Labor Economist Explains: To Fix Inequality, Start Young (with Kathryn Anne Edwards)

Yeah, I have to say, I've been really struck in this whole conversation so much when people talk about the economy and what are we going to do about the economy and how to fix the economy.

They'll say, they'll talk about things.

It's like, okay, well take the economy we have and the workers that we have when we need to do this and this and that.

And you said, no, we need to think about children.

Right.

Where are the workers of tomorrow coming from? Well, they're kids right now.

Right.

And the investments we make in kids right now, they're not really that expensive, but they have enormous effects over their lifetime, both on that person individually and on society as a whole.

So I really appreciate that perspective.

I think that it's something that we don't say out loud enough, but there is absolutely no advantage to our economy to having poor children.

There is nothing.

We get nothing good from having poor children.

So we can continue to tolerate a level of child poverty because we hate their parents.

But there's other way to hate their parents and not keep the kids poor.

I mean, there's so many things we can do if we hate parents.

Like I implore you to think creatively about how to judge parents of poor children and how to like...

I don't know.

Do something.

Think of another way to make yourself feel better and know that you're better than poor parents.

But we do not benefit from keeping children poor.

It is just a matter of how large the costs are to our society and to our economy that we have such a high tolerance for so many kids growing up in such deep poverty.

What it means for our economy that we have this tolerance for accumulated disadvantage.

It doesn't have any benefit.

The only benefit can be that you just don't like helping people or you want to make sure that you don't help their awful parents.

Come on, be creative.