Poor No More

by Peter Cove

In the 1960s, America set out to end poverty. Policy-makers put forth an unprecedented package of legislation, funding poverty programs and empowering the poor through ineffectual employment-related education and training. However, these handouts produced little change, and efforts to provide education and job-training proved inconsequential, boasting only a 2.8 percent decrease in the poverty rate since 1965. Decades after the War on Poverty began, many of its programs failed. Only one thing really worked to help end poverty-and that was work itself, the centerpiece of welfare reform in 1996. Poor No More is a plan to restructure poverty programs, prioritizing jobs above all else. Traditionally, job placement programs stemmed from non-profit organizations or government agencies. However, America Works, the first for-profit job placement venture founded by Peter Cove, has the highest employee retention rate in the greater New York City area, even above these traditional agencies. When the federal government embraced the work-first ideal, inspired by the success of America Works, welfare rolls plummeted from 12.6 million to 4.7 million nationally within one decade. Poor No More is a paradigm-shifting work that guides the reader through the evolution of America's War on Poverty and urges policy-makers to eliminate training and education programs that waste time and money and to adopt a work-first model, while providing job-seekers with the tools and life lessons essential to finding and maintaining employment.

210 pages, Paperback

Published February 6, 2017

Reviews

[Jordan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cove walks a fine line between the two major parties' ideals, proposing a common-sense compromise solution to poverty that ought to appeal to both if militant partisanship wasn't such a big deal right now. Conservatives will hate this plan because it leaves government programs in place; liberals will hate it because implementing it means admitting their approach to fighting poverty has been wrong for decades. But the reality is that a compromise like this is better than what's happening now. Hopefully this book and plan gets into the right hands to truly make a change.

[Cherye Elliott · Rating 3 out of 5]

Let them eat cake

“Work banishes those three great evils, boredom, vice and poverty”.
Government benefits should be temporary. Training and education should not come first. It should be in addition to working. People are too dependent on the government being their parents. Cut them off of that umbilical cord and let them sink or swim.

[Nicola · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is not a comfortable book to read. Cove bluntly criticises the welfare system, saying it causes and encourages dependence on benefits and consequently causes poverty itself. It isn't a new idea, but coming from somebody who has spent his life working on programs to reduce poverty in the US, it a much more persuasive one.
To think people in difficult circumstances are incapable of working is, Cove argues, terribly patronising and denies them the opportunity to develop the valuable life skills all employment provides, things like self esteem, independence and teamwork.
My main criticism is that Cove does like to hearken back to the good old days of America a bit, when everybody used to an honest days work. His implication that attitudes towards work are worse now than in the past is a bit simplistic - it doesn't really take into account the enormous social changes of the last century.
However his arguments about the value of employment are sound. When it comes to finding a way to help disadvantaged people, we must consider if welfare programs are providing an escape from poverty, or a short term fix which condems future generations to dependence on the state.