A national policy that can be reasonably effective in addressing issues of poverty must accomplish two things.

1. It must provide a broad and inclusive social safety net that guarantees its citizens a minimal acceptable level of resources to meet basic needs for food, clothing, shelter and healthcare.



2. It must support, promote, and sometimes create conditions that provide opportunites and incentives for individuals and local communities to be reasonably self-sufficient. (The Dickey's of the country are blind to the extent to wich they receive government 'welfare'.)

The devil is in the details.

While not mutually exclusive, these are two separate goals, and large, national programs need to give primary importance to one or the other. Programs that do not focus primarily on one of these goals over the other are doomed to be ineffective. Most of our national programs fail to recognize the distinction.

I keep losing long posts to cyberspace so I'm going to break this up.

Janie