EDITORIAL: The state of black America

Even putting the entire American health care industry under government control won't be enough to reduce racial gaps in unemployment and health care, says the National Urban League.

In its annual "State of Black America" report Wednesday, the 100-year-old organization said African-Americans still lag in homeownership rates and were almost twice as likely to be unemployed and lack health insurance.

Seeking to broaden its appeal, the report for the first time also addresses inequality for Hispanics, the nation's fastest-growing demographic group.

Among the report's recommendations:

-- Provide $150 billion for direct job creation by offering taxpayer grants to cities, states, universities and nonprofit groups. Eligibility would be based on local unemployment rates with a goal of creating 3 million jobs.

-- Crack down on "predatory lending," because blacks and other minorities were disproportionately hurt by the foreclosure crisis.

-- Spend $5 billion to $7 billion to hire up to 5 million teens as part of an expanded Youth Summer Jobs Program that would improve opportunities for urban youth, who have higher rates of unemployment.

-- Give jobless black people free government health insurance (here called "an alternative public option"), and establish a new federal agency that would guarantee a job for every person seeking work on "public works projects," handing the workers the same health benefits already available to federal employees.

Americans need more jobs. But leaving aside the inherent racism of a proposal that money collected by raising taxes (and thus destroying jobs) elsewhere be targeted to create short-term jobs only in "urban" communities, this emphasis on direct government spending would create only dead-end, make-work "opportunities," anyway.

Where is the emphasis on reducing the taxes and regulation -- which tend to be most onerous in urban ares -- that stifle black and Hispanic entrepreneurship and real, long-term, free-market job creation?

Where is the emphasis on the need for such urban communities to police themselves, reducing the crime rates that hike the costs of both security and insurance, driving many potential employers out of our inner cities?

It's been two generations since Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan -- a New York liberal and no racist -- exposed and lamented the multigenerational trap of dependence on government handouts that has crippled so many of our urban, minority communities. And all the Urban League can think to do, at this late date, is ask for more welfare for make-work jobs that -- because they produce no product anyone would want to buy -- will disappear as soon as the subsidies run out?

If anything, the Urban League may understate the problem. If we count the number of minority adults who are denied the dignity of a job, true unemployment rates are probably far higher than acknowledged.

But the real solution is to get rid of impediments such as the minimum wage and to encourage entrepreneurs to create real jobs by producing goods and services that customers will voluntarily pay for.

Yet one may search the "State of Black America" report in vain for a kind word about "capitalism," "profit," "deregulation" or "black and Hispanic entrepreneurs."