Reply #21: "throwing money at it" is indeed the way to solve poverty

[bread_and_roses]

And just what is this "good strong evidence" that "much of the welfare system undermined family units and made the problem worse?"

Poverty in this country is a structural problem built into a system that needs cheap and disposable labor to sustain high profits for Corporations. If every single poor person in this country suddenly had the skills to get a good paying job, exactly where are the jobs for them? And yet people continue to talk about poverty as if it were solely the fault of individuals who do not have the education or the personal strength to "lift themselves" out of it. The poverty level is kept artificially low and the employment figures kept artificially high precisely because we don't want to admit that there is no where for people in poverty to go.

If we admitted the systemic, structural nature of poverty we could no longer demonize and denigrate the poor. We would have to start talking about a basic guaranteed national income and about sustaining neighborhoods - decent schools, free healthcare, decent housing, decent recreational facilities like parks - even when there are no jobs. But the taxes for that would cut into Corporate profits, so we continue with our national pretense that anyone and more significantly everyone can get out of poverty by their own efforts. It is nonsense, demonstrably false, and nothing but an excuse for maintaining Corporate profits and the prison-industrial State.