Although our current poverty situation may be due, in part to income inequality and policies that favor the wealthy. I think it has more to do with how we deal

Although our current poverty situation may be due, in part to income inequality and policies that favor the wealthy. I think it has more to do with how we deal with poverty, which is essentially to throw money at the problem and hope it goes away. I'm a big fan of helping people help themselves. Many people live in poverty because of poor financial decisions or because they don't have skills to succeed in the workforce, not because their taxes are too high. In fact our current tax structure incentivizes people to stay in lower tax brackets because as you start to earn more money, you have to pay a higher percentage of your income to the government. I think the following changes would go a long way to solving the poverty problem. - Focus on providing the basic needs (housing, food and medical attention) by providing those goods and services to those in need instead of just giving people money. - Stop giving loans (especially high-interest loans) to people who do not have good credit. In my opinion the government should not allow loans to consumers to have an more than 10% annual interest. - Stop using the IRS and tax policies as a welfare assistance program. They are probably one of the worst entities able to determine if someone is really in need. As others have pointed out, American poverty doesn't really even compare to situations of people in third-world countries. Poor in this article refers to a statistic released by the census bureau, which best I could tell is calculated using thresholds based on one's income and how many people live in a household. Instead it should be based on whether someone is getting enough to eat, has somewhere to live and can get medical treatment.