January 20, 2012
That is the nature of the complaint in his column, that no one is talking about poverty, even if he probably doesn’t realize it. Of course there are people talking about the factors behind poverty, the most important of which is the weak economy. When we had low unemployment and strong growth at the end of the 90s, even those at the bottom of the income ladder were seeing greater opportunities.
To get from here to there would require more stimulus, more aggressive action from the Fed, and a lower valued more competitive dollar which would bring millions of manufacturing jobs back to the United States. However, the Washington Post (along with most other major news outlets) almost never presents the views of those making such arguments.
While Gerson thinks the problem is that people are not talking about the factors that cause people to remain mired in poverty, the real problem is major news outlets are not anxious to promote this discussion.
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