Efficiency versus equality in American anti-poverty policy

¶ … paradoxically while the United States has the potential to alleviate poverty and increase the likelihood of even those families who are fatherless to gain an economic foothold, the politics of egalitarianism in effect stop even the best-intentioned programs. The chapter goes on to analyze why such a prosperous nation cannot consistently excel at the tasks of lifting its poorest citizen s out of poverty and into the higher levels of the socio-economic layers of the nation. Analyzing the tensions between purely an efficiency-based strategy to economic and personal income growth relative to one that focuses on equality and egalitarianism, the chapter builds a foundation for even further debate relative to efficiency vs. equality and its muted affects on the economic futures of lower-income Americans.

What is most troubling about this chapter is the structure of moving from the dichotomy of efficiency vs. equality, and the transition to how, by what approach, and through what series of philosophies the challenges of poverty can be met. The author would do better to stay focused more on the causes and effects from previous research vs. searching for the perfect solution of the tensions between efficiency and equality. Dogmatism towards economic self-determination and the tendency to look at poverty as a function of a lack of initiative does occasionally comes into the discussion, which creates more of the fallacy that for some, poverty is a choice. From the position the author seems tempted to create straw men and use them to hold up the concept of poverty as a reason why the U.S. should move more towards equality.