Walls and Bridges: Social Justice and Public Policy

Appendix: Implications for Social Policy

Appendix: Implications for Social Policy • The most fundamental social problems in society are ultimately issues of power and justice. • The key to addressing social problems is political pressure for social change. Such pressure should be based on principles of social ethics and distributive justice. • The search for solutions to social problems starts with people intentionally working to change the social environment in which they live. • Ethical social policy is community oriented—rediscovering strength in families; working for safety in our neighborhoods, schools, and churches; and supporting effective law enforcement and correctional strategies. • Our social problems often carry over into the global community and are tied to crises in other societies, many of which are far less fortunate than our own. • We can use evaluation research and social ethics to alleviate social inequality. We can use our resources to transform the environment to better meet the needs of each member of society. • Given demographic trends soon placing ethnic minorities as the numeric majority in our nation, society should distribute resources that reflect such trends. • Given the finite nature of resources, we must ethically justify the development of particular types of new policies at the expense of others or the acquisition of new knowledge in some areas while ignoring others. • Resources used in medicine and biology are also needed to reduce gender and ethnic discrimination, urban decay, environmental pollution, and poverty and to improve the quality of education. • Technologically induced dehumanization, the abuse of power, and the unjust distribution of scarce resources exemplify the need to develop and implement socially just laws and public policy. • Social change is typically initiated by those who view that their needs and the needs of others like them are being unmet by existing institutions and policy. • If our problems are shared by others and attributable to social conditions, we seek political or policy solutions. 169 • We have a responsibility to mobilize resources and attempt to convince policy makers and the public that we have legitimate claims and that our interests should be represented fairly. • Social policy is supported, at least implicitly, by an explanation of the problem’s cause and on a specific perspective of human nature. • Social policy cannot increase one good without simultaneously decreasing another, or decrease one evil without strengthening one to which it is associated. • While most Americans believe that government programs designed to help the poor have failed, many programs have demonstrably improved the lives of people trapped at the bottom of the economic ladder. • Educational participation and academic achievement are critical for students as a foundation for occupational attainment and parity in political decision-making processes. • It seems rather obvious that increasing class time should increase educational attainment. • Educational intervention in disadvantaged families should include federal programs such as Head Start. • Our schools should be funded by a fair formula that does not reward wealthy property holders with more elaborate schools and resources and penalizes poorer property holders. • Poverty is essentially a work problem, not a welfare problem. Thus, we should use secure employment opportunities to base welfare reform. • Current policies that reduce families on welfare do little to eliminate poverty; instead, they increase the number of families at risk. • Widespread urban trends demonstrate changes in the labor and housing markets that have fostered income inequality and segregated the rich from the poor. • It is important for policy makers to understand what it is like to be poor and live on welfare. • Our laws, social policy, and culture value single mothers’ cheap labor often at the expense of care for their children. • If we are to significantly lessen poverty, we must invest in human capital potential, including remedial education for those members of our population who currently possess limited education and job skills. • We should create secure and full employment for people who want jobs. • Antipoverty policies should target the working poor as well as those on welfare. • Despite its cost, investment in our decaying infrastructure and ineffective social services would significantly contribute to the betterment of society and enhance economic development. • Since societal resources are finite, the question of distributive justice—the equitable distribution of resources among the various segments of our population—is crucial. • We have come to depend on medicine to remedy an increasing array of contemporary social problems: drug addiction, genetic counseling, unwanted pregnancy, unwanted childlessness, suicide, sagging body parts, laziness, and crime, to cite just a few. • Measurements of health in the United States confirm the failure of existing health care to recognize or respond...