Correspondents' Correspondence
LAND, JOHN E. SCHWARZ/THOMAS
Correspondents' correspondence BRIEF TAKEOUTS OF MORE THAN PERSONAL INTEREST FROM LETTERS AND OTHER COMMUNICATIONS RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS. Murray's Mistake Tucson—Although the notion that...
...Sponsored by two United Nations organizations, the tem is intended to create a high-capacity high way linking both halves of politically divided Europe with each other and with the Middle East via Turkey, Iran and Syria...
...The expanse will be a focal point for theTrans-Euro-pean North-South Motorway (tem), a gigantic 6,200-mile project now reaching its crucial third development phase...
...A spokesman for the ECE—the only international organ specifically devoted to strengthening commercial relations between Eastern and Western Europe—recently summed up its potential: "Economically, the project will lead to lower transport costs, higher energy savings, easier goods traffic, better access to trading partners, a quicker turnaround of vehicles, and a shorter immobilization of trading capital...
...Indeed, the ongoing backdrop of excess labor suggests we ought to consider the possibility that the liberal policies implemented in the wake of the 1964 election, far from precipitating joblessness, actually restrained it...
...For notwithstanding the social scientist's professed surprise at this widening gap, what else would one expect in a period of labor surplus...
...Lamentably, Murray's polemic ignores these gains...
...The first, completed in 1973, had been expected to accommodate transcontinental road traffic for the rest of this century, but it is already saturated...
...Construction is estimated to take over two years at a cost of $551.3 million...
...Such programs as Medicaid, Medicare, Food Stamps, public housing assistance, and Head Start bucked the demographic odds, bringing well-documented gains to the lives of poor Americans in infant mortality, longevity, nutrition, housing, and education...
...The phase j ust ended dealt with construction and operational procedures...
...Murray's indictment has been hailed as a crippling blow to the intellectual basis of the Great Society and of domestic liberalism generally...
...A group of Turkish, Italian and Japanese enterprises has just started construction of the new bridge...
...Putting them into the equation not only destroys Murray's thesis but also turns it upside down...
...Having accepted conservative claims that the strategies of the Great Society failed, liberals are currently struggling to discover new ones that will avoid yesterday's alleged debacles...
...This enviable record was merely one in a scries of achievements that theeeonomic and social policies of 1965-80 promoted...
...Murray backs his critique of the liberal social policies carried out after 1965 with much seemingly incontrovertible evidence...
...It is unlikely that a successful new path will be found that does not in large measure incorporate the old.—John E. Schwarz Bridge Building Geneva—Representatives from a dozen European and Middle Eastern countries met recently in Istanbul for a brief ceremony to lay the foundation stone of a second bridge across the Bosporus...
...Still more to the point, a close examination of the statistics for the youngest group Murray studies, the 16-17 year olds, reveals that the unemployment gap between blacks and whites did not suddenly appear in the late '60s, after the liberalization of welfare rules was firmly in place, nor did it emerge initially in 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson started the ball rolling .Detailed data, including material \n Losing Ground itself (Appendix, Table7), showthat the relative worsening of the position of young blacks began in 1963-64—that is, before the enactment of a single Great Society program, and before virtually every other change Murray and his fellow critics denounce...
...Against the background of an enormous increase in goods transport [ed] by road between Europe and the Middle East, the growing role of the private car in international tourism, the new Bosporus bridge providing wider access to Asia, and the maritime links of North Africa, the importance of the tem can only increase.' —Thomas Land...
...But ever more frequently they make their case by arguing that the government's present inactivity is no remedy for its past ineffectiveness...
...TheTEM's first phase, from 1977-83, concentrated mostly on design...
...The sheer power of the demographics nullifies even Murray's most appalling evidence—that pertaining to the fate of young black male adults, whose unemployment rates rose relative to those of their white counterparts...
...Infact, many liberals have now joined conservatives in concluding that the Great Society and its offshoots failed...
...Year after year the 16-34 year olds of our society faced stiffer competition than their seniors, whose numbers grew by a mere 4 million...
...Thus the anomaly of a strong post-1965 economic surge being accompanied by a sharp rise in joblessness that spread far more rapidly among young adults than people over t he age of 34...
...The figures say a lot...
...Murray's thesis is a fairly simple one: Expansion of the Federal welfare network unintentionally provided many Americans entering the labor market with an incentive to opt for a public handout rat her than seek employment...
...The present third phase of development, scheduled to run until the end of next year, will consolidate the work already under way and develop the management and institutional framework for maintaining the network once the UNDP concludes its involvement...
...In a time of fierce competition for scarce Federal funds, many conservatives have been using this most effectively to justify their contention that cuts in public-assistance spending would really help (he indigent in the long run...
...Murray's Mistake Tucson—Although the notion that programs meant to benefit the poor tend to harm them instead is hardly new, its credibility has been soaring since the appearance last December of Charles Murray's widely publicized and powerfully argued Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980...
...The undertaking anticipates a dramatic increase in the volume of traffic between the Baltic, Adriatic, Aegean, and Black seas, and between Europe, Asia and Africa...
...In other words, the number of young people entering the job market in the'60s and'70s was 14 times higher than it had been during the preceding period...
...The Economic Commission for Europe (ECE) is directing the entire tem project...
...True, liberals continue to insist that in a private-enterprise economy there must be a strong public presence to help alleviate poverty...
...Certainly we should recognize that holding the rise in our unemployment rate down to lower lev els than any other non-Communist industrial nation, including Japan, was a major achievement considering the 40 percent increase in thesi/eof the American work force between 1965-80—an explosion that only the United Slates had to face...
...financing is being supplied by the UN Development Program (UNDP) and participating countries...
...If similar efforts elsewhere are any guide, the system will stimulate a rash of supplementary projects along both sides of its route...
...Between 1963-80 millions of baby-boomers came of age...
...When completed, the tem will be one of the world's most modern highway systems, assuring users auniformly high quality traffic service...
...The participating governments originally hoped to finish the tem by 1990, but economic recession forced them to reassess their priorities and postpone work in some areas...
...His entire chain of reasoning, however, ignores a crucial influence on the history of the times: demographics...
...Thus, too, t he skyrocketing in both the unemployment and the labor-force-withdrawal rates of black males aged 16-34...
...The balance of the road is still under study...
...Besides Turkey, they include Italy, Yugoslavia, Romania, Poland, Hungary, Greece, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Austria...
...YoungAmericanseventuallycame to be a commodity in almost permanent oversupply and therefore found themselves disproportionately subject to unemployment...
...The speed limit will be 75 miles an hour...
...I do not envy them, for they are ignoring the reality of history...
...Nevertheless, the tem is very much a reality...
...The tem will permit an economical, convenient alternative to other forms of transportation...
...Each country is responsible for covering the design and construction costs of the highway sections within its borders, and is providing staff and funds for part of the coordinating work...
...These will connect several substantial industrial and trading areas, promote tourism, encourage further industrial and agricultural development, and increase employment and income in construction, transport and auxiliary services...
...Finally, thus the overall increase in latent poverty (the number of officially impoverished, not taking transfer payments into account) despite impressive economic growth, and in the levels of family dissolutions and crime...
...The second suspension bridge, situated 3.1 miles north of the old one in Istanbul, will have a 1,192-yard roadway with two four-lane tracks...
...From 1963-80, as the baby-boom tidal wave moved toward young adulthood, 26 million Americans aged 16-34 poured into the labor force, a record, as compared with under 2 million from 1947-63...
...Over 1,000 miles are now operating, and 300 more are being built...
...Not coincidental-ly, 1963-64 also were the years the earliest batch of baby-boomers (born in 1946-47) first went looking for full-time work...
...An additional 1,000 miles have passed through the final design stage, with the preliminary design done for another 1,200 miles...
...It will have two separate one-way roads, each with a minimum oftwolanes4.1 yards wide at straight stretches...
Vol. 68 • August 1985 • No. 10
