Based on a lot of thought and some substantial experience in the problem area, I propose:
1) Put an end to illegal immigration.
2) Put an end to mass immigration, reducing the numbers substantially.
3) Make trade agreements which are of net benefit to the United States, and not just certain corporations or groups within the United States. Be able to quantify and document that net benefit by documenting every negative as well as the positives, in every way possible.
4) Put an end to the culture of self-indulgence and hedonism that was brought in by the late 60s, a culture that hurts poor people the most, even as it's preached by our moneyed elites in all of our media. Here a spiritual renewal, broad-based, will be necessary...
5) Improve the schools. There are a lot of ways to do this without spending more money. One significant way would be to eliminate those teachers, the one in five, who were actually totally incapable. It's been demonstrated ("Waiting for Superman") that just eliminating that one teacher in five will substantially raise reading, writing and math scores for inner-city kids.
Fathers, Fatherhood and Families.
Let's understand that gang life thrives in neighborhoods without fathers where entire groups of young men raise themselves.
Families lack fathers for a number of reasons, all of which are important.
Among them, the first is that poor men contribute little with their small wages to the well-being of the family. Wives see the husbands as expendable and can go on welfare.
There is also a tremendous issue today of war against males, of masculine identity, the false notion that a mother can raise a son as well as a father.
Simply not true.
At a certain age, adolescents typically become hostile to their mothers as they break away from the childhood psyche. Those young-men-in-formation need both the chance to break away and to be initiated into manhood by men who have done just that.
Essentially, gang life is a substitution for this process.
The atmosphere within the home and the capacity of a man and a woman to live together on good terms is also an issue. The general lack of sexual self discipline in our society particularly hurts those at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder, much more than those at the top.
Once the cycle of poverty begins, its great momentum helps it continue.
If your parents had a bad marriage, and if your same-sex parent, with whom you identify, had enormous problems in life, whether it be in work or in relationships, you usually inherit a lot of the problem and much less of the solution.
So, it can't be said that as soon as we have certain economic issues settled, marriage will become reestablished as the norm among people for whom it has not been the norm for several generations. It can't be said that neighborhoods will suddenly be full of fathers supervising their sons. But, without an economic basis, no family can exist, just like anything else in our society.
Let's take a look at the economic nexus surrounding this problem.
When I was a boy in a major East Coast city, the vast majority of jobs were in industrial production. At a certain point, the shipyards were moved to South Korea because of cheaper labor (?), and the neighborhoods that depended on the shipyards for work were simply destroyed.
These were white people, educated to some extent, having real job skills, who depended on these jobs to take care of families. I didn't see any real efforts to help these families adjust, and the neighborhoods turned into neighborhoods very similar to the poor black neighborhoods in Los Angeles.
The neighborhoods were full of families on welfare, young people on drugs, and a lot of violence secondary to the drug trade, besides whatever went on with the families themselves out of the general sense of frustration and hopelessness.
This pattern has continued.
NAFTA increased the number of illegal immigrants coming to the United States from Mexico because NAFTA killed the livelihood of small Mexican farmers. Their corn was too expensive compared to the price of corn from the United States.
Whole villages have been abandoned.
These farmers without a livelihood used to go to the Maquiladora region to get work on the border with the United States. American managers lived on the American side and commuted to their factories just south of the border where Mexican workers manned the plants.
Then this wonderful thing called "China trade" happened.
The Maquiladora region could no longer expand because they couldn't compete with products from China. So, what did the dispossessed farmers (and others) do and what have they been doing to this day?
They continue to come illegally into the United States to find work. As a result, wages have gone down. Butchers in LA supermarkets get the same wages as decades ago. Young black men and women have a harder time getting jobs. Even summer temporary work has been shunted off to immigrants.
Worse, in some areas, such as Compton, Mexican gang members have begun harassing, hunting down, killing black people living there in an effort to "ethnically cleanse" Compton of blacks, giving the Mexican Mafia greater control.
Who speaks of this? Practically no one...
Have you ever thought to ask yourself why George W. Bush never secured the border in the wake of 9/11?
Have you ever thought that George W. Bush never secured the border in the wake of 9/11 because, had he done so, the illegal immigrants from Mexico, the refugees from NAFTA's effects there, would have had to stay in Mexico causing major civil unrest?
Have you ever thought that George W. Bush never secured the border in the wake of 9/11 because, had he done so, Mexico would have pulled out of NAFTA, and that would have hurt some enormous Chamber of Commerce-New World Order-Internationalist-Globalist itch that they seem all intent on scratching, starting with a few American farmers who could no longer sell their corn there?
China trade, the cause of the failure of the Maquiladora region to thrive, is premised on fixed currency regimes that are to our detriment. These fixed-currency regimes are a violation in every sense of the notion of actual free trade. For those of you unfamiliar with the notion, if two countries really have free trade, then the medium of exchange, their currencies, do not have a fixed value.
I will do more on that in another blog. There is a lot more to be said.
So, there you have it.
On both sides of the political spectrum there are people dedicated to internationalism and mass immigration.
They mouth all kinds of platitudes regarding minorities and the poor who are already here, but they refuse to see the evidence that they've actually hurt the situation. They refuse to see the evidence that the only way to help minorities and the poor of any color who are already here is to restrict immigration and to stop the export of jobs.
So, how to fix the problem?
Once again:
1) Put an end to illegal immigration.
2) Put an end to mass immigration, reducing the numbers substantially.
3) Make trade agreements which are of net benefit to the United States, and not just certain corporations or groups within the United States. Be able to quantify that net benefit in every way possible.
4) Put an end to the culture of self-indulgence and hedonism, which poor people are most hurt by.
5) Improve the schools by eliminating those teachers, the one in five, who are actually totally incapable. It's been demonstrated that just eliminating that one teacher in five will substantially raise reading, writing and math scores for inner-city kids.
