To Reduce Poverty, Expand the Welfare State https://jacobin.com/2025/08/welfare-state-poverty-aging-disability-unemployment
By
Matt Bruenig poverty happens when
The national income is distributed using payments to laborers and capital owners.
Capital ownership is very unevenly distributed across families.
A large share of the population is not working at any given time.
Nonworkers are unevenly distributed across families.
scenario where capital is not highly concentrate -a social wealth fund where much of the nation’s capital stock is held collectively and each person is entitled to an equal share of the investment return. ( Alaska, Norway
where capital is highly concentrated, Labor income is more evenly distributed than capital income, but its ability to keep poverty low is hampered by the fact that, at any given time, around half of the population is not working and therefore does not receive any personal labor income.
in reality, nonworkers are very unevenly distributed across households. Forty percent of people live in families where more than half of the members work. Another 40 percent live in families where less than half of the members work. Sixteen percent of people live in families where none of the members work. Only 20 percent of people live in families that have the one-to-one ratio of workers to nonworkers.