Jobs are the best way to fight poverty. Most of the impoverished are unemployed and many of those have stopped seeking work; very few are employed full time. More often than not, government policies erect obstacles to employment (e.g., taxes, wage floors, licensure, regulations, mandates, and negative work incentives created by many aid programs). Reversing those entanglements is imperative if we are to foster broad self-sufficiency.

Like so many other areas in which government attempts to intervene, vast spending on anti-poverty programs does little to address the underlying problems. “Throwing more government dollars at this problem won’t solve it. Despite record spending on programs to help the needy, a record 46 million Americans were in poverty in 2012.”