For a very long time, the left and the right have converged on the belief that the preferred cure for poverty is wage work. The left calls for full employment, and for economic growth because it will create full employment. The right calls for scaling back social assistance programs because they presumably allow the poor to avoid wage work and the climb out of poverty that work would ensure. These dual but complementary convictions have crippled our approach to anti-poverty initiatives. Moreover, whatever plausibility that employment as a solution to poverty has had in the past, in the contemporary economy it no longer makes sense.
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