Customer Reviews

When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor

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I wish to write this review primarily as a repudiation of the completely inaccurate review written by this site's political editor. The unnamed reviewer's main hypothesis was that When Work Disappears fails to answer two main questions: 1) the reason for the exodus of jobs from the inner city, and 2) the question of whether inner-city black males are willing to work, regardless of the availability of jobs. I find it difficult to believe that any reasoning person could have made such a statement after reading When Work Disappears. Indeed, a brief scan of the table of contents would reveal that a substantial portion of the book was devoted to answering these very questions. The reviewer's first assertion was that there was a "chicken or the egg" dilemma concerning the exodus of inner-city jobs and the social dysfunction of inner-city residents. Did the exodus of jobs cause aberrant behavior, or did aberrant behavior cause the exodus of jobs? I wish to state fir! ! stly, that a comparison of the conditions of inner-city neighborhoods in the 1940's and 1950's when people were working, to the conditions of these communities today should be sufficient to answer this question without the aid of a work as extensive as When Work Disappears. Nonetheless, this rather obvious question is not overlooked by Wilson, as the reviewer suggests, but is extensively and repeatedly explored. On page xx of the introductory material, Wilson clearly states his belief that "If inner-city black workers are experiencing the greatest problems of joblessness, it is a more extreme form of economic marginality that has affected most Americans since 1980" He goes on to clearly explain throughout the book that most of the jobs that left the inner-city left because of the global trends of downsizing, the exodus of more mobile industries like automobiles and textiles to cheaper labor markets, and the resultant shift of the economy from an inner-city factory ba! ! se to a largely suburban service base. He states that these! trends are not restricted to the inner- city, though inner-city communities tend to bear the brunt of the social dislocation these trends produce. A summary of Wilson's findings on these phenomena can be found on pages 139-143. The reviewer went on to state that Wilson's proposed solution of job creation failed to take into account the unwillingness of blacks to work within the existing job opportunities of the fast food industry. This statement is not supported by the fact that nearly the entirety of the first 105 pages of When Work Disappears is devoted in part or in whole to answering this very question. Wilson repeatedly states that the reason blacks do not take these jobs is that they do not pay a living wage, and that taking into account health benefits, child care, and transportation, fast food occupations pay much less than welfare (which is already substantially below the poverty rate). He also states that the availability of much more income in the informal (drug) ! ! economy also contributes to blacks seeking other alternatives to low-wage employment. Wilson repeatedly asserts that only living wage employment could be viewed as a long term solution to disproportionately high unemployment in the inner-city. For the reviewer to state that these questions were answered insufficiently would be his prerogative. To suggest that they were not addressed is simply incompetent. These oversights were so glaring, that it leads me to doubt whether the interviewer actually read the book at all. I found his or her review to be biased, and to border on outright racism. It is one thing to dislike a book, it is by far another for a representative of Amazon.com to assert in a literary review one's personal belief that black males are too lazy to find work His or her largely uninformed and unsupported insinuations may lead interested readers from reading one of the most thoroughly researched and insightful books on race and poverty in recent decades. Don'! ! t think of this as losing a customer, think of it as gainin! g a vocal and determined critic.

I think there are two major problems with theories that attempt to explain black poverty as something completely or primarily due to welfare, "culture", or genetics: first, they seem to lack a comprehensive understanding of African-American history. Second, from everything I've seen, such theories totally ignore the very similar conditions experienced by other ethnic/national minority groups in many advanced as well as developing countries (ex: Gypsies, Maori, Aboriginies, etc.). On the other hand, an author such as Wilson offers a very refreshing insight into the conditions of the urban poor. While his policy prescriptions call for a much stronger, activist government, the focus of this book is the analysis of the current conditions of the black urban poor and how it reached it's current state. In that sense, it should be accesible to all political stripes. Also, this book is not in any way a "marxist" critique; it never criticizes American or global "capitalism" as the cause of the poor's suffering. The citing of socio-economic factors, such as technological and industrial changes, as a major factor in the deteriorating conditions of the urban poor is quite a different thing than stating that one can only solve such problems by overthrowing capitalism (this is a marxist perspective, not Wilsons). Also, the author's analysis does not lack addressing issues of "personal responsibility" or cultural, behavioral norms. On the contrary, he takes these very sensitive issues head-on and concludes that in some important ways there is a distinctive sub-culture (a "culture of poverty"), but not for the reasons some intellectuals assert (welfare, genetics, etc.). Differing social norms concerning work ethic, education, attitudes at work, etc. primarily exist because of the high rate of concentration and separation of the black urban poor from white, middle-class society. Those who grow up in a community where joblessness is actually the norm (and all of its associated ills) will not have adequate preparation for decent-paying jobs that require good education, work references, and interpersonal skills. I could say so much more, but I should probably limit this review to concluding that Wilson's work is destined to become a classic sociological reference and an important guide for other writers as well as policy-makers.

The essence of my reading of the book is that concentrated joblessness, not just concentrated poverty, is afflicting many people in old urban areas, and that prolonged joblessness, even more than prolonged poverty, is a profoundly disabling condition not only for individuals, but for communities, and has intergenerational effects.

Support for his theories is drawn from survey and ethnographic reseach with ghetto and non-ghetto residents and Us census data, as well as evidence from projects which involved relocation from ghetto to non-ghetto areas.

Focused on the American urban ghettos, with most of its data drawn from Chicago area studies, Wilson discusses the overlap of ghetto poverty areas, jobless ghettos, and the effects of living in each. He gives significant attention to the role of race- segregation, racially coded policy, ghetto culture, and attitudes of employers towards race and their employees. Of special interest is his aside on the opinions of black employers to black employees (reflective of the general pool of employers opinions towards black employees).

Wilson also examines ghetto related culture, the informal economies of the ghetto, and the place of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) in the decision making calculus of ghetto residents.

What is, IMHO, key to reading this book is keeping in mind that areas of ghetto poverty and ghetto joblessness are growing, deepening, and are not in a position to self-correct. Put simply, if joblessness is a key factor in the creation of ghettos, it needs to be addressed by supply-side solutions (job creation & employment of last resort, fostering adequate social supports (childcare, etc.)), and not simply reconfiguring the stick of Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (the successor program to AFDC ).

If you're looking for a detailed set of proposals, Wilson retreads several good ideas (universal healthcare among them), but you'll be able to find far more developed versions of the same proposals elsewhere. If you're looking for a more in-depth look at poverty and joblessness in urban areas, however, this is an excellent place to start.

I found this to be one of the best discussions on urban poverty, and certainly one of the most balanced. I could go on about what I like about the book, but the other reviews do that justice.

I did not have much of a problem with his analysis of urban poverty. Wilson is right on when he blames a lack of jobs, transportation, adequate social support (including the lack of universal healthcare and childcare subsidies), and the cultural conditions created by unemployment as causes of urban poverty. However, like many sociologists and economists, he assumes post industrialist conceptions of these problems. For instance, he cites the "skills bias" as one of the major causes of a lack of jobs for poor, unskilled workers. He rehashes the common view that job loss can be attributed to our post-industrial economy that simply requires people to go to college and get more and more education. However, subsequent sociologists (namely, Michael Handel from the University of Wisconsin) have dismissed the skills bias as a bit of a myth that is used to distract people from the actual problem. If Wilson would have written his book a couple years later, he would have seen how job loss in the high technology sectors of the economy and the high unemployment rates for college graduates make it hard to believe that our economy has a skills bias. However, Wilson does acknowledge the other causes of job loss, including the trade deficit and off shoring production as more realistic causes of poverty.

My major problem is with his policy prescriptions, which like most establishment social scientists fall within the mainstream thinking. Wilson has excellent ideas concerning transportation, which should be a major policy issue in cities like Baltimore where most of the urban poor are without adequate means to get to work. Wilson's ideas about everything else are quite superficial considering the depth of his analysis. He basically advocates No Child Left Behind (national education standards) as a solution to our education problems. However, Wilson, like most scholars and political pundits, never advocates the obvious solution: more equal funding for inner-city schools to make them on par with suburban schools. Wilson himself acknowledges that problem, but it is not part of his solution. I think we do need to improve school instruction, but simply arguing for national education standards is too general. There are many problems with schools, but there are even more problems with students whom get their learning skills from the mass media.

Wilson also argues for more industry partnership with secondary education, and even goes so far to advocate allowing industry to shape curriculum. I think Wilson needs to examine the dangers in such a policy. While I agree that high schools do a poor job at preparing students for the labor market, I also think there is danger in using employer prescriptions as public policy. Employers are looking after what they need today in terms of workers, and by preparing students based on their prescription we might be shortchanging their futures when markets change (i.e. we were all told in the 1990s that computers were the way to go, but look what happened to the IT market). What we really need is to broadly educate students, giving them both skills and knowledge that are applicable to both the economy and in a democratic society where people are more than just workers. Only a broadly educated worker can adapt to this new economy.

Also absent from his education policy is the idea that we should have universal college education. I figured that was a given considering his views on education and joblessness, but it was absent from his discussion.

Wilson advocates creating a New Deal style Public Works program to give people jobs. I think that is essentially a good idea, but Wilson does not go far enough in justifying his arbitrary stance on setting public job wages below the minimum. The whole idea behind a WPA-style program is to decrease unemployment so wages rise, not just to decrease unemployment with no consideration of wages. Wilson shows a blatant disregard for Keynesian economics in this analysis. The problem is demand-side, not only the fact that people cannot find jobs, but because people cannot find good jobs that pay well. Industry is totally committed to keeping workers at poverty-level wages, and government policies for the past 30 years have ignored that struggle. Yes, Wilson advocates expanding the EITC, but why cut taxes? Taxes are not the problem, but the solution. Raise taxes for everyone, especially the rich.

What we need is for the government to create jobs of varying levels of skills and pay to compete with industry. The problem in the economy is that we have excessive amounts of labor slack generated by the decline of unions and the outsourcing of foreign labor. Wilson believes that by making the WPA jobs below the minimum wage it will give incentives for people to leave the WPA for higher paying private sector jobs. For what private sector jobs... McDonalds? How are low-waged WPA jobs going to influence the private sector to raise wages? Why does Julius not call for a higher minimum wage? Why is Wilson soft on making corporations pay their workers decently? Yes, unemployment is a problem, but so is job quality. Again, back to his analysis, the reason these women are on welfare is because it is more advantageous not to work than it is to work. The focus should be on raising wages through reducing unemployment and increasing labor's bargaining power. With a high paying public sector job, labor can tell private power "hey, if you're not going to pay me well, I'm going to go here...".

The last point of contention is where Wilson assumes that the globalization of production is "inevitable" and that protectionist policies are "undesirable". Of course, when discussing trade policy, the assumption is that job outsourcing is a phenomena associated with free trade. Transferring production abroad is not free trade; it is a protectionist policy corporations use to avoid the market discipline of comparative advantage. The phenomenon is the cause of the expanding trade deficit, and has disastrous economic effects. Public policy should aim to reduce job outsourcing by making it more expensive and by putting restrictions on capital mobility (and such restrictions were in place before the 1970s when everything started to go downhill). The federal government and state governments need to tell industry: "hey look, if you are not going to produce here, you can't sell here". That'll put them in line. These kinds of restrictions on capital mobility need to be implemented on a state level too to prevent businesses from fleeing the community anytime a local government creates a pro-labor policy.

It is interesting that private power is absent from Wilson's discussion. What responsibility do employers have to their workers in Wilson's book? None... In fact, public policy should aim to make everyone happy and not piss anyone off, according to the author. Well, the reality is that most of the policies that help working people are going to piss businesses off and may even hurt our competitiveness in the global economy. "Our" competitiveness in the global economy is based on exploiting third world countries and holding down the poor in our own country.

I am grateful for Wilson's book-long rebuttal to the many simplistic and wrong-headed arguments made for cutting welfare and, generally, for punishing underprivileged people for being poor. Though at times dry as dust and clogged with statistics, this is ultimately a great book which provides progressives and liberals with ammunition. The last chapter is an indispensable meditation on possible solutions both long- and short-term to the tragic persistence of degrading inner-city joblessness which keeps our country from true greatness.

The urban poor are happy to take welfare, never work, commit crimes, do drugs, etc. Sound familiar? People love to tout this idea of the urban poor, based on anecdotes, popular TV and movies, and some media approaches. However, Wilson describes, quite convincingly, a world of the urban poor who yearn for the "American Dream" like the rest of us, who want to work, contribute to society, and make their lives (and their children's lives) better, but are simply unable to do so.

This book can get dry by piling on statistic after statistic, chart after chart, but always seems to bring the reader back in by presenting direct quotes from people, typically from ghetto areas of Chicago, on how their lives are effected by their situations. It puts a human face on the issues of poverty in America - a human face that rarely gets seen.

For all of those who have grown up in suburban areas, small towns, or cloistered urban situations, I recommend you read this book and open your eyes to the true world of the urban poor. Yes, there are some bad apples, as in any society - but these people want to improve their lives - and we need to ensure we enact responsible policies and give them the opportunity to do so.

Wilson's argument is that the global economic reorginization that has taken place over the last thirty years has significantly decreased the number of manufacturing jobs available to unskilled workers. Many workers who formerly worked in manufacturing have adapted the the new service economy, but the unskilled workers that could not adapt have been left behind. The result of this job loss has been severe in the urban ghetto, whose population in predominately black and has not been able to socially assimilate into societal norms and become functional in the service sector. Over time the result of chronic joblessness has prloferated a culture that has been moving further away from cultural norms, indoctinating itself into "ghetto related behavior and attitudes," and creating a new generation of urbanites that have little hope of betterment.

What is interesting about Wilson's argument is that a continued globalization could threaten other employment sectors, displacing workers that are not the traditional urban poor. The point being, in a fast paced, high technology, global environment -- although his case is the extreme --it is likely that people who are left out of work, or out of society for any length of time will have a difficult time becoming productive to society again.

I found When Work Disappears very insightful and definitely a must-read for anyone interested in understanding the issues of urban poverty, the interplays of race and class and the global machinations that aggravate poverty in domestic U.S. contexts.

In the introduction, Wilson gives a solid history and analysis of the perceptions and institutionalized roles of the poor in America. He gives interesting, objective and valuable takes on the Moynihan report and Hernstein & Murray's The Bell Curve among others, contextualizing the various schools of thought and how they interact. He discusses the conservative theories that focused on poverty as stemming from destructive individual behavior as well as the liberal theories "black perspective" that blamed social structures and painted the inner-city poor as superheroes who survived racial oppression, to the absolute neglect of the destructive realities. He says "the tendency of some liberals to deny the very existence of culturally destructive behavior and attitudes in the inner city is once again to diminish the importance of the environment in determining the outcomes and life chances of individuals.

He articulates this point so well - it's a thorny issue that when mentioned by non-African-Americans risks them being construed as racist, and when mentioned by African-Americans, risks them being construed as sell-outs. Sweeping the reality under the rug never helped anyone. He makes no excuses, and delves into the underlying forces - the flight of not just higher income earners from urban cities, but the flight of jobs.

One of the most important positions he adopts in the book is that there is a difference between the consequences of inner-city poverty and inner-city joblessness. He posits, "The consequences of high neighborhood joblessness are more devastating than those of high neighborhood poverty. A neighborhood in which people are poor but employed is different from a neighborhood in which people are poor and jobless."

Wilson also does well to discuss the relationship between poverty and global, political processes. His approach stands in contrast to the usual approach that isolates poverty within the U.S. without discussing it within a larger, universal context. His balanced views do not label capitalist America the enemy; neither does he label it a friend.

Ultimately, I like the book because in it, Wilson does not play the blame game with regards to who creates/maintains the underclass. He does not dabble in rhetoric, and does not overemphasize or understate the role of race in poverty. He states that" as the turn of the century approaches, the movement for racial equality needs a new political strategy that will appeal to a broader coalition and address the many problems that originate in historical racism and inner-city residents. We must recognize that these problems cannot be solved through race-based remedies alone."

In short, I enjoyed reading and learnt a whole lot. Kudos to WJW on this one!

Once in a decade a work sums up and defines what has happened to America's landscape in recent years. Rebutting the awful morals preaching coming out of Washington about the poor, Wilson points to industrial abandonment and governmental default (exactly the same miscreants sharing the podium at President Clinton's Volunteer Summit in burned-out North Philadelphia in 1997) as the big factors in the malaise of the new urban super-poor. It is unfortunate that he uses such terms as the "control of adolescents," etc., when black and Latino, and poorer white, youth need opporutunity, not more policing, but this does not detract from the immense value of this sociology classic.

The first two hundred six pages of the paperback edition of When Work Disappears merit reading by a broad audience of intelligent lay people. Though sometimes tedious because of inclusion of an inordinate number of comparisons of percentages and dollar values in the text, the first seven chapters are really quite interesting.

Unfortunately, however, this book, like so many of its kind, eventually devolves into predictable platitudes. A detailed and insightful analysis that comprises the bulk of the book is followed by an off-the-shelf prescription for long-term improvement that is fraught with cliche's and is hopelessly off the mark. Until the final chapter, the reader imagines that he or she is studying important aspects of the way our social system actually works. Then, without warning, the author betrays the fact that, in spite of decades of social research and public policy analysis, he is just as short-sighted as most well-meaning, life-long liberals who think that innocuous tinkering with ancillary institutions will provide a long-term economic remedy for all of us.

Perhaps the most insightful contribution of When Work Disappears is the sharp distinction Wilson draws and develops between poverty and joblessness. I have long been inclined to think that working for compensation that is inadequate to maintaining, at a minimum, the bare material rudiments of a middle class life style is a rip-off. Wilson has not changed my views in this regard, but he has forced me to reconsider the value of work -- just about any work that is not physically brutalizing or psychologically destructive -- as a means of social integration and wholesome personal regulation.

Most work, after all, is an inherently social activity. We work alongside others, in collaboration with others, in joint ventures that develop our organizational skills, and we work in ways that manifest, develop, and direct the unspoken interactive wherewithal that enables us to be amicably cooperative while avoiding needless conflict. Even if we are competitive strivers whose primary aim is to improve our position by out-stripping the attainments of our co-sorkers, we need to know and display socially acceptable on-the-job behavior in our efforts to achieve more.

In addition, work provides us with opportunities for more rewarding spare time activities. Relaxing alone is all well and good, but eventually it gets old, even depressing. Making social connections on the job can provide one with a group of peers who enjoy being together in activities as mundane as bowling or going to the movies, as

intellectually demanding as playing chess, or as skill-intensive as remodeling an old car while keeping expenditures low enough to make the activity practical.

Furthermore, being socially engaged, both on the job and off, perhaps while car-pooling to and from work, provides access to information not available in the best library or on the Internet. Word-of-mouth can be an invaluable source of knowledge concerning other kinds of employment -- a second job, a job for one's spouse, an opportunity for advancement that has not been advertised. Word-of-mouth can also apprise one of still other ways of improving one's life, such as the availability of sliding-scale health care at a clinic you otherwise wouldn't know existed.

Collectively, moreover, a neighborhood or community in which most people have jobs has a rhythmic stability that makes it a pleasant and nurturing place to live. Most jobs have a schedule, and most people who work have to abide by the schedules intrinsic to their jobs. This may sound unduly regimented, but Wilson presents it as predictable, dependable, and orderly, qualitites that make life less hectic and less emotionally taxing. At the same time, other institutions -- churches, small businesses, bars, restaurants, playgrounds, social clubs -- acknowledge this day-to-day routine by organizing themselves accordingly. The social world in which one resides may be a location where poverty is commonplace, but it is also a locus of informal social controls that operate to the benefit of all. It's a community.

In the 1950's and 1960's company towns often had this near-comunitarian character. Just about everyone worked in the same place doing basically the same thing without dramatic differences in compensation. Were company towns insular and intolerant of individual differences? Sure. But at least they were communities where most felt a strong sense of belonging.

The trouble with company towns, however, was and is that the company may shut down, sell out to a labor-hostile national chain, or simply move away. As Wilson acknowledges, this brings us to the crux of the problem of joblessness today: many employers have moved from the center city to the suburbs or to another country. The jobs may still exist, but center city residents no longer have access to them. Many jobs have been relocated or simply eliminated by the ubiquitous processes of internationalization, out-sourcing, down-sizing, and introduction of technology intensive labor-saving techniques. All this is done to reduce labor costs.

Writing in 1996, Wilson views the principal losers in this profit-seeking mode of job destruction to be center city residents who may once have been poor but are now also jobless and surrounded by joblessness, as well. This is the primary concern of When Work Disappears. Over the past fifteen years, however, it has become ever clearer that the processes that have restructured center-city labor markets are becoming just as destructive with regard to labor markets in which everyone else participates, including those with one or more college degrees.

Recessions come and recessions go, but recoveries are now manifest in increased corporate profits but not in increased earnings or improved employment prospects for people who work for a living. Cutting labor costs is a time-honored way of increasing profits, and multinational corporations are poceeding apace to make the most of it. For them, it's the rational thing to do. If politically correct right-wing talk show hosts object to this judgment, discerning intimations of class warfare, they are right. Unfortunately, capital is doing all the fighting, while the rest of us are disorganized casualties.

Wilson, I think, would agree with everything I've written above, except the last paragraph. As Wilson views the world, large economic actors, whether multinational corporations or some other entities, range between socially neutral and socially benign. If they aren't creating good jobs and hiring, it's because the skilled human capital they need is not being created, Thus Wilson's stunningly pedestrian long-term prescription for joblessness: better schooling carefully tailored to meet the needs of prospective employers, with schools' output then selected, sorted, and allocated through a cooperatively constructed school-to-work partnership. What could be more banal? What could be more ineffective?

To make matters worse, Wilson holds that we can improve schooling and upgrade the workforce mainly by placing a heavy emphasis on accountability. A national system of gauging school effectiveness, using tuition vouchers and tax credits to promote competion thereby making schools more effective, and identifying and getting rid of that omnipresent scapegoat, the ineffective teacher. Astonishing, really, that Wilson's thorough analysis of joblessness and its consequences should take us right where we are: No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, charter schools, and increasing emphasis on privatization.

What Wilson proposes is little more than blind adherence to mainstream human captial theory, a deeply flawed, thoroughly debunked perspective, coupled with perniciously intrusive accountability schemes that mandate testing, testing, and more testing. But does anyone really believe that increased availability of human capital will persuade employers to invest in job creation in the U.S. or elsewhere? Well, actually, as it turns out Obama does. George W. Bush did. And so did Bill Clinton. Blaming ecnomic problems on poor schooling and proposing better schooling as the eventual fix has been with us for four decades. There is no evidence that there is merit to this perspective, but schools, as with teachers, are such convenient scapegoats.

I think it's reasonable to surmise that our schools functioned pretty well until we started relenelessly tinkering with them in the 1970's. Now our schools may very well be dysfunctional simply because we have been monomaniacally determined to find eduational solutions to economic problems such as joblessness.

Historically, it's not dificult to see where these misguided ideas came from. Looking at the social science and public policy literature from the end of World War II until the early 1970's, it's clear that just about everyone expected post-war prosperity to continue indefinitely. When it didn't, we all looked around for an institutional reason, something we could diagnose and fix. If human capital theory is correct, then Education --> Productivity --> Income, for individuals and for entire nations. If this scheme doesn't hold true, the problem must be with our schools: for some reason they've stopped making workers productive. Though he doesn't use just these words, this is the way Wilson thinks, and his way of thinking has carried the day. As a result, schools are constrained to do little more than teach students to take standardized tests, and economic circumstances, for most of us, have continued to deteriorate.

Here we are, immersed in an era of Reaganesque Rugged Individualism, surrounded by a world economy that has been restructured to the painful disadvantage of most of us, and one our most influential liberal social scientists tells us we need better schools. What a mess. Does Paul Goodman have any contemporary intellectual heirs? We certainly need them.