The bogus, self-serving notion that poverty is complicated

It's exceedingly simple: Poor people need money and jobs

Is poverty simple or complicated?
(Image credit: REUTERS/Mark Makela)

Poverty is a "mysterious, unknowable, negative spiral-loop that some people find themselves in." So said New York Times philosopher-columnist David Brooks, in the keynote for the release of a Brookings and American Enterprise Institute (AEI) report on poverty solutions.

"Some problems are clock problems," Brooks continued, according to a transcript from sociologist Philip Cohen. "You can take them apart into individual pieces and fix them. Some problems are cloud problems. You can't take a cloud apart. It's a dynamic system that is always interspersed."

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Jeff Spross

Jeff Spross was the economics and business correspondent at TheWeek.com. He was previously a reporter at ThinkProgress.