The “medium chill” and keeping Sabbath

Grist’s David Roberts has written a follow-up to his “medium chill” post of about two years ago that expands on the idea and its social and political implications. In the original post, Roberts argued, based in part on “happiness research” and in part on personal experience, that it’s more fulfilling to work less to allow more time for enjoying life’s intangible goods–even if that means making less money.

In the follow-up post, he concedes that research he cited in the previous post that seemed to show that happiness levels off after a certain income level (about $75,000) may have been wrong; nevertheless, the relationship between wealth and happiness does seem to be “logarithmic”–that is the increase in happiness you get from each additional dollar is less than the previous one, even if it isn’t zero. The basic point seems to stand: after you’ve reached a certain level, adding more income isn’t going to increase your happiness or life-satisfaction much, if at all.

But if you have reached that level–if you even have the option of “chilling”– you are likely among the richest 0.1 percent of the world’s population. Which means that access to a life with possibilities for fulfillment beyond the struggle for material security is severely maldistributed, to put it mildly.

And if you are so fortunately situated, it’s due to luck far more than hard work, pluck, or anything else that you could plausibly claim to have merited. Where you were born, who your parents are, and your genetic make-up have a lot more to do with your success in life than anything you contribute (assuming there’s some irreducible element that can’t be chalked up to any of these other factors).

Because those of us with more have it not mainly by dint of the sweat of our brow, but because of circumstances well beyond our control, there is no justification for hoarding all that good fortune. (“You didn’t build that,” as President Obama might say.) We need policies–liberal policies essentially–that distribute access to the world’s goods more equitably in order to allow everyone a shot at a flourishing human life.

He goes on to speculate a bit about the possibilities for human life freed from the necessity of working more to earn more. Life should not be about being a fitter, more productive worker bee; it should be about cultivating our innate capabilities for creativity and self-expression in community with others. The seemingly laid-back medium chill turns out to have a rather radical, utopian streak.

All, or nearly all, of this resonates with the Christian view of life as I understand it. In his recent book A Public Faith, theologian Miroslav Volf argues that Christianity’s contribution to the common good is a more substantive and appealing vision of human flourishing than the one that has gained much ground in the modern West. According to Volf, this is the view that the good life consists primarily in the satisfaction of individual desire or preference.

Not surprisingly, he considers this to be a deeply impoverished view of human life. Not only has it lost sight of the love of God, but by focusing on individual satisfaction it is opposed to any robust idea of human solidarity. By contrast, for Christians,

[w]e lead our lives well when we love God with our whole being and when we love our neighbors as we (properly) love ourselves. Life goes well for us when our basic needs are met and when we experience that we are loved by God and by our neighbors–when we are loved as who we are, with our own specific character and history, notwithstanding our fragility and failures. (p. 72)

This account is clearly incompatible with a society in which everyone has to scramble endlessly to “get ahead” in material terms–e.g., Thomas Friedman’s horrifying “401(k) world.” Christians should want a world in which people are free from the pressure to constantly “invest in themselves” to please some boss or keep up with the Joneses.

In the Christian view, we aren’t made for working ourselves to death or for endless accumulation, but for lives “rich with relationships and experiences,” as Roberts puts it. In Biblical terms, we might think of the “medium chill” as a way of keeping Sabbath, as described by Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann:

Sabbath, in the first instance, is not about worship. It is about work stoppage. It is about withdrawal from the anxiety system of Pharaoh, the refusal to let one’s life be defined by production and consumption and the endless pursuit of private well-being. (Journey to the Common Good, p. 26)

This restful withdrawal from over-work and over-consumption is a precondition for genuine community and human flourishing. A good society would be one that made this a possibility for everyone.

Gary Dorrien’s social gospel

At the heart of modern capitalist economics is the idea of infinite accumulation. At the heart of Christian social teaching, however, is a strong conception of distributive justice and the related notion that there is such a thing as having enough. The prevailing American preoccupation with piling up money and material possessions is spiritually deadening. The readiness to defend ill-begotten privileges with force is immoral. The prevailing view of nature as a commodity to be conquered and exploited degrades the sacredness of creation. These themes have marked Christian ethics at its best. Figures such as [Walter] Rauschenbusch and [William] Temple were powerful advocates for progressive Christianity, partly because their minds were rooted in the biblical and spiritual wisdom of the past, partly because they were alive to new challenges and horizons for the church, and partly because they believed that Christianity has an important social mission. If liberal Christianity is to regain its public voice, it must recover this spirit.

That’s the conclusion to Gary Dorrien’s 1995 book Soul in Society: The Making and Renewal of Social Christianity (pp. 375-6). It traces the history of liberal, mainly Protestant, Christian social ethics in America from the social gospel period, through the rise of Niebuhrian “Christian realism,” to the more recent development of liberation, black, feminist, ecological, and other “pluralizing” theologies.

According to Dorrien, a signature concern of Christian social ethics–one that runs like a thread through all these movements–is extending democratic principles to the economic sphere. This has taken a variety of forms: Rauschenbusch’s calls for a “cooperative commonwealth,” Niebuhr’s early Marxist-influenced analysis of social power and class conflict and his later evolution toward New Deal-style reformist liberalism, and the aspiration toward democratic forms of socialism among liberationist voices. Contrary to the impression you might get from the current political scene, American Christian social ethics has long had a strongly social-democratic, if not outright socialist, bent.

Dorrien is far from uncritical of this tradition. He agrees with some–though not all–of Niebuhr’s criticisms of the social gospel tradition. He acknowledges the failures of central-planning approaches to the economy. He also points out that more recent theologians’ calls for “socialism” often have a dreamy, unreal air, and they fail to spell out what they want in concrete terms.

But Christians can’t give up on the need to press for greater distributive justice. Dorrien reviews some recent experiments with greater economic democracy (a term he generally prefers to “socialism”). These include worker ownership and management of firms and public mutual funds for directing investment. In general, he prefers  pragmatic experiments in making the economic system more just and democratically accountable that don’t rely on overly centralizing power in a bureaucratic state. Dorrien also emphasizes the ecological impact of economic growth and the pressing need to pursue distributive justice and “eco”-justice simultaneously.

Neoconservative Christian ethicists like Michael Novak have turned their back on this tradition and embraced what they call “democratic capitalism” as the only viable economic system after the fall of Communism. But Dorrien points out that actually existing capitalism not only fails the tests of distributive justice and ecological sustainability–it leads to a cultural coarsening that conservatives themselves deplore, even though they tend to blame it on “liberal elites.”

Dorrien is realistic about the state of liberal, mainline Protestantism. Too often, it has focused more on making sweeping social statements and lobbying Washington than on nurturing vibrant religious communities. While he disagrees with those, like Stanley Hauerwas, who are critical of Christian attempts to create a more just society, Dorrien argues that a progressive Christianity that isn’t rooted in a genuine “spiritual experience of Christ” has lost its reason for being. It’s because of what Christians believe God has accomplished in Christ that they act to foster signs of the in-breaking Kingdom in the social order:

The kingdom to which Christians belong and owe their loyalty is partially prefigured in the world; it calls Christians to bring the transforming virtues of love, peace, and justice into the world; it calls Christians to join sides with the poor and oppressed to attain justice; but it does not make political success the criterion of its action or seek power over the social order. The social ethic of the way of Christ is an ethic of faithfulness to the prophetic biblical ideals of freedom, equality, community, and redemptive love. It calls the body of Christ to be a moral community that incarnates these ideals in the world and lives faithfully by them. It seeks to bring sustainable justice and peace to the world but does not live by the world’s tests for worthwhile activity (pp. 374-5).

This is a responsible social ethic for a post-Christendom world: one that embraces  the duty to work for structural justice without surrendering Christian distinctiveness or assuming the role of “chaplain” to the existing order.

Why the ministry of women needs no defense

British evangelical theologian Steve Holmes explains why he will no longer defend the ministry of women in the church. (Not exactly what you might think.)

I can’t say that this has ever been a “live” issue for me. At nearly every church I’ve been involved with as an adult, women’s ministry was a given. For a year, I did attend a Episcopal parish on the Anglo-Catholic end of the spectrum that might’ve blanched at having a woman preside at the altar, but otherwise, all the churches I’ve belonged to were firmly in the “full equality” camp. The head pastor at our current church is a woman, and I’m looking forward to her baptizing our son next month.

Not once has it occurred to me that the ministries of the women at these churches were “invalid” or otherwise theologically defective. What Holmes writes applies to most of the women pastors I’ve known: “In the face of so evident a work of the Spirit as was seen in her life, who am I to even consider the question of whether God had called her to preach?”

Capitalism, liberalism, and the good life

I enjoyed this review by philosopher Gary Gutting of Robert and Edward Skidelsky’s How Much Is Enough? (I haven’t read the book.) The Skidelskys, according to Gutting, argue that, under capitalism, we find ourselves with relative material abundance but without enough time to pursue “intangibles such as love, friendship, beauty, and virtue”–which are essential ingredients of a good life. Moreover, capitalism, with its seemingly insatiable drive toward increased production and profit, creates in us the desires for more and better things, and these desires crowd out our desires to pursue the intangible “higher goods.” They say we need to redirect our society toward the good life with measures to curb these pernicious effects of capitalism–such as a guaranteed basic income and a consumption tax on luxury goods.

This isn’t an unfamiliar line of argument, but Gutting goes on to consider two types of objections. First, utilitarians might argue that the good life consists in maximizing subjective states of satisfaction (i.e., happiness as commonly understood), not the attainment of objective goods. Appealing to Robert Nozick’s “experience machine” thought experiment, Gutting replies that it’s implausible to think that subjective satisfaction is sufficient for a good life–though he agrees it’s probably necessary. And he thinks the Sidelskys could easily take subjective satisfaction on board as part of their account of the good life.

More difficulty for the Sidelskys’ argument is posed, Gutting thinks, by liberalism’s insistence on personal autonomy and its demand that the state be officially neutral among competing views about what constitutes a good life. Liberal societies, according to this view, shouldn’t try to impose a specific vision of the good life as a matter of public policy. So the Sidelskys’ proposals seem like non-starters because they would violate the liberal commitment to anti-paternalism.

Gutting thinks the liberal objection can be met by a renewed emphasis on liberal education. Such an education exposes us to different ways of living and can act as a counterweight to the acquisitiveness fostered by capitalist society. This would provide, Gutting hopes, a “bottom-up” rather than a “top-down” corrective to the problems the Sidelskys identify:

There is a risk that free citizens educated in this way will not arrive at the truth we have in mind. They may, free and informed, choose the material illusions of capitalism. But, in a democracy, an ideal of the good life has no force unless the people’s will sustains it. Liberally educated consumers—and voters—are our only hope of subordinating capitalism to a humane vision of the good life.

While this is good as far as it goes, I think Gutting may be underestimating the resources political liberalism has for addressing these concerns. Gutting says that the “basic goods” advocated by the Sidelksys, such as “health, security, respect, personal freedom …, harmony with nature, friendship, and leisure” differ from the “primary goods” that liberals advocate as prerequisites for effective individual freedom to pursue a variety of lifestyles. But I wonder if the Sidelskys’ list is really at odds with what liberals like John Rawls or Martha Nussbaum (or for that matter sophisticated utilitarians) would advocate at the level of public policy.

People sometimes underestimate how radical the implications are of what philosophical liberals advocate. If we really took seriously the requirement to ensure equal access to primary goods (Rawls) or capabilities for functioning (Nussbaum), or equal consideration of interests (utilitarianism), I think American society would look a lot different. It would be much more economically egalitarian and probably as a result would produce fewer luxury goods. Besides, on any reasonable, non-totalitarian view of public policy, there has to be some scope for people to make choices that depart from some officially preferred vision of the good life. Indeed, as liberals from J.S. Mill onward have argued, such freedom is an indispensable ingredient of the good life. On a practical level, then, I’m not sure how much the Sidelskys’ desired end-state differs from that of liberalism.

Election 2012: A victory for Christian values

Some religious conservatives have been near-apocalyptic in their predictions of a second Obama term, insisting that he’s leading the country away from Christian principles and down the road to perdition. But from my perspective, last night’s election was a triumph (albeit a partial one) for Christian values.

–In rejecting the Romney-Ryan plan to dismantle the welfare state and repeal Obamacare, voters reaffirmed the principle that the government has an indispensable role in caring for the most vulnerable members of society and ensuring universal access for basic goods necessary to a flourishing life.

–Victories for marriage equality in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, and, hopefully, the state of Washington suggest that Americans are coming around to the idea that all God’s children deserve equal rights and respect.

–The “Maryland Dream Act” will allow undocumented immigrant students to pay in-state tuition at state colleges and universities and access financial aid,  upholding the principle of “welcoming the alien and the stranger.”

–Although it barely rated a mention during the campaign, a second term for Obama opens the possibility for meaningful action on climate change, an urgent part of our calling to care for God’s creation (not to mention our survival as a species).

–President Obama has reaffirmed that we’re in this together and that we are each other’s keeper, in contrast to the rhetoric of economic individualism from the Right.

I admit this is a partial and somewhat one-sided list. The election didn’t allow for a dramatic choice against a hyper-militarized foreign policy, for instance. And religious conservatives would likely take issue with how I’ve characterized these election outcomes. But as far as I’m concerned, care and respect for the vulnerable fellow citizen, the immigrant, and the earth are core Christian values, and they gained some significant headway last night.

Was Jesus married? Does it matter?

It looks like there’s some skepticism among scholars about the authenticity of the already much-discussed “Jesus’ wife” papyrus–said to be a fragment from a non-canonical Coptic gospel that has Jesus referring to “my wife” and saying that she will be a “disciple.” Much of yesterday’s breathless reporting on the papyrus centered around its potential to “shake up” debates about women’s role in the church. So if the fragment is spurious, does that mean no such re-thinking is necessary?

To start with, we should be clear that, even if it’s authentic, all the papyrus would seem to show–at most–is that there was an early tradition that Jesus was married. (Curiously, few people seem to have considered the possibility that the wife “Jesus” refers to might be the church–an image that goes back to the NT itself.) It wouldn’t, as even the professor who discovered it acknowledges, show that Jesus was in fact married.

Second, even though Christian tradition has long held that Jesus was unmarried and celibate, it’s not clear to me that anything of theological significance stands or falls on this. How would the central Christological doctrines–the Incarnation, Atonement, Resurrection, Ascension, etc.–be affected by the discovery that Jesus was married? It’s true, as one Twitter-friend pointed out, that it may call into question the reliability of the gospels since you’d think they might mention such a significant fact about Jesus. But against this we should remember (1) the gospels don’t provide “biography” in our modern sense; they are theological-confessional documents intended to witness to faith in Christ, and (2) historical criticism has already called the reliability of the gospels into question in many respects, and yet they still function as the Word of God for people in the church.

All of this aside, I think it’s wrong to suggest that we need certain facts about the historical Jesus to be true in order to authorize things like the full equality of women in the church. As theologian Clark Williamson has written,

The problem with feminist theology is that in its constitutive assertions it is right. Women are fully human, clearly the equal of men, and need liberation from sexist oppression. But if the only way to warrant being a Christian feminist is by appeal to the empirical-historical Jesus as a norm, then Jesus will turn out to have been a feminist. . . . [But i]f Jesus was not a feminist, am I still not free to be one? Is it the role of Jesus . . . to authorize our conformity to him or to author our freedom and creativity, our right to reform the church? Dare we allow the historical Jesus to be himself, a first-century Jew, different from us, or must he reflect our concerns and ideals back to us? If so, how can he ever correct us? (Williamson, A Guest in the House of Israel, p. 190).

Williamson is concerned to correct the tendency in some feminist theology to portray Jesus as the egalitarian, feminist liberator from an oppressive, patriarchal Judaism, an opposition that in effect “de-Judaizes” Jesus and reinforces the long history of Christian anti-Judaism. But his point has broader application, I think. If modern Christians want to be feminists (and they should!), they don’t need to justify it by appealing to a shaky historical reconstruction of a “feminist Jesus.” Many churches, drawing on the resources of the canonical scriptures and Christian tradition, have come to see sexual equality as a gospel issue–and that provides a much stronger foundation. Christians shouldn’t be threatened by historical research, but neither should they build their faith on it.

Speaking of equality…

From this really interesting interview with philosopher Elizabeth Anderson:

The idea that human beings are fundamentally equals from a moral point of view is ancient. I suspect it can be traced all the way back to the origins of monotheism, in the idea that we are all equally creatures of God, all made in God’s image, all in principle equally eligible for salvation. However for most of history most monotheistic churches have promised equality only in the next life; in this one a thousand reasons were invented to uphold various forms of social, political, and religious hierarchy.

I also recommend Anderson’s paper “What is the point of equality?” (PDF), though it’s a bit philosophically dense.

Do the evolution

As everyone not living under a rock now knows, in an interview with ABC yesterday, President Obama–who recently had said that his views were “evolving”–announced that he now supports the right of same-sex couples to get married.

Some liberal critics complained that Obama’s announcement does nothing to change the status quo, with marriage still being essentially a state matter. This of course was vividly demonstrated just two days ago by North Carolina’s amendment of its state constituion to exclude recognition of any relationships other than heterosexual marriage, even civil unions.

But others pointed out–such as in this article–that this may be part of a broader strategy on the part of the administration. This strategy includes its ending of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy and its decision to stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act in federal court. In addition to being good ideas on the merits, these may help set the legal stage down the road for the courts to recognize a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. As Chris Geidner, the author of the article, sums it up, “Obama’s legal, policy and personal views are not in any way contradictory and present a clear path forward toward the advancement of marriage equality across the country.”

Also worth noting is that the president couched his change of mind in explicitly religious terms. Writing at Religion Dispatches, Sarah Posner highlights this part of Obama’s comments:

when we think about our faith, the thing at root that we think about is, not only Christ sacrificing himself on our behalf, but it’s also the Golden Rule, you know, treat others the way you would want to be treated. And I think that’s what we try to impart to our kids and that’s what motivates me as president and I figure the most consistent I can be in being true to those precepts, the better I’ll be as a as a dad and a husband and hopefully the better I’ll be as president.

Posner goes on to contend that

Obama didn’t just endorse same-sex marriage today. He abandoned conservative religious rhetoric about it and signaled that religious conservatives, even his close religious advisors, don’t own the conversation on what Christianity has to say about marriage.

Similarly, Ed Kilgore writes today that Obama’s “evolution” actually puts him in closer alignment with his own relgious tradition, the United Church of Christ, which has affirmed same-sex relationships as a denomination since 2005:

Relgious conservatives may scoff at the UCC (or the Episcopalians, or other mainline denominations that are, to use the buzzword, “open and affirming” to gay people). But the UCC is the country’s oldest Christian religious community, and among other things, was spearheading the fight against slavery back when many of the religious conservatives of the early nineteenth century were largely defending it as a divinely and scripturally ordained instituion.

So Obama has pretty strong authority for saying there’s no conflict between his faith and support for same-sex marriage.

Liberals are prone to arguing in bloodless, technocratic terms, so it was nice to see Obama making the case in explicitly moral–even religious–language. I personally think liberals could stand to do this more often.

Of course, no one seriously doubts, I think, that there was at least some degree of political calculation in this announcement. (Do presidents ever say anything that isn’t politically calculated to some degree?) And it remains to be seen if that calculation will pay off in November. But even granting mixed nature of his motives (and Christians of all people should be the first to acknowledge that we never act from completely pure motives), it was the right thing to do. Nice job, Mr. President.

Better theology needed in the public debate over homosexuality

One criticism I’ve seen of mainline churches is that they don’t do a very good job of connecting theology to congregational, individual, or public life. Whether or not this is true as a general matter, one area where it does seem to me to happen is the public debate–particularly in American Christianity–over the place of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in the church. To hear people talk, you wouldn’t know that theologians have been grappling with these issues for literally decades or that over this time, a rich body of biblical and theological material has been developed supporting the case for the full equality of LGBT people. (Case in point: this recent exchange between Ross Douthat and William Saletan; to read this, you would never know that there was more than one “Christian” position here.)

It would seem that very little of the work that has been done in rethinking Christian attitudes toward LGBT people–largely by academics in theology and biblical studies–has filtered down to the congregational level and out into the public sphere. We still find ourselves rehashing the same half-dozen or so “clobber texts” and framing the debate in terms of “traditionalists” who uphold orthodox faith and “liberals” who are moral and doctrinal relativists. What this leaves out is, for example, the robustly theological (or theological-ethical) case for equality that has been developed by people like James Allison, Eugene Rogers, Gareth Moore, and others, or the work that has been done on the meaning and context of the relevant biblical texts. Bringing this to bear on the discussion would scramble the usual narrative of “liberals” being indifferent or hostile to theological arguments.

Mainline congregations have often exhibited good instincts in this area, basing their stance of equality for LGBT folks more on concrete experience than theory. But this leaves mainline Christians ill-equipped to make the case in theological and biblical terms, and they often end up ceding the theological high ground to their conservative opponents. It also allows more conservative forms of Christianity to be seen as the sole legitimate public expressions of the faith.

The failure of welfare reform

The 1996 welfare-reform law, passed by a Republican-controlled Congress and signed by President Clinton (who famously said that the “era of big government is over”), has been hailed by people in both parties as a great triumph. It replaced the old Aid to Families with Dependent Children program with the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program (emphasis on “temporary”). The TANF program restructured the funding of federal assistance to the poor, creating block grants to be administered by states. Crucially, it also imposed strict limitations on the amount of time someone could receive benefits, increased requirements to move people off the rolls and into jobs, and gave states much more flexibility in designing their programs.

At first, it did seem like a success, and the direst predictions of some of the critics (Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously warned of children sleeping on city grates) didn’t come to pass. Welfare caseloads plummeted, and a booming economy seemed to promise jobs for anyone who wanted one.

Of course, the story in 2012 is quite a bit different. In the wake of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression and a continuing unemployment rate hovering around double digits, the seams of the revamped welfare system are starting to pull. This story from the New York Times details how cash-strapped and jobless people (many of them single mothers) are coping with the absence of state support:

[M]uch as overlooked critics of the restrictions once warned, a program that built its reputation when times were good offered little help when jobs disappeared. Despite the worst economy in decades, the cash welfare rolls have barely budged.

Faced with flat federal financing and rising need, Arizona is one of 16 states that have cut their welfare caseloads further since the start of the recession — in its case, by half. Even as it turned away the needy, Arizona spent most of its federal welfare dollars on other programs, using permissive rules to plug state budget gaps.

The poor people who were dropped from cash assistance here, mostly single mothers, talk with surprising openness about the desperate, and sometimes illegal, ways they make ends meet. They have sold food stamps, sold blood, skipped meals, shoplifted, doubled up with friends, scavenged trash bins for bottles and cans and returned to relationships with violent partners — all with children in tow.

The article notes a couple of interesting facts. First, because the food stamp program is fully funded by federal dollars, while TANF comes via state block grants, states have been pushing people toward food stamps. (Hence the favorite GOP talking point about soaring food stamp enrollment under President Obama is actually a result, at least in part, of welfare reform.) Second, the “greater flexibility” given to states under TANF allows them to divert funds from providing cash assitance to the poor and unemployed to other uses–and not always ones that directly help the intended beneficiaries of the program. Or, as a representative from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities put it: “The states use the money to fill budget holes.” The upshot is that, despite increased economic hardship, the flow of direct aid has been slowing to a trickle. (It’s also worth mentioning, as the article points out, that this kind of structure–block grants to states and incresed restrictions–is one that Repbulcians like Rep. Paul Ryan would like to apply to other welfare-state programs, like Medicare.)

The story notes that “the number of very poor families appears to be growing.”

Pamela Loprest and Austin Nichols, researchers at the Urban Institute, found that one in four low-income single mothers nationwide — about 1.5 million — are jobless and without cash aid. That is twice the rate the researchers found under the old welfare law. More than 40 percent remain that way for more than a year, and many have mental or physical disabilities, sick children or problems with domestic violence.

Welfare reform was driven by the assumption that jobs were available and that the only problem was the “perverse incentives” created by the existing welfare program. This was, and is, a popular view in conservative and “neo-liberal” circles. Take away the cash assistance, the theory went, and people would be “incentivized” (i.e., forced) into participation in the workforce. Whatever the merits of this as an explanation for why people remained on welfare, it falls apart if there aren’t enough jobs to go around. And for better or for worse, we aren’t, as a nation, committed to a policy of full employment. (During the Depression, for example, the government just flat-out created jobs for people.) Without the jobs is it any surprise that people turn to dubious means to feed themselves and their families?

Secular liberalism and Christian social thought agree that a society should be judged, in significant part, by how its worst-off and most vulnerable members fare. By this measure, it’s very difficult to judge welfare reform a success.