The story of the Rand Institute and Daniel Patrick Moynihan is a cautionary tale that continues to ring true for us in the present day due to how there are still people in America who hold views that are very similar to the ones that Moynihan espoused. In addition, the rampant abuse of statistics and conclusion-jumping that is featured in this reading make it hard to tell that it was describing events from almost 40 years ago. It’s too bad that the authors failed to include any quotes from the residents of the affected neighborhoods in the reading; it would have been interesting to read about how some of the lower and middle class African-Americans and Puerto Ricans living in the “sick neighborhoods” reacted to being labelled as sociopathic arsonists by Moynihan.

The idea of benign neglect is fairly odd once it is given some thought. It practically says: “Shut your eyes and pretend the problem is not there, and with any luck, once you open them it won’t be there.” Planned shrinkage is no better as a policy, but at least it actually had a plan, which was to pull resources out from “dying” neighborhoods and redistribute them among healthy ones. According to the authors, The Rand Fire Project deliberately manipulated NY Fire Department policy for its own purposes, which happen to coincide with Planned Shrinkage policy. With this in mind, it seems hard to believe that they were extremely simple-minded when they made all their assumptions and generalizations for their models. It is also hard to believe that the Rand Corporation is still around today, and it has done very well for itself since the 1970s, having been involved with studies on health insurance and national security and defense with numerous Nobel Prize recipients.

Discussion Question: To what extent should public policy be dictated by outside organizations like the Rand Corporation?