Wow! I’m going to have to give that some serious thought, but my first reaction is that I really need to read up on that. I suspect that it’s more true than I would have imagined. For example, I know that a very large percentage of kids who qualify for Head Start (about half) stay at home rather than being enrolled by their caregivers in this safety net program. I’d love to see data on this. Anecdotally, I’m a little too old to have qualified for Head Start, but my youngest sister did take part. In a school dstrict that was 20% Black, there were NO Black kids in my little sister’s Head Start class. But that’s anecdotal, of course.

At any rate, that’s a great point! I do suggest a solution that is a cousin of the universal basic income. If we taxed the ulrta-rich just a little more highly, we could eliminate poverty almost completely. Further, my proposal gives financial help to people in direct proportion to just how poor the are (it’s an income floor, not a UBI). Here’s a link to that short piece:

Thanks for the very thoughtful response. :)