Poverty is not inevitable

One of the best things to come out of a seminar hosted today by the group Action for Children (and the release of the group's new report "Child Poverty in North Carolina: A Preventable Epidemic") was the reminder it provided about the very simple, but often overlooked truth: Poverty is not inevitable.

To hear the market fundamentalists tell it, the poor will always be with us and all we can do is make sure that no one starves. (Actually, given the periodic assaults on the Food Stamps program, that last point may not even be a given.) Unfortunately, the right wing has repeated this falsehood so many times that many who ought to know better have begun to accept and repeat it.    

Today's event and release provide a powerful reminder that, in fact, intentional public solutions can, have and do reduce poverty. Moroever, as presenter Prof. J. Lawrence Aber pointed out, it's entirely possible to marry aggressive and generous anti-poverty programs with the cause of putting people to work. In other words, it's not — as many contend — a matter of choosing between providing an incentive for people to work and having a real and adequate social safety net.

As Aber points out, virtually every other advanced western style economy has figured out a way to promote work and benefits. That's why most of their child poverty rates are only a fraction of what kids endure in the U.S.