Poverty and Public Policy Charles Blow Discusses

Poverty and Public Policy

Charles Blow discusses in hits NYT op-ed column the issue of child poverty. He notes up front that his belief is that poverty can never really be ended, highlighting that the man has a realistic outlook on the issue. There are many different causes of poverty, not the least of which is that poverty is, ultimately, relative. What we call poverty today in America would be considered wealthy in half the other countries in the world. His point, however, is that even if you accept that there will always be some poverty, there is a societal obligation to keep the poverty rate as low as possible. He argues in particular against children living in poverty.

This is where public policy comes into play. The United States, simply put, performs poorly on the issues of overall poverty and child poverty, and that is the direct result of public policy. Child poverty rates are higher in the U.S. than any other OECD

country except Mexico, which is an outlier in terms of overall development:

The U.S. Census Bureau highlights how poverty in the U.S. remains at high levels, even as the GDP continues to grow:

The challenge is not wealth, of which the U.S. has a lot, and in growing quantity, it is the way that the U.S. allocates wealth. The argument in favor of pulling children out of poverty is not made because it is economically sound logic -- people are not born with a right to a comfortable living, as that only creates incentive for people to make bad decisions regarding family planning -- but it is a powerful narrative because it counters the prevailing dialogue in the United States. This dialogue, the notion that people are in a state of poverty because of their own laziness or poor choices, has little basis in reality, but has legs with a large segment of the population, enough that public policy choices often reflect this sort of thinking, and public monies are thus not directed towards eradicating poverty, because the poor deserve their state. The child poverty narrative that Blow espouses here is, rhetorically, a counter to that, because children have no control over their own economic fate. Rhetorically, the child poverty argument brings a lot of pathos and ethos to the table, but in terms of its logos the conclusion is that society should aim to have nobody in a state of poverty, because the natural outcome of adults living in poverty is children living in poverty. Further, economically, child poverty leads to adult poverty, which comes with its own set of economic consequences -- a lifetime of dependency of social assistance, government-funded health care and a complete lack of contribution to the economy (Borjas, 2011).

Public policy, therefore, needs to reflect policies that can help people to exit the state of poverty, however they came to be in that state. This means that public policy should emphasis the removal of barriers to wealth creation. Too often, this means lowering corporate taxes or other methods of enriching shareholders and executives. But those techniques do not help people who are impoverished, because they don't own shares. Barriers to starting a business need to be reduced. This can mean finding different ways of providing seed capital for entrepreneurs. It can also mean finding ways of providing mentorship for people who otherwise have no role models. The more costs are associated with starting a business, the wealthier you have to be to start one -- lowering such costs to the point where anybody can start a business is one pathway out of poverty.

Education is another path out of poverty, but education costs in the U.S. are high. Many nations in Europe provide extensive funding for higher education. This comes at the cost of high taxes, but it also means that most workers in these countries have the potential to genuinely add economic value to the country, because they have the skills and knowledge that allow them to compete globally. America's poor tend to be very poorly-educated, and can compete with nobody.

Education and the provision of programs to help lift people out of poverty cost money, but the tradeoff is that America will be more competitive, and will spend less on social assistance and health care for the poor in the long run. America has a high rate of poverty because poverty is not a spending priority -- it is estimated that for $77.2 billion a year, or 2% of the national budget, the child poverty rate could be cut by 60% (Blow, 2015).