Not so secret Memo

Check out this story in City Limits, and click on the link to the "Confidential" (oops) Memo from the Mayor's Commission for Economic Opportunity. The last item, "Data, Measurement, and Management," while it sounds the most dry and dull, is perhaps the most radical item. Arguably, the first step toward any meaningful, practicable program of poverty reduction must begin by abandoning the dreadfully inaccurate methods by which we measure poverty itself. For the wonkish among us, it's a means by which a new frame for problem definition can open up for consideration a broad range of better solutions. Whether anything is likely to come of this is, of course, an entirely different question.