The Policy in the Room

POSC 459 — Social Welfare Politics and Policy · Week 2, Wednesday 2 September 2026

Accessible text version of the Week 2 Monday slides — same content in linear order, with no slide-scaling container. Reading: Howard ch. 2; Desmond ch. 2.

Today

  1. Research pre-survey (~10 min)
  2. PapyrusAI sign-up, everyone, in the room (~10 min)
  3. My AI policy — as a policy (~35 min)
  4. Why haven’t we made more progress? (the rest)

First: the pre-survey

uci.questionpro.com/t/Acs2vZ9boH

Sign-up, together, now

  1. Canvas course nav → PapyrusAI. First access creates your account.
  2. Choose Google or a password — decide now, not in October.
  3. Course code: FALL2026-POSC459
  4. Confirm you’re enrolled before you close the tab.

One entry, one new conversation.

The + button. Top right. Every time.

You are carrying five AI policies right now

Five courses. Five different rules. Zero tolerance for mixing them up.

That is administrative burden, and I am contributing to it.

By Week 3 you’ll have the vocabulary for exactly this.

§12, in your hands

Read my AI policy the way this course reads any policy:

My stake, on the record

Asking you to evaluate something I benefit from without saying so would be the exact failure the disclosure rule exists to prevent.

Scale it up

The CSU–OpenAI contract.

You have an account because of this decision.

The exercise — three groups, eight minutes

  1. Does “equitable access” describe what the contract accomplishes? What would have to be true for the claim to hold?
  2. Who bears the cost — and is it the group that gets the benefit?
  3. The beneficiaries were not consulted. Compare: how are TANF or SNAP beneficiaries consulted — or not?

Report a position and the strongest argument against it. A group that summarizes both sides goes back for one minute.

Before we leave it — a poll

Does receiving something make you more likely to defend the decision that provided it?

Monday I left you a question

If poverty is a knot and not a line — what number would tell us we’re making progress?

Here is the official number.

The flatline

Fifty years. And over that stretch, spending on the thirteen largest means-tested programs went from $1,015 to $3,419 per person — up 237%.

Desmond’s chapter 2 walks the suspect list: stinginess, immigration, single parenthood. Each one fails the evidence.

But which number was that?

The official measure never sees SNAP, the EITC, housing help, or a stimulus check. Count those — the Supplemental Poverty Measure does — and poverty falls meaningfully over the same years.

Fantasy, in the film: “I have received extra food stamps cause of COVID. That stimulus, that paid half my bills.”

The official measure records her as untouched.

Where the dollars leak

And Howard’s map: Crystal’s household runs on food stamps, HUD, disability-linked cash, and free school lunch at once — four programs, both “tiers,” one trailer.

Due and next