Simply providing income supplements and the like will not suffice to do this. First there are too many people who mistakenly believe that people receiving help are lazy and unwilling to work. For that reason, they not only do not want to expand assistance, they want to reduce or eliminate it. Second, most recipients don’t want a handout, they want a hand up.
How then can we help? It requires a multi-pronged approach. We must make sure these people have jobs, even if government must provide those jobs. We have striking infrastructure needs in the United States. We have roads and bridges that need repair. We also need expansion of roads and bridges, among other things. This requires not only the laborers to do the work but many support people behind them.
The greatest expansion of the American economy in modern times occurred when we committed as a nation to building more and better roads and bridges. I’m sure there are those who would choose to call this a government boondoggle, but the work desperately needs to be done in the near future. This puts people in paying jobs, rather than leaving them on the dole, so to speak.
It improves transportation in this country, and puts money in the hands of the poorest residents. Those people will spend the money they receive, in addition to paying taxes on it, which will increase demand and boost the economy as a whole. It gives low income people more self respect and undercuts the notion that these people are ‘unwilling to work’.
We must make sure the jobs we create pay a living wage. Minimum wage as it stands is a starvation wage. It is impossible to support a family on a full time minimum wage job. These jobs also need to include benefits, especially health insurance. Far too many private employers try to sidestep providing benefits, and those with very low incomes cannot afford health insurance.
Beyond that, it puts pressure on private employers to match this. If the government will guarantee a job with full time hours at a living wage and health insurance, other employers will be compelled by the job market to do likewise. There must also be free or subsidized child care provided for low income parents. In some instances, there may also be the need for transportation assistance most likely in the form of effective and efficient public transit. Child care and public transit can provide additional jobs, to boot.
That begins, but will not complete the process of eliminating poverty. There are additional steps needed. We need more educated workers for the economy of the future. We must invest in better public education. We need better funding for K-12 education, along with more support for community colleges and state universities. Too many people complete a college education with tens of thousands of dollars of student debt. This is unacceptable and discourages too many people from pursuing higher education.
We need job training for those people for whom college education is not the best solution. This may be young people who are more suited to other types of work, along with older workers whose jobs may have been eliminated due to changes in the economy. We need to make these people employable, and education is the most effective solution.
We need to have free or heavily subsidized birth control available for women of all ages. Far too many young women are unable to afford birth control, resulting in unplanned pregnancies and becoming single mothers. This often disrupts their education and makes it harder for them to find and keep employment. It also results in abortions that would be quite unnecessary if inexpensive birth control were available.
Finally, we have too many people who have been made unemployable by having been convicted of drug crimes, particularly marijuana. We need to legalize or at the very least decriminalize marijuana and fully pardon those convicted of non-violent drug crimes. The current criminal record makes employers hesitate to hire them, in many cases forcing them into either poverty or a life of crime. Beyond that, we spend billions of dollars pursuing and jailing people for these non-violent crimes.
I suppose some would say this sounds prohibitively expensive, but I suspect it would cost but a fraction of what we currently spend on weapons for the military, some of which the military does not even want, but which are purchased to benefit corporations in the districts of key members of Congress. In the long run, making these people productive members of society will benefit us far more than the monetary cost.
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