Socialism and Poverty

David Riemer thinks we can end poverty. Riemer is the director of policy and planning at Community Advocates of the Public Policy Institute.

Riemer argues, in a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel commentary on Sunday, that "potential policy packages must be well-conceived and evidence-based, shaped by the poor themselves and rigorously tested..." Among his suggestions are to "raise the minimum Supplemental Security Income and Social Security payments to the poverty line plus $1... a WPA-like transitional jobs program.... and a somewhat higher minimum wage plus an increased earned income tax credit."

Additionally, we need to attack racism, greatly improve the health insurance system, improve the health and education of children etc....

The common thread to all this of course is increased government power and massive income redistribution, or, to be less delicate, socialism.

I wonder if Mr Riemer is interested in the evidence-based and rigorously tested outcomes of the myriad of socialist experiments throughout the world in the last hundred years or so. If he was, he would realize that socialism is not a solution to poverty but one of its main causes.