SUMMARY: This article focuses on poverty and inequality, discussing how poverty puts people in a condition in which they cannot make meaningful choices. “Instead, we might look to policies like a guaranteed basic income or a negative income tax, in which we give people money and treat them with the dignity their humanity entitles them to. … Not only would it help those who are suffering get by, but rather than treating them like social degenerates, it would trust and empower them to make their own financial decisions. Given how much responsibility the more fortunate among us have for the problems plaguing the poor, it is the least our society can do.” The author, Shamus Khan is an associate professor of sociology at Columbia University. He is the author of Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul’s School.
Shamus Khan, “The marriage of poverty and inequality: Who is responsible when people don’t have enough?” Al Jazeera America. February 20, 2014.
