Wages for most Americans are rising only very slowly right now and have been stagnant in real terms for most of the last four decades -- not least because most of the better floors in the U.S. economic building are currently being gutted by deindustrialization. You can't get everyone out of poverty while simultaneously outsourcing to Asia the well-paying jobs on which the general prosperity of middle-class America still depends. And you do not solve poverty -- for the society as a whole -- by focusing policy on routes out of poverty by a hard-working few. You solve poverty by raising the base of the ladder for everyone. No matter what Republicans claim, you cannot make the American dream a reality for the mass and generality of Americans by simply creating more ladders that reach up to the privileged few. You can only make the American dream a reality for the mass and generality of Americans by raising the floor on which the ladders are actually set. Poverty is not something to be escaped from. Poverty is something to end.
Wake Forest University's David Coates hits all of the right notes here.
TS
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