QUAGMIRE? Time visits Milwaukee. The article focuses on Milwaukee's recent crime wave, and devotes the bulk of its space to advancing the argument that stingy Federal policies have made policing more difficult. Toward the end, however, it suggests that the problem is ultimately one of instilling the Habits of Highly Effective People.

Since 1998, Wisconsin has lost nearly 90,000 manufacturing jobs. Milwaukee has suffered the brunt of that, hemorrhaging 7,500 positions in 2005 alone. The unemployment rate hovers around 7%, up from 2.6% in 1998 and nearly double the national average. In inner-city neighborhoods, the level rises to nearly 60% for working-age males. With only half of adults earning more than a high school diploma, the city's residents aren't well matched for the white-collar jobs most common today. The number of able men wandering the streets in the daytime is striking.

[Milwaukee mayor Tom] Barrett's administration has tried to address unemployment through a huge investment in real estate development and tax incentives to attract business. The mayor says those efforts have created more than 10,000 local jobs. Most of them, however, are either high-tech positions beyond the skills of many Milwaukee residents or low-wage service slots in retail shops and chain restaurants that pay less than needed to support a family.

"People who have put in a full day's work are generally too tired to go out and terrorize the neighborhood by night," alderman Willie Wade says. Employment can assuage other social ills. It leads to more homeownership--meaning fewer absentee landlords and the drug houses that can go with them. And a job can anchor an entire family. Says Wade: "A little money in his pocket can convince a man to be a father to his children instead of stealing his neighbor's Cadillac."

That's an interesting juxtaposition. Where did the neighbor get the resources to buy the Cadillac? Is it safe to steal transportation from drug-runners or absentee landlords? And isn't the fencing of stolen goods a way to obtain the money that the alderman suggests does the convincing? There's more to fixing a broken city than job training, even of the kind that might equip individuals to do the higher-paying jobs.