Growth & Justice Blog

Top priority for transitway development should be employers and jobs

You are a policy-maker and you have a tough choice between  two major development proposals for the same site on a major light-rail line or transitway.   All things being equal, which do you choose:  a major employer or a large housing complex?

If overall accessibility improvement and employer access to labor is the goal, take the employer, says new research presented this week at the 23rd Annual Transportation Research Conference in St. Paul this week.   

The research by University of Minnesota Humphrey School Assistant Professor Yingling Fan was complex and aimed at planning professionals.   But the bottom-line key finding was straightforward:  "Locating new jobs near transitways produces larger increases in accessibility than locating new housing near transitways.''   Getting these fundamentals right are important because by 2030 we likely will have an integrated network of 14 transitways up and running in the Twin Cities, ranging from light-rail to commuter rail to express bus lines.   Few public investments are more important for business growth than transporation infractructure.   Equally important is better access for a workforce that is increasingly comprised of low- and middle-income communities of color, and who need much better connectivity to jobs in the new economy. 

Fan's research was sponsored by the McKnight Foundation, the Jay & Rose Phillips Foundation and the Surdna Foundation.   Abstracts from the conference provide rich state-of-the-art thinking on a wide array of transportation investment issues.

 

Dane Smith

 

St. Paul resident and son inspecting Central Corridor construction in downtown St. Paul (Metropolitan Council photo)

All of our kids will be in the minority, and very soon

Plain facts: By 2015, in just three years, white youth in the United States will  no longer comprise a majority, and then all of our kids will  be members of a minority group. The Star Tribune and other Minnesota media was abuzz last week confirming this transition.   In 2011, for the first time in our nation's history, more than 50 percent of our newborns were non-white or Hispanic and in Minnesota more than 30 percent of our kids under 5 are kids of color.

This will be good, for Minnesota must become a world community to compete in an age of globalization.  But the more important corresponding reality is that our white population and our education systems must adapt faster to changing demographic realities for this state and nation to thrive.   That was the key message delivered by Georgetown University Law Professor Sheryll Cashin  during a recent forum in Minneapolis.

Sheryll Cashin, Georgetown University Law Professor

“The Latino population grew at a rate 40 times that of the white population during the last decade, and these are people born here; not immigrants. Growth in the Asian population is high as well,” Cashin said during the 15^th Annual Julian Parker Lecture held earlier this month at the Minneapolis campus of the University of St. Thomas.

 Cashin, who writes extensively about issues of race and inequality, said that social psychology holds that most people harbor biases, and people who are the most isolated tend to believe the worst stereotypes.  This can be dangerous because separation perpetuates stereotypes of people perceived as “the other.''  

“It is no secret that American public schools are rapidly resegregating,” Cashin said. “Blacks and Latinos have become more segregated than ever in the last 30 years.”  Economic segregation is rising as well, she noted, noting that in 1970, 65 percent of the people in this country were middle class while today, 44 percent are middle class.

The better news is that some areas of the nation have been able to counter this segregation and the widening gap in various measures of  school success rates, to the benefit of all, Cashin said.  She cited Montgomery County, Maryland, where longtime zoning laws required 10- to 15-percent affordable units in wealthier communities.  Now, Montgomery County has emerged as a leader in closing the achievement gap between low income and affluent children, she said.   (See Growth & Justice policy brief on Montgomery County.)

Referring to different perceptions about race and inequality, Cashin said whites frequently view racism through its more blatant and outrageous history, in the context of laws and policies of the previous century that more brutally and intentionally held certain groups back.  So, whites are more likely to see progress around the issue. People of color, however, seek a future of true equality, which they see as quite distant, Cashin said.  

Although whites and people of color typically disagree about the subject of race and addressing disparities, Cashin urged unity and called for establishing multicultural coalitions that “narrow rather than widen gaps” between people.

 Louis Porter II

(Note from Growth and Justice President Dane Smith:  Louis  Porter II is a new Policy Fellow for Growth & Justice.   He's a communications teacher at the University of Minnesota, a former journalist for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, and he holds a doctorate in education.)

 

 

Recommended Reading: Ember Reichgott Junge on charter schools, and John Watson Milton on Senate Majority Leader Nick Coleman Sr.

For lovers of Minnesota, for history buffs and for students and practitioners of public policy, I highly recommend two outstanding books released this week.

One is "Zero Chance of Passage: The Pioneering Charter School Story,'' by former state Sen. Ember Reichgott Junge, a key state leader in education, human services, and governmental redesign and a primary champion of the school-choice and charter school movement of the 1980s and 1990s.  Reichgott Junge skillfully weaves the story of emerging education innovation in Minnesota, from the influence of union leader Albert Shanker, through Gov. Rudy Perpich's bold effort to push through public-school choice, to her own championing of the fights for post-secondary options and finally, Minnesota's emergence as the leading model state in the charter school movement.   Controversy still surrounds charter schools, but they are here to stay, and I'm personally glad that this option was available when my own daughter sought an alternative to her big public high school a few years ago.  (If you buy the book online between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m.on May 9, Ember tells me, there's a chance amazon.com will help with promotion.) 

The other is "For the Good of the Order: Nick Coleman and the High Tide of Liberal Politics in Minnesota, 1971-81,''  by former state Sen.  John Watson Milton, and who served with Majority Leader Coleman in a heyday of progressive reform.   This golden decade, in which Coleman arguably had more influence than any other leader, stretched from the Minnesota Miracle and greater state responsibility for education funding and quality,  to putting teeth in civil rights legislation and expanding the rights of women and minorities and gays and lesbians, to campaign finance reform, to environmental cleanups, to progressive tax overhauls.   As former vice-president Walter F. Mondale writes in the foreword:   "In many ways, (Coleman) and Roger Moe, his successor as Senate majority leader, were more important than many governors we've had _ lasting longer, creating a revolution, and elevating the legislative branch to an equal footing with the executive...Nick Coleman was one of the brightest and most effective people in public office I've ever known.''

Both books will serve as reference works for years to come.   And they are a reminder of what's possible in our political process, and an inspiration for future stewards of our state government.

 

Dane Smith

 

Lessons from Blackwell and Finland: Equity is the superior growth model

Angela Glover Blackwell is one of the nation's leading voices on poverty and inequality, and her national think tank, PolicyLink, provides a wealth of data and best practices for moving people out of poverty, and improving lives for middle- and lower-income households, and communities of color.

Blackwell was in Minnesota recently, promoting PolicyLink's America's Tomorrow report on equity, and she was featured on MPR talking about poverty in America. She made the points, among others, that the vast majority of Americans have no idea how hard it is to get out of poverty, and that more equitable nations are outperforming us economically.

The MPR segment included an inspiring call-in from a Lakeville woman who described how the more generous safety net benefits of the 1970s saved her family and helped her to go to college, and she decried the shredding of those benefits and their reduced purchasing power in recent years.

Blackwell's equity-driven economic model is not just a pipe dream, or a sentimental wish list. It exists as a real life example in places like Finland, which has one of the world's stronger economies, high incomes and standard of living, an innovative workforce, and leading socio-economic indicators.

In the 70's, Finland wasn't so much beset by poverty as it was concerned about how to redesign its education system to move into the knowledge-based economy. Finland chose equity as its educational policy goal, not competition.

Finland's results on the PISA, an international reading, math and science survey conducted by the OECD, rank among the very best in the world. And this is from a system that promoted cooperation among schools, high teacher pay, and equality over high-stakes test scores, competition and "choice." A fascinating recent article in The Atlantic magazine explains Finland's success and concludes that "the problem facing education in America isn't the ethnic diversity of the population but the economic inequality of society, and this is precisely the problem that Finnish education reform addressed."

While comparisons between Finland and the United States as a whole may be like comparing lingonberries to fruit salad, a comparison of Finland to Minnesota is particularly useful to our policy conversations. Finland's population is 5.4 million; Minnesota's is 5.3 million. Finland is becoming more diverse than most people realize and its foreign-born population is 4.6% of the country. Minnesota's foreign-born population is 6.7% of the state.

FInland created an equitable system based on the idea that every child, in any city, from any family and any income should have the same educational experience, from birth on. Minnesota can match the rhetoric on equal opportunity. And we actually stood out as a model of equity among the states until a couple decades ago. But we can't match the results lately and disparities by race and income on educational attainment and achievement are among the worst in the nation.

The lesson from Finland and from leaders like Blackwell on the payoff from elevating equity in order to achieve growth is becoming part of a larger conversation. And PolicyLink's mantra, that equity is the superior growth model, is catching on as a defining principle for economic and education policy.

Maureen Ramirez
 

P.S. I'm the new policy and research director at Growth & Justice and I'm thrilled to be working for an organization that is focused so clearly on advancing equity (also known as economic justice) as the superior growth model. I bring to this job my experience as a current member of the University of Minnesota Board of Regents; as a former executive director of the CaptiolRiver Council in St. Paul (a downtown council that advises the city on planning issues); as a former director of the Minnesota Civic Engagement Table; and as a former coordinator of the Minnesota Participation Project at the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits.

 

Know exactly where you rank among the 99 Percent (you may be surprised)

One of the best things coming out of the 99 Percent movement is an increasing public awareness of exactly who gets how much in our increasingly unequal nation.  A number of interactive calculators have popped up on the internet and I'd recommend the Wall Street Journal's "What Percent Are You?'' site for a quick calculation of your household's approximate position on our extremely unequal income ladder.  The calculator advises that an annual salary above $506,000 puts you in the top 1%, while you need to make less than $2,500 a year to be in the bottom 1%.

Ignorance and misinformation about exactly where you are in the economic hierarchy can lead to poor decision-making in voting and policy-making.  I've seen studies that show many Americans on the bottom half of the scale mistakenly think they are more affluent than they are, and are even more wrong about their likelihood to ever make it to the top echelons.  As a result, they may actually oppose increasing tax rates on the top tier because they imagine they are in it or close to it, or destined for it.  Similarly, I've seen studies that show many households at the upper echelons, perhaps because most of the people they hang out with also have second homes in Florida, don't think they are rich.  A recent New York Times story headlined "Everyone is Middle Class, Right" summarizes a study that documents these erroneous impressions.  Note the bar graphs that show how wrong people are about their status, on both the top half and bottom half.

Maybe if more wealthy folks knew exactly how many Americans ranked below them, they wouldn't be so hostile to paying more for the social contract.  And if more voters knew how far behind the top tier they are, the less they would empathize with that advantage.  Knowledge, as they say, is power.

One last point.  The Wall Street Journal's What Percent Are You? calculator is part of its regular feature, The Wealth Report, a blog by senior writer Robert Frank.  Frank's blogs are even-handed, often counter-intuitive and progressively edgy and funny, without being strident.

--Dane Smith

Channel that "99 percenter" energy by linking to the SKILLS@WORK movement

Protesting the increasingly unfair advantage of the top 1 percent underlies much of the new energy around politics and policy these days.  And that can be healthy, because the economic decline of the middle class and the working class is a major challenge of our times.

But it's important to stay active and informed on a more constructive front as mainstream Minnesotans try to channel that anger and enthusiasm in 2012.

And one of the best new positive things going in Minnesota, coinciding with the Governor's Job Summit this fall, is a campaign called SKILLS@WORK, a joint project led by the United Way of the Greater Twin Cities, and the Governor's Workforce Development Council.

Key facts from the SKILLS@WORK website that many have already heard, but must be kept top-of-mind:

• In 2018, 70 percent of Minnesota jobs will require education beyond high school, yet only 40 percent of working-age adults in Minnesota hold a postsecondary degree.  (We at Growth & Justice have been urging state leaders to start by setting a goal of 75 percent post-secondary attainment by 2020.  See our op-ed urging an attainment crusade earlier this month.)
• Nearly two million working-age Minnesotans lack a credential beyond a high school diploma. 
• Educational attainment levels are expected to decline in coming years – an unprecedented trend.

The alarming facts surrounding an educational equity gap for kids of color, which is grossly unfair to our fastest growing demographic groups, is a major factor for that last bullet.  One of the better comprehensive formulas for improving that picture is contained in the document "All Hands on Deck," which was produced by the Governor's Workforce Development Council under the previous administration and has strong input from the corporate and business world.  The GWDC is one of the most farsighted state agencies you've maybe never heard of.  Plug in to it.

--Dane Smith

 

Report card is in on the Tax Cut Decade: Not good for most of us

The U.S. Census Bureau's report on "Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2010," is out and it's worth digging in to the spreadsheets showing year-by-year change over the last 25 years for each state.

More than 500,000 Minnesotans currently are without health care, even more (560,000) are living below the official poverty level (a ridiculously paltry $22,113 for a family of four) and median income in Minnesota ($52,554 in current dollars) has dropped to its lowest level since 1999.  As usual, our rankings relative to the rest of the nation are a little better, but this should be small comfort.

It's important to remember that 1999 gave us some of the largest state income tax cuts in Minnesota's history, sold then as the surefire medicine for long-term economic growth.  Many states followed suit with their own tax cuts, and two years later we were treated to some of the largest federal income tax and capital gains tax cuts in history, also billed as a tonic for long-term job and income growth.   Instead, the next decade was marked by a dot-com bust and a bad recession, a rather weak recovery for all but high-income families, another recession capped by a banking and housing collapse, the worst economic and private-sector failure since 1929, and severe budget shortfalls and ballooning debt at the state and federal level.

Of course, the last decade, increasingly known as the "Lost Decade'' for most Americans and Minnesotans, also was the decade of 9/11, an expensive and dubious "Global War on Terror," rapid technological progress and disruption, accelerating economic globalization, and manufacturing job loss to cheap-labor competitors.  All of these factors surely are related to economic dislocation and travail, and poor and middle-income folks usually can't cope as well with rapid change as the people who are on top, highly educated, and in position to take advantage of economic changes.

But let's not forget that it was anti-government conservatives who made the cause-and-effect case, and still do, that tax cuts are not only a good thing for the economy and general prosperity, but the best and main thing to do, period.  As Ricky Ricardo would say, they have some "splainin' to do.''

Some of the best analysis and interpretation of the Census numbers can be found at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, which offers an interesting take on the growth of "deep poverty,'' and the Minnesota Budget Project, which notes that only Michigan had a bigger drop in median income than Minnesota since 1999.

--Dane Smith 

Nathan and CSC at Macalester show how to shape mindset early for post-secondary completion

Check out the recent column by our friend and ally Joe Nathan at the Center for School Change at Macalester College for some stirring advice on getting kids and parents plugged in to college visits and post-secondary options during the month of August.

We all know that our more successful students are prowling college campuses and weighing options by their sophomore or junior years in high school, and Nathan's column provides links to the public and private systems in Minnesota that encourage such free visits for any and all visitors.

The CSC website's mainpage also features a recent event at Macalester and an initiative that everybody needs to encourage greatly: getting much younger kids and their parents, especially students of color and in disadvantaged situations, on track and thinking about post-high school credentials.  The site chronicles a campus visit by kids from the Summer Academy, a summer instruction program provided by a partnership of three charter schools in Minneapolis, and notes these remarks by visiting elementary-age kids: "I will definitely go here" and "I want to go to college next year!"  The freedom of going to college intrigued some of the visiting 5th grade students, with one noting, "You can play video games BEFORE your homework is done!?!"  A Macalester student guide reflected on the event, saying, "You can never start too young to think about college."

--Dane Smith

Growing together: using equity to spur growth

Speakers at an event last week made a powerful and compelling case for equity as a growth strategy.

Minnesota stands out for some striking inequities tied to race – embarrassing disparities when it comes to educational attainment, unemployment rates, income levels, poverty and other important measures of both individual well-being and the economy.

A problem? Yes. A challenge? Yes. An opportunity? Absolutely!

Speaking at an Anchoring Equity presentation, coordinated by the Metropolitan Council, the Northwest Area Foundation and others, john a. powell noted that Minnesota tapped the potential of women in the state decades ago by advancing opportunities at a time when women faced barriers and many argued, for example, that education was wasted on women.

As a result of increased equity for women, a whole new segment of the population put its talents to work and helped move forward the Minnesota economy and the prosperity of the state’s families and households. The United States did likewise, well ahead of most countries worldwide.

The issue, said Ohio State University’s powell, is not redistribution but growth.

Angela Glover Blackwell from PolicyLink, another speaker at the event, defined the term. Equity is “just and fair inclusion into a society where all can reach their full potential.”

Glover Blackwell pointed out the moral imperative for addressing inequities. But she, too, emphasized the potential for economic growth that results from doing just that. “Equity is the superior growth model,” she said.

Growth & Justice makes the same argument in its recent report and policy brief, We’re All in This Together: Educational Achievement and Attainment by Minnesotans of Color.

As the report notes, “With Minnesota’s population becoming increasingly diverse, we as a state have the chance to address and overcome these educational inequities, tap the talent and potential of all Minnesotans, and secure the Minnesota advantage well into the future.”

We’re certainly not there yet. Nekima Levy-Pounds from the University of St. Thomas’ Law School cataloged many of the disturbing inequities in Minnesota, focusing on differences in situations and outcomes for black and white Minnesotans.

Minnesotans must awaken to the sense of urgency, build the political will to change the situation, and ensure that Minnesotans of color are at the table leading these efforts from the start, she said.

Speaking after Levy-Pounds outlined the disparities, Glover Blackwell gently asked if the audience was embarrassed by the inequities in the state and, for that matter, in the nation.

“These disparities are horrible. They are troubling. And something needs to be done about them,” she concluded.

Indeed. They affect us all.

 – Matt Kane

Happy 10th Anniversary, Tax Cuts! But Where's the Fruit?

Watch for some ironic hoopla this week on the 10th anniversary (June 7) of President Bush's tax cuts, the largest federal income tax rate reductions in modern history, which were preceded in Minnesota by similarly historic cuts in the state's income taxes.

The main "celebrants" are progressive policy groups who are critical of those tax cuts, and considering the economic picture of the last decade, it's obvious why the anti-tax, anti-government zealots are not lighting the candles. Chuck Collins, an heir of the Oscar Mayer fortune and co-founder of Wealth for the Common Good, makes the case in a recent op-ed that the "magical'' conservative "one-point plan'' for everything has been an abysmal failure on every front, except the enrichment of the already rich.

As outlined in a 10-point analysis published by the Economic Policy Institute, the Bush income tax cuts were overhwelmingly "expensive, ineffective and unfair.'' The United States budget went from black ink to red ink in short order, suffered two downturns and twice as many recessions as previous decades, and folks in the top 1 percent got 38 percent of the tax breaks, even as their take of total income and wealth increased dramatically. And you don't have to take the word of progressive policy groups on ranking the decade. A recent report by Investors Business Daily ranks the last decade as the worst for private-sector wage growth since the 1930s.    

Tax cuts can have a positive effect on private-sector growth and no serious liberal economists would argue that tax increases, by themselves, have zero effect on business decisions. But reasonable conservatives also know that the right kinds of taxes and government  investments in human capital, research and physical infrastructure are a foundation for long-term growth. Relatively high income taxes and smart investments in those business-building goods and services has been Minnesota's formula for success, endorsed by moderate Republicans and DFLers for decades.

At the state level, a very insightful take on the subject recently was offered by one of Minnesota's prominent local economists, Paul Anton, who in a Star Tribune op-ed suggested that marginal differences between the states in tax increases and spending cuts have little effect on jobs and economic growth. Recent articles by business columnist Eric Wieffering offer similar hard-headed wisdom on the value of public investments over tax cuts as a business stimulant.

The case for repealing those trillions (at the federal level) and billions (at the state level) of accumulated tax cuts for top incomes seems to grow daily, as federal and state budget shortfalls escalate.

- Dane Smith