themselves no matter how much money you give them or how much opportunity you offer them. quote: ORIGINAL: TheHeretic True, LadyE. We have to acknowledge that a biggie among those crippling circumstances is the entitlement mentality that has been spawned and nurtured by government's good intentions. It seems we have to find some way to separate the people who cannot, from the ones who don't think they should have to. I've tossed out one idea for how we can do that, but I'm open to others. It turns out though, that bribing people to be responsible doesn't work.

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