Poverty of ideas

The Bluegrass Institute's Chris Derry has a rather cold and callous solution to easing Kentucky's poverty problem:

Actually, I suggested that perhaps Frankfort (a synonym for Kentucky's General Assembly) could help opportunistic individuals – those who want the chance to improve their lives – by offering them one-way bus tickets to Lexington or Louisville.

For an organization that offers "best practices for a better Kentucky" this is a rather nonsensical and perplexing idea.

There are plenty of opportunities available for most people in Kentucky. While, at times, finances may be tight for many Kentuckians, many people can work their way up as long as they hold onto a full-time job.

Here's what a Heritage Foundation report has to say about poverty:

But the living conditions of the average poor person should not be taken to mean that all poor Americans live without hardship. There is a wide range of living conditions among the poor. Roughly a third of poor households do face material hardships such as overcrowding, intermittent food shortages, or difficulty obtaining medical care. However, even these households would be judged to have high living standards in comparison to most other people in the world.

Perhaps the best news is that the United States can readily reduce its remaining poverty, especially among children. The main causes of child poverty in the United States are low levels of parental work and high numbers of single-parent families. By increasing work and marriage, our nation can virtually eliminate remaining child poverty.

Perhaps the best solution to poverty legislators in Kentucky could come up with is the introduction of competition into the Commonwealth's public schools. School choice would force lagging public schools to improve. The better education Kentucky's children receive, the less likely they will live in poverty when they become an adult.

While there is probably no end-all solution to poverty, I know that herding a bunch of people like cattle and shipping them off somewhere else definitely won't be a public policy we will ever see.