Robert Reich: THE THREE BIGGEST RIGHT-WING LIES ABOUT POVERTY: [View all]

[kpete]

(1) Economic growth cures poverty. “The federal government,” Paul Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman, wrote recently in The Wall Street Journal, “needs to remember that the best anti-poverty program is economic growth.” Baloney. Since the late 1970s, the economy has grown 147 percent per capita but nothing has trickled down. The poverty rate remains around 15 percent. That's higher than it was in the early 1970s.

(2) Jobs cure poverty. More baloney. A higher percentage of the poor now work than has been the case in thirty years, and a smaller share of their income now comes from government programs. But they’re still poor. The only thing that’s different is the number of “working poor” – a term that should be an oxymoron – has exploded.

(3) Ambition cures poverty. Still more baloney. The poor aren't poor because they lack ambition; what they lack is opportunity. America is the only rich nation that spends less on educating kids in poor communities than in middle-class and wealthy ones.


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