“…how to improve human capital”
We have heard the knashing of Progressive teeth with their usual wails: We must spend more money to fix Baltimore”! The epitome of the Progressive / Socialist mantra – we must take more from those that have to give to those that have-not. After all, these poor oppressed people are oppressed by everyone else – thus, we will force everyone else to care.
$130 million was spent – a first tranche. Yet, what grabbed me was at the end – a few snippets to set it up first (emphasis mine, reformatted):
…The effort to revive Sandtown was massive. More than 1,000 homes were eventually renovated or built. Schools were bolstered. Education and health services were launched. But there were many obstacles along the way, according to Enterprise’s report. Some residents complained that the vision was too grand to execute. Others involved said the city’s bureaucracy stifled innovation.
The most significant problem, according to community organizers and the Enterprise report, was that new businesses and jobs never materialized. And as Baltimore’s decent-paying manufacturing jobs vanished — a problem shared by Detroit, Cleveland and other Rust Belt cities — there were fewer and fewer opportunities for Sandtown residents to find meaningful work.
Lesson 1 – just because you build infrastructure, there is no guarantee “they will come”
…Since then, Sandtown’s struggles have been revisited by the people who wanted to make a difference there. They said the hundreds of charming three-bedroom houses built in the neighborhood weren’t enough to transform the lives of those residing in and around them. “Having a well-maintained home doesn’t get at the larger issues that prevent self-sufficiency,” said DeLuca, the Hopkins sociologist. “The labor market and drug markets really destabilized Sandtown.”
Lesson 2 – give people middle class “stuff” doesn’t mean people become middle class
…Daniel P. Henson III, the city’s housing commissioner when the initiative was launched, agreed that building houses and building thriving families were two different things. “What we did not know as well,” he said, “was how to improve human capital”. We were naive,” said Diane Bell McKoy, president and chief executive of Associated Black Charities and a former top aide to Schmoke. “We meant well, and we mean well, but I don’t think we have taken time to dig deeply enough to find the answers.
Lesson 3 – middle class and self-sufficiency is an attitude and a state of being. No one can just “give” that to you.
“In many cases, people have to be connected to their own ability to change their lives. That kind of work calls for longer-term solutions than we are prepared to deal with in our political cycles.”
Lesson 3 – It must be generated from within.
Let’s go back to the “how to improve human capital”. We hear oft that the Progressives wish to “evolve” the rest of us (as if they actually owned the moral right to do so). Well, isn’t that what they tried to do with the residents of Baltimore in that neighborhood?
And failed? And oh so miserably?
Yet, they never will admit failure – it’s just that “the right people didn’t implement it.” And let’s not forget this:
Baltimore Received $1.8 Billion from Obama’s Stimulus Law
And yet the Progressives and Baltimore / Maryland Democrats have said that not ENOUGH money has been spent? Where’d that money go? And remember, since the War on Poverty started 60 years ago, we’ve seen a redistribution of a staggering $22 Trillion. And what is the bottom line result?
Nothing but a bigger, more intrusive, more demanding, and more arrogant Government. How’s that working out for the rest of us?
The price of Freedom is eternal vigilance. Never give up and never surrender.
