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I think solving the poverty crisis in the U.S. requires a few insights to become broadly accepted: - There are many causes of this systemic poverty and no spec

by Joeri 9y ago

I think solving the poverty crisis in the U.S. requires a few insights to become broadly accepted: - There are many causes of this systemic poverty and no specific regulation or deregulation can fix it. Only broad systemic change can lead to genuine improvement. - The causes and fixes of the poverty crisis are not partisan. Placing either blame or solution with one political party is uninformed and counterproductive. - America must fix its income inequality to fix its poverty. Tax hikes for the rich are unavoidable. There are no free lunches or quick fixes. Everything has been tried before somewhere in the world and the only proven anti-poverty strategy is wealth redistribution. - Things can always get worse, passively waiting until they do is actively contributing to the problem.

davidf18 9y ago
These kinds of articles, especially in the context of the Republican tax changes are veiled attacks on Trump. The taxes have much to do with transfer payments from wealthy to poor and reversing those transfer payments. Rent-seeking -- the use of politics to create politically induced scarcity (in this particular case, housing) causes higher prices which in effect is a reverse regressive tax on the poorer populations to the very wealthy. The proper fix is to remove the market failure of rent-seeking and let the markets do their work.
curun1r 9y ago
I'm curious how you can reconcile your second and third bullet points. If tax hikes on the rich are an unavoidable part of the solution, one party just rammed through a huge tax cut for the rich and the other party did everything they could to stop it. It can be argued that the Democrats don't really care about fixing income inequality and that they like to use it as a talking point more so than they like to actually make progress, but to pretend that the Republicans are anything less than a roadblock to fixing this issue seems disingenuous if you believe what you said in the third bullet point.

by Joeri 9y ago

davidf18 9y ago

These kinds of articles, especially in the context of the Republican tax changes are veiled attacks on Trump. The taxes have much to do with transfer payments from wealthy to poor and reversing those transfer payments. Rent-seeking -- the use of politics to create politically induced scarcity (in this particular case, housing) causes higher prices which in effect is a reverse regressive tax on the poorer populations to the very wealthy. The proper fix is to remove the market failure of rent-seeking and let the markets do their work.

curun1r 9y ago

I'm curious how you can reconcile your second and third bullet points. If tax hikes on the rich are an unavoidable part of the solution, one party just rammed through a huge tax cut for the rich and the other party did everything they could to stop it. It can be argued that the Democrats don't really care about fixing income inequality and that they like to use it as a talking point more so than they like to actually make progress, but to pretend that the Republicans are anything less than a roadblock to fixing this issue seems disingenuous if you believe what you said in the third bullet point.