Stop Tackling Poverty
“We used to think we could look around and ‘see’ poverty, in a poor city neighborhood across the proverbial railroad tracks, or a poor town, and that’s how we knew it was there and a problem. Or because being black and being poor were conflated, which was how policymakers and the wider public often ‘identified’ poverty in America. Think, for instance, about Donald Trump responding to a question about U.S. racial divisions by characterizing those living in our ‘inner cities’ as ‘living in hell.’ But, if there ever was, there’s no longer such a thing as middle-class, poverty-free places. And the current economic indicators policymakers rely on aren’t helping to make this any clearer.”