If the author's hypothesis is true, then if the state grants the lower class a level of material well being equivalent to the middle or upper classes, then then social indicators should improve. Unfortunately, we have tried this already, and it did not work. See this article about Antioch, CA, where the welfare state gave the underclass McMansions with swimming pools, yet crime did not abate ( http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/09/us/09housing.html ). The same thing happened in Memphis (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/memphis-crime ). Or in Britain read this article about violence and drug abuse ( http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/10/world/europe/10britain.htm... ). Note that the subjects of the articles are already taken care of by the welfare state. What more should we give them, so that they will stop committing crimes?
The crime problem needs to be solved first, or employers will simply never return to the burned out areas. As one super market in Detroit says ( http://www.detroitblog.org/?paged=2 ):
A day in the life of Tom Boy Super Market consists partly of stopping people from robbing the place blind. “There’s so many days when I don’t do nothing,” Jitu says. “My main job is to run the office and I don’t have to be here, but I have to come anyway. You don’t want to have, like, one person here, and then half the store is gone. We have to have so many people. They don’t have to do nothing, but they have to be here.”
