John C. Goodman

Families headed by single mothers are five times as likely to live in poverty as married-couple families. Children in single-mother homes are less likely to graduate from high school or earn a college degree. They are more likely to become single parents themselves,...

If no policies are changed, in just ten years 66 million Social Security beneficiaries will see their monthly benefit checks cut by 23 percent. That will be financially devastating for retirees at the bottom of the income ladder – who depend on Social Security for their entire income – and it will double the number of seniors in poverty.

At the same time Medicare payments to hospitals will be automatically cut by 10 percent. That will make seniors, especially low-income seniors, less attractive as patients and lead to rationing of medical care.

As time passes, these financial problems will become increasingly worse. They will spill over and affect every social insurance program – Medicaid, food stamps, housing subsidies, etc.

It is an economic truism that capital is needed to make investments which are a prerequisite for increasing worker productivity, which is a prerequisite for raising the average income of workers. That is to say, capital is essential for economic growth. Economic growth is the most powerful anti-poverty weapon ever discovered. So consuming capital today makes poor people poorer in future years. Some might question whether economic growth is unambiguously good. This post contains two short videos explaining why growth is unquestionably good – everywhere in the world.

The most contentious issue regarding income support for the bottom of the income ladder has to do with work.

As previously noted, the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit, although largely Republican creations, have broad support in Congress from both political parties.

A Goodman Institute study shows that by 2018, if a mother worked full time at the minimum wage, it was impossible for the family to be poor – regardless of the number of children. That conclusion is even more true today, since the average wage for unskilled (and moderately skilled) workers is more than twice the minimum wage, nationwide.

There is no single act of government that creates more inequality in a shorter amount of time than the lottery. Tickets are mainly purchased by below-average income buyers, and then the winner becomes fabulously wealthy.

Surprisingly, this activity is rarely criticized by “progressives.”

The largest lottery winner in history walked away with an estimated $2.04 billion Powerball jackpot.