When Work Disappears

When Work Disappears Americans believe that inner city residents, mainly African Americans, struggle to survive and choose violence and crime intentionally, and that they are lazy and unmotivated to improve their lifestyle. However, William Julius Wilson, writer of When Work Disappears, disagrees with these thoughts, and he believes that results of joblessness have caused the violent behavior and the poverty in inner cities. Wilson states,”Many of today’s problems in the inner-city neighborhoods—crime, family dissolution, welfare—are fundamentally a consequence of the disappearance of work.” He also explains how this problem will cause “lasting and harmful consequences” if it is not addressed. He also believes that there are practical solutions to these problems and writes, “…those solutions are at hand.” To begin, Wilson explains how location of jobs, cost of child care and medical insurance, training and education required for jobs, and racial segregation are factors of joblessness in these inner cities. Each of these factors caused many people in the inner cities to become unemployed. Some cause people to become unqualified to work, and some cause inner cities residents to become obsolete. One factor makes the job too far away and causes the people unable to get to the job. Furthermore, location of the jobs is one major factor of out of work people in inner cities. Since 1960, many businesses moved away from the inner cities toward the suburbs where there were better dealings, and this caused the struggle for inner city residents to find jobs. Employment was available in suburbs, but most inner city residents did not own automobiles and could not afford public transportation to leave the city to get to their jobs. These changes in job locations cause much crime and violence because they could make more money illegally (drug deals, pimps, etc.) than legally, which paid minimum wage. In addition, the cost of childcare and medical insurance causes