NY Times: Cities Deal with Shanty Towns

Like a dozen or so other cities across the nation, Fresno is dealing with an unhappy déjà vu: the arrival of modern-day Hoovervilles, illegal encampments of homeless people that are reminiscent, on a far smaller scale, of Depression-era shanty towns. At his news conference on Tuesday night, President Obama was asked directly about the tent cities and responded by saying that it was “not acceptable for children and families to be without a roof over their heads in a country as wealthy as ours.”

While encampments and street living have always been a part of the landscape in big cities like Los Angeles and New York, these new tent cities have taken root — or grown from smaller homeless enclaves as more people lose jobs and housing — in such disparate places as Nashville, Olympia, Wash., and St. Petersburg, Fla.

Link to article.

My reflection of this week's readings

Hi, all.

I am very interested in this week's reading because I have been thinking myself how economics could approach poverty for a long time.

After reading the article of Blank (2003), I have been fascinated with the following two points. First, she described that poverty is present due to the social and political process that occur outside market mechanisms. This is not new for me, but I got interested that well designed market structure can influence the social norm and political structure so that we can reduce poverty indirectly. This claim leads me to recognize the importance of interdisciplinary intervention to eradicate poverty.

Second, the article proposes the importance of taking risk to balance the critical economist with the caring economist. It suggests that when not only researching a poverty issue but also implementing an anti-poverty programs, economist should take a risk to accept more type II error in statistical term, which means avoid inaction. Inaction does not only keep current poverty unsolved but also produce poverty in the future. I am deeply impressed with this view point because I did not know what criteria I should be based on. Economics values efficiency as a criteria. However, we should consider other criteria such as moral when we are engaged in anti-poverty program.