Three ways to reduce poverty

Last February Glenn Reynolds wrote an article for the Indianapolis Star, suggesting three areas where Congress could take action to alleviate poverty. One was Education. Glenn writes,

...Yes, Obama's free community college program is a start. But if Republicans in Congress want to make hay, they should also require that every college receiving federal funds — which is pretty much all of them — accept community college credits 100 percent for purposes of transferring. This would substantially help lower-income students trying to get four-year degrees. On a further note, we could go national on something like former Texas Gov. Rick Perry's plan to make it possible to get a four-year college degree for $10,000. Already, 12 Texas colleges have signed on. (Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Mike Lee, R-Utah, have some additional ideas, too.) Meanwhile, at the K-12 level, we need to promote school choice, and alternatives such as online and home schooling, that can offer students better education than failing public schools, at lower cost. If education is a key to alleviating poverty and income inequality, then schools should be run for the benefit of students, not the benefit of teachers and administrators.

Immigration: Yes, we're a nation of immigrants. But it's also true that when you allow a lot of low-skilled immigrants in from Mexico and Central America, you push down wages for low-skilled American citizens. You want to help poor workers in America? Cut down on the number of people competing for their jobs. (The well-off understand the impact of competition, which is why nobody's talking about opening up immigration to unlimited numbers of foreign lawyers, doctors, dentists, accountants or, God forbid, pundits. As Reihan Salam observed in Slate last week, the upper-middle-class is hyper-vigilant about protecting its turf from competition. Likewise, Silicon Valley firms are always trying to relax visas for tech workers so as to push American wages in that sector down, because that's what immigration does to wages.

Job licensing:...occupational licensing is touted as a protection for consumers, but in practice it mostly just protects the licensed from competition, protection for which they reward politicians with votes and donations.

The right to employment is protected by the Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment, which also grants Congress the power to pass "appropriate legislation" to protect rights. Congress should act to make state licensing laws subject to strict judicial scrutiny, and should also require states to recognize each other's professional and occupational licenses so as to enhance mobility and opportunity.

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