The Two Legends of American Poverty: Breaking Out of Poverty's Historic Snare

Abstract

Efforts to reduce poverty in America have been hobbled by poverty's historic explanation accompanied by a political reticence to accept its contemporary manifestation. Public policy has directed resources toward modifying personal behavior rather than attending the role macroeconomic decisions contribute to poverty. Whereas poverty could be understood within an environment of economic individualism independent of political choices, the Employment Act of 1946 gave Congress the authority to shape the economy, putting economic choices in the center of the political process, and poverty has become a consequence. Congress holds the political power to shape the economy, and the scope of its constitutional obligation to provide for the General Welfare Clause as stated in the Preamble and in Article 1, Section 8, was clarified in 1936 and applied to the Social Security Act in 1937, giving Social Security and Unemployment Insurance constitutional legitimacy. Social Security has assumed the growing burdens of poverty as America's economic individualism world has waned. Expanded extraordinarily over the past 80 years to enlarge its income maintenance protection, Social Security's twentieth‐century economic structure endangers its twenty‐first‐century obligations while Unemployment Insurance's byzantine financing and its administrative structure have failed miserably to address the problems of contemporary poverty.