SID SALTER: Defining poverty is key to understanding
I wrote recently about that fact that both Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Marco Rubio launched their presidential bids talking about income inequality.
Time Magazine listened to the opening salvos by Clinton and Rubio and declared: “Income inequality is clearly going to be the key economic rallying issue of the 2016 presidential campaign.”
The problem is, for many, a chasm of misunderstanding about what exactly the term “income inequality” means. For many, they equate “income inequality” with “poverty” and consider the terms interchangeable.
That’s a slippery public policy slope and particularly so in Mississippi – the state with the dubious distinction of the “poorest state in the union” based on last place status in per capita income.
As I noted last month, income inequality is defined well by journalist John D. Sutter when he says: “Income inequality refers to how evenly or unevenly income is distributed in a society. The U.S. has a relatively high level of income inequality because the very richest people take home a large share of the economic pie – and there is a relatively large gap between them and some of the poorest people in America.”
Daily Journal
http://djournal.com/opinion/sid-salter-defining-poverty-is-key-to-understanding/
4/29/15
Magnolia Tribune
