To Beat Back Poverty, Pay the Poor

[IDemo]

By TINA ROSENBERG
January 3, 2011, 8:15 pm

The city of Rio de Janeiro is infamous for the fact that one can look out from a precarious shack on a hill in a miserable favela and see practically into the window of a luxury high-rise condominium. Parts of Brazil look like southern California. Parts of it look like Haiti. Many countries display great wealth side by side with great poverty. But until recently, Brazil was the most unequal country in the world.

Today, however, Brazil’s level of economic inequality is dropping at a faster rate than that of almost any other country. Between 2003 and 2009, the income of poor Brazilians has grown seven times as much as the income of rich Brazilians. Poverty has fallen during that time from 22 percent of the population to 7 percent.

Contrast this with the United States, where from 1980 to 2005, more than four-fifths of the increase in Americans’ income went to the top 1 percent of earners. (see this great series in Slate by Timothy Noah on American inequality) Productivity among low and middle-income American workers increased, but their incomes did not. If current trends continue, the United States may soon be more unequal than Brazil.

Several factors contribute to Brazil’s astounding feat. But a major part of Brazil’s achievement is due to a single social program that is now transforming how countries all over the world help their poor.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/03/to-beat-back-poverty-pay-the-poor/?partner=rss&emc=rss

[pinto]

1. Kick

:kick:

[dkf]

2. Isn't that basically the child tax credit with conditions?

We could easily make the tax credit contingent upon parents doing all that stuff.

It is ironic that parents must be paid to be decent parents nowadays. I'm not sure if that is a complete dis to poor parents or not.

[raccoon]

3. K&R. nt

[ladjf]

4. Whatever they are doing, we should try it here in the U.S. nt

[bvar22]

5. Latin America has given us the Blue Print for REAL "Change".

They have accomplished near bloodless Populist Revolutions.
All we need is the will.


When the Working Class & The Poor realize we have more in common with each other than we have in common with the elite leadership of BOTH Political Parties, we can force "CHANGE".
WE outnumber THEM.


VIVA Democracy!!!!
I hope we get some here soon!