Paul Krugman:Helping the Poor, the British Way

[cal04]

It’s the season for charitable giving. And far too many Americans, particularly children, need that charity.

Scenes of a devastated New Orleans reminded us that many of our fellow citizens remain poor, four decades after L.B.J. declared war on poverty. But I’m not sure whether people understand how little progress we’ve made. In 1969, fewer than one in every seven American children lived below the poverty line. Last year, although the country was far wealthier, more than one in every six American children were poor.

And there’s no excuse for our lack of progress. Just look at what the British government has accomplished over the last decade.

(snip)
The moral of my Christmas story is that fighting poverty isn’t easy, but it can be done. Giving in to cynicism and accepting the persistence of widespread poverty even as the rich get ever richer is a choice that our politicians have made. And we should be ashamed of that choice.

http://wealthyfrenchman.blogspot.com/

[babylonsister]

1. Smooches to cal04,

for being a dream that delivers the news to me!

[Missy M]

2. In this country we can send a man to the moon and wage...

billion dollar wars but we can't even get a measly minimum wage hike, no less twice as much as it is, as the British government did.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

3. He's a bit too kind to the Blair government, which is

trying to dismantle the National Health Service by underfunding it (probably because of having to pay for the Iraq War) and making it unsatisfactory enough so that the right-wing press is egging people on to demand privatization.

Also, the minimum wage is higher, due to the exchange rate, but its purchasing power appears to be about the same as ours. When I was in England last summer, I noticed that most things were the same in pounds that they would be in dollars here, so that an item that cost £5 there would cost $5.00 here, even though a pound is worth $1.95 now.

[Joe Bacon]

4. Gee, where are the churches?

Talk to idiots like my aunt, who say that the churches should be taking care of the poor and needy.

Then I ask her who will cover her Social Security check if the churches take over and she shuts up.