“I have come to grasp an ugly but very important truth about American politics,” writes historian Robin Einhorn in the 2001 preface to her 1991 book Property Rules: Political Economy in Chicago, 1833-1872. “The antigovernment rhetoric that saturates our political discourse even today is rooted in the slaveholders’ fears of a democratic government invested with real political power….American governments were designed to be weak and decentralized so that they would not become democratic forums for debates about the nature and distribution of property.”
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Is it better to be off welfare? Not as much as you might think, judging from the research of Steve Anderson, a social work professor at the University of Illinois. He interviewed 232 single mothers living in inner-city Chicago who left the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program in December 1999, half of whom stayed off and half of whom returned later (called “recyclers”). According to a March 1 university news release based on his report to the Joyce Foundation, “Nearly half, or 47 percent [of those who stayed off TANF], said they did not have enough money to buy food when off welfare, compared with 61 percent of recyclers.”
“Neighborhood schools in the most rapidly gentrifying areas have failed to attract their new neighbors,” writes Dan Weissmann in Catalyst (February). In nongentrifying Chicago, public elementary school enrollment grew 13 percent between 1995 and 2000. In fast-gentrifying census tracts–in West Town, Lake View, Lincoln Park, the near south side, and elsewhere–enrollment has dropped by 18 percent.
