To Beat Back Poverty, Pay the Poor

[ProSense]

To Beat Back Poverty, Pay the Poor

By TINA ROSENBERG

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.

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[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

1. You should see the hissy fits the rightos here throw over Bolsa Familia.

Welfare queens in cadillacs, Brazilian version.

[ProSense]

2. The US could take another route

increasing wages, but the RW believes personal responsibility is a substitute for paying someone a decent wage.

They seem to have no concept of the working poor.

[Zoeisright]

3. Exactly.

And that 'personal responsibility' thing applies ONLY to other people. When THEY mess up, it's always someone else's fault. The repuke hypocrisy is mind-blowing.

[jwirr]

4. In the 50s Paul Harvey whom I dislike suggested that if the US paid

each poor family $40,000 a year there would be no poverty and it would save paying all the income maintenance workers. It's the middle man you know.

[ProSense]

5. Increasing the minimun wage would help tremendously. n/t

[jwirr]

6. Absolutely. I was just pointing out that this idea isn't totally crazy.

[butterfly77]

7. ...