Poverty

Lots of possibilities here. The key–how a problem is ‘framed’ sets up how it should be addressed. When thinking about what to do, remember that there are different ways to do something. Individuals can act as consumers, as citizens (e.g., volunteering at a food pantry), as taxpayers and voters (supporting policies and politicians that address the issue of poverty in ways you think are effective). An individual view would do basically what the Welfare Reform Act of 1996 did–it would put more burden on the individual to lift him/herself out of poverty, and provide the resources to help them enter the workforce. Another part of the Reform Act called for greater promotion of marriage, assuming that single-parent families were a major cause of poverty. A more structural view might say that single parent families are more a symptom of poverty than a cause, and look at structural barriers to greater participation in the economy and social life of citizens–a way to fund public education (that didn’t rely heavily on property values and property taxes), for instance, that didn’t disadvantage schools in poor neighborhoods. Public investment programs to help people build ‘human capital,’ marketable skills, to be more competitive, rather than finding them the first available job. More help for child care and/or health care issues to help people be more productive in the workforce by dealing with difficult issues outside the workplace. A structural view might even try to address unequal distribution of wealth through more progressive taxation (that is, more wealthy individuals pay higher rates of income tax). Increasing the minimum wage to a ‘living wage,’ or taxing employers who pay workers at a rate that requires them to supplement their incomes with welfare services. Taxes on estates and on capital gains (e.g., income from investments) are other ways to address perceived inequalities, rationale being in part that wealthy individuals and groups have more money and clout to influence tax policy and keep more of their money (the US has the lowest income tax base and highest rates of inequality among industrialized nations–check out this map (each circle represents a country).

Divorce

Divorce is a tougher social problem to conceptualize than poverty, because there aren’t so many obvious beneficiaries in this case than there are if, for instance, a country’s wealth is unevenly distributed. An individualist view of divorce would put resources into strengthening marriage, perhaps even making marriage licenses more difficult to obtain, and making divorce harder to obtain as well. Counseling programs also go with this approach. The Bush/Cheney Administration spent billions on this during their two terms. Statistically children seem to fare better economically in households with two parents. A counter argument is that poverty is the culprit, not marriage, that over time the institution of marriage has changed–less people marry, more people get divorced, and the key is to support those families that are affected by divorce and the possible loss of economic resources. Churches and religions can influence divorce somewhat through their policies (divorce is technically grounds exclusion from the Catholic Church, for instance). Many churches have relaxed their positions in recent decades, which no doubt has led to higher divorce rates. So a more individual view says let’s strengthen the institution of marriage and return to a time where divorce was rare. A more structural approach says divorce is a sign of social and cultural change, let’s seek policies that don’t mete out moral or economic punishment to people and harm their life chances. The Welfare Reform Act of 1996 places many burdens on households seeking public assistance. Many of these households are single parent-headed, the vast majority of those headed by females, a significant percentage having experienced divorce. To receive welfare assistance, these mothers often have to enter the workforce and make arrangements for the care of their children, requiring some difficult choices and begging some broad questions, such as: Are single mothers more valuable to society in low-wage employment, or spending more time raising their children? As with all other social problems, beware of politicians offering simple answers to the complex.

Financial crisis

Well, if you see this as a ‘liquidity’ problem of not enough money for banks to lend, you get them money somehow. Hopefully with assurances they’ll use it to lend. If you see this as a problem of banks and investors engaging in high-risk lending that was profitable for a while, at least until the real estate market ‘bubble’ popped (in other words, its artificially inflated value deflated), you would more likely support letting banks go bankrupt, making investors pay for their risky investments, and if there were to be help making sure that the taxpayers’ interests, not the banks, were being considered in any public subsidies or ‘bailouts.’ Another consideration would be homeowners who have defaulted on their mortgages, and whether they deserve assistance in staying in their homes. An individual view says they made bad choices and shouldn’t be rewarded for those. The structural view says that predatory lending institutions basically made easy money available (with the help of quasi-government agencies pushing higher-risk lending and underachieving regulators), encouraging people to purchase more house than they could afford, and that the banks did this in a very conscious way. The banking crisis pretty much implies policy solutions involving government, more than the other two kinds of social problems.

A new agency was created out of the crisis, The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. One of the more outspoken critics of government policy and the financial industry, Elizabeth Warren, won election to the Senate in Massachusetts, and will likely serve on committees that oversee banking regulation (and guess who’s not happy about that!).

Don’t expect the financial industry to apologize, though. That’s not how the economic system works. You don’t have to think about this as greed, really, but in a system where greed is rewarded, and profitable innovation is paid for with high salaries and benefits on Wall Street, then a certain portion of the best and brightest will continue to ‘innovate,’ and lobbyists will fight hard any calls to reduce the size of the ‘too big to fail’ institutions.