Well, we could start by turning NCLB into something more than standardized testing requirements that overtax inner city schools and unfunded mandates those schools (as well as lower middle class rural schools) cannot afford, and make it into a program to help standardize quality education for ALL students.

See that's the sort of solution must have just been too creative for the AEI.
Thanks Jennifer!
Keep em' comming readers..

So somebody finally stumbled onto the utimate quagmire, the War on Poverty.
The "War on Poverty" has officially been raging for 40 years now, starting with LBJ.
Each and every administration has been roughly equally successful/unsucessful as the others, but with 31.6 million still in poverty in 2000, at the peak of the biggest economic boom in 70 years, this "war" is America's biggest quagmire or failure, take your pick.

Well, over 5 million jobs have been created in the US since Bush has been president. That's 5 million people whose incomes have gone from $0 to, speculatively, the median of around $15.60/hr. Do you consider that to be an improvement for the poor?

How to end poverty:

Simple. Stop rewarding it; you'd be amazed how many people could climb their way out of poverty if we stopped enabling them to stay there through the Poverty Subsidy, aka Welfare.

The government fighting poverty. Just like it's war on drugs - an idiotic, unconstitutional concept that ultimately amounts to nothing more than corporate welfare.

John, I appreciate someone from a different perspective is interested in discussing this subject in a mature way (somehow this is rare).

But as the study I linked to shows, the people kicked off welfare didn't move into stable longterm employment.
The jobs that many of these people got after loosing welfare were so low paying that people still need outside help to feed their families. Work needs to pay enough for people to survive. I'm sure you have a libertarian answer that says minimum wages are immoral but if you say that no-one should get welfare it is even more important to make sure that all jobs pay a living wage. What is the other solution? Tell people to starve?

The students that Maureen works with are all doing what it takes to move out of poverty- they are going to school - but the federal government's new welfare rules are getting in the way. So I would think that people that believe in self-empowerment would want to support Maureen's students and tell the government to get out of the way and let poor students finish their degrees so they can move out of poverty perminently.

That job creation record would be respectable if there had been no recession in which the nation lost millions of jobs and there had been no population growth over the course of the Bush Administration. As it is, job growth has been much slower than in previous economic recoveries and has not kept pace with population growth. The Economic Policy Institute crunches the numbers and concludes that “the United States has only 1.9% more jobs today than at the start of the last recession. Private sector jobs are up only 1.5%. At this stage of previous business cycles, jobs had grown by an average of 8.8% and never less than 6.0%.” So no, a job creation record that fails to keep up with population growth is not an improvement for the poor.

Elana, can you give us an example of an economy which has created more jobs in the last 10 years -- I say 10 so that we can look beyond just the Bush term.

The idea that 5 million jobs is "not an improvement for the poor" is a contradiction in terms. To say that it would be nice to have created *more* jobs is an exercise in the obvious.

If there are other economies that are creating more jobs and more wealth, perhaps we should emulate them.

Regarding population growth, immigration is a large (the largest?) driver. It is a fair assumption that those that come to this country to work are making a great deal more here than in the countries from which they came. That strikes me as a pretty big wage gain for hundreds of thousands of working people.

Plus, if we look at our current accounts deficit with, say, China, you will find that additional tens of billions of US-created wealth is going to truly impoverished people.

This is not meant to be rah-rah USA, but rather an empirical look at where the wealth is being created. Of course we can do better. But who is doing more than we are?

The poor cannot survive higher education, not just because of tuition costs; the system, particularly in the private sector which targets the poor, is corrupt. For some interesting readings and reports, see http://luxuriouschoices.blogspot.com/2006/05/federal-aid-student-loan-program.html

Actually, the federal government's effort to reduce poverty during its "War on Poverty" was quite impressive. In 1964, 19 percent of the total population, or 36.1 million people, lived in poverty; by 1969, it had been cut to 12 percent, or 24 million people. This is one of the greatest decreases in poverty in the shortest amount of time in the history of the nation. Interestingly, the most successful poverty-reducing program came from the expansion of AFDC and Social Security. Both of the programs provided cash assistance that helped to lift poor people out of poverty. Economic growth was also strong during this period, but it was not responsible for lifting seniors and single women with children out of poverty; the existing public assistance and social insurance programs created by the New Deal accomplished this.

Thus, I disagree that "every administration has been roughly equal" at reducing poverty. Under Johnson, poverty was reduced by 12 million; under Bush, poverty has increased by 5 million. If you are interested in learning more about the numerous attempts to reduce poverty in the U.S., check out "Social Solutions to Poverty: America's Struggle to Build a Just Society" at http://www.solvingpoverty.com/

Post by smlipton