CSM: How best to boost the 'working poor'?

[pampango]

Nearly 1 in 3 working families now qualify as 'working poor.' More affordable college – and a more progressive tax system – would help.

"We are moving away from shared prosperity," says Brandon Roberts. "It is disturbing."

Mr. Roberts is lead author of a new study of "working poor" families, the nearly 1 in 3 working families who earn less than 200 percent of the official poverty threshold. These are families who do have a member working steadily, but are "hard-pressed to stay afloat in the weak economy," he says. They are one paycheck away from major financial difficulty.

Washington needs more active government policies to reverse a 30-year trend toward income and wealth concentrating at the top of the income ladder as a result of a failed "laissez-faire experiment" of reduced government intervention in the economy. He'd like to see a more progressive tax system (higher taxes on the well-to-do), a higher minimum wage plus other changes to help the working poor, and rule changes to make it easier for trade unions to organize and bargain for improved wages and other working conditions.

Such measures, he says, would "strengthen our democracy so money doesn't run it." Besides the rising concentration of income and wealth at the top, a multidecade trend that most analysts acknowledge, the Roberts study notes that the different income groups are increasingly sorted into different neighborhoods, schools, and social networks. So poor children are at greater risk of being isolated from educational and economic opportunities that might provide a path out of poverty.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/David-R.-Francis/2011/0214/How-best-to-boost-the-working-poor

Great recommendations, but will anything happen? A more progressive tax system, higher minimum wage, and making it easier to unionize all will boil the blood of repubs and teabaggers.