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View Full Version : Fighting "poverty" by promoting poverty




Cowlesy
09-05-2007, 11:01 AM
You guys will LOVE this post.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2007/09/fighting_poverty_by_promoting.cfm

My favorite lines came at the end...


And he's right! But it takes a special kind of brazenness to propose a reduction of the national poverty rate at the expense of ensuring that more people stay poor by denying them opportunity to set foot in the nation.

If Mr Rector cared about actual human poverty, as opposed to some statistic about the number of Americans beneath what he agrees is an arbitrary line, he'd favour an increase in legal immigration and some kind of guest-worker program. If these policies were to inflate American poverty rates, as they surely would, that would be something to be proud of. From a humanitarian perspective, if a wealthy nation's poverty rate improves, then it isn't letting enough poor people in.