Answer:
After a financial crisis, a deep recession, and a stalled recovery, it should be no surprise that poverty in America is on the rise. This fall, the Census Bureau reported that a record 46 million Americans — 15% of the population — were living below the poverty line. This is a troubling figure, and it should certainly move us to act to help the poor as we strive to grow the economy.
But efforts to address poverty in America are frequently derailed by misguided ideology — in particular, by the notion that poverty is best understood through the lens of inequality. Far too often, policymakers succumb to the argument that a widening gap between the richest and poorest Americans is the fundamental problem to be solved and that poverty is merely a symptom of that deeper flaw.
Such concerns about inequality are not baseless, of course. They begin from a fact of the modern American economy, which is that, in recent decades, incomes among the poor have risen less quickly than have incomes among the wealthy. And such growing inequality, some critics contend, is both practically and morally dangerous. A growing income divide can foster bitterness and animosity between classes, threaten democracy, and destabilize the economy. Above all, they argue, it violates the cherished moral principle of equality.
Implicit in much of the critique of our income divide is the assumption that inequality per se is inherently unjust, and therefore that the gap between rich and poor is as well. That perceived injustice in turn spurs support for redistributionist policies that are intended to make levels of prosperity more equal across society.
