> Income inequality is one thing, but hardcore poverty, as described by the author, is a different beast
This is something I never thought of but certainly rings true. The left always talks about income inequality and poverty as if they are one and the same. And then rebuttal almost always rebut against income inequality (or being "broke") and not poverty. By conflating the two, we're throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Perhaps we need politicians who will accurately define poverty and policies for getting folks out of poverty, and then once everyone can afford to eat, we can talk about income inequality.
Not sure why that comment got downvoted. I guess that "income inequality" is the Boogeyman Du Jour.
I'm unhappy with it, but it is also a lot harder to address, than hardcore poverty.
A popular thing for people to do, is wring their hands and complain about problems that can't be solved, while ignoring the ones that can be addressed.
Fighting poverty is going to be tough, but fighting income inequality would be orders of magnitude more difficult, because of the entrenched and powerful folks with investment in the status quo.
If we split them, we can deal with the "low-hanging fruit" of poverty, maybe even leveraging the vast resources of the very rich, who might be more willing to help, if they didn't see it as a threat.
Maybe splitting them is helpful, but why would you have to do them sequentially? Many of the things that reduce income inequality also help reduce poverty. Poverty isn't "low-hanging fruit" and it's something people have been trying to eradicate longer than we've been alive.
Saying "let's not even think about B until we've 100% sorted A" is just a way to ensure B never gets done.
I think I gave the impression that we should tackle them sequentially with my comment. My point was that I don't think it's controversial to eradicate poverty, but for whatever reason it is controversial to eradicate income inequality. We don't need to tackle them sequentially but we also don't need to wait for a silver policy bullet that solves income inequality while we try to solve poverty as well. It may be possible to do both, but in the event it's impossible to do B at least we can still try to do A.
This is something I never thought of but certainly rings true. The left always talks about income inequality and poverty as if they are one and the same. And then rebuttal almost always rebut against income inequality (or being "broke") and not poverty. By conflating the two, we're throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Perhaps we need politicians who will accurately define poverty and policies for getting folks out of poverty, and then once everyone can afford to eat, we can talk about income inequality.