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Maria Hernandez
Professor Aaron Johnson
ECON 2106
2 July 2017
The Role of Government to Address Poverty
There is an easy way to fix poverty – let us take money from Amazon’s CEO, Jeff Bezos,
and invest it on the poor people in the U.S.; he is only worth over 72 Billion. Or why do not we
get the folks that contributed to the Georgia – 6 District Election, with approximately 55 MM
dollars spent in a few months, to donate to the poor within their community – unfortunately no
one is that selfless.
Since those with the means to help, are not likely to give up their money out of their own will
and desire, the US Government must create policies to reduce poverty within American society.
Many factors combine to make poverty a phenomenon with multiple faces closely related to each
other. Although poverty is commonly associated with a lack of resources to live, it also has a
physical and psychological effect that changes the lives of those who cannot get what they need
to survive.
Poverty is defined as the lack of what is necessary to ensure material well-being,
particularly food, but also housing, land and other assets (worldbank.org). In other words,
poverty entails a lack of many resources that lead to hunger and physical deprivation. According
to the U.S. Census Bureau — poverty status is determined by comparing pre-tax cash income
against a threshold that is set at three times the cost of a minimum food diet in 1963, updated
annually for inflation using the Consumer Price Index (irp.wisc.edu). In 2015, the most recent
year for which data are available, the poverty threshold for a family of four was $24,257. The
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official national poverty rate was 13.5 percent. There were 43.1 million people in poverty
(census.gov).
Based on the definition of the US Census Bureau, the way to fix poverty is to make an
adequate salary for a family of four – a salary over 25k per year. So what keeps one from making
an adequate salary?
• Lack of Jobs – the government should consider polices to prevent private companies
from outsourcing jobs to China, India, and Mexico for example. Low skill jobs have been
shipped out to foreign countries for the last 30 years, leaving folks with no alternatives. Places
like the “Rust Belt” in the US, have a void in jobs for low skilled labor; whereas 30 years ago, a
person with little skill could get a decent paying job at a steel mill or foundry. There is also the
Auto and Textile industries, which also lost thousands of well-paying jobs, leaving many
