In the 21st century, we appear to be suffering from collective amnesia, at least when it comes to the issue of poverty. We seldom discuss this issue any longer in our national dialogue. It is as if it has disappeared from our consciousness. Where has this collective national neglect gotten us? About a decade ago, when the original piece was first put together, here were some of the numbers I shared:

Overall poverty number (almost 50 million) is somewhat higher than it was several decades ago. Our child poverty rate (roughly 1 in 5 kids) would spark outrage in our peer nations though hardly is noticed here (note: our child poverty rate is sone 5 or 6 tines higher than in several Scandinavian countries);

Income and wealth inequality are at levels not seen since just before the Great Depression. The share of all income going to the top 1 percent was back up to 24 percent in 2007, the year preceding our most recent economic collapse. While inequality in most advanced counties is up, the U.S. raned 4th worst out of 33 peer nations (in 2013);

Social mobility rates in the U.S. have declined to the point that we have fallen behind our so-called ‘socialistic’ peers in that respect. By some measures of social mobility, the probability of moving up the income distribution (e.g., from the 4th quintile to the 2nd quintile for example), we rank dead last compared to our European peers. Want the American dream, head to Scaninavia;

U.S. health care outcomes are middling at best. We stand next to Romania in some rankings despite spending more than anyone else, by far. Worse, we had the 47th highest infant mortality in the world when this piece was written;

Our educational outcomes suggest that our kids are falling further behind our primary economic competitors, particularly in math and the sciences. Our rate of functional illiteracy among adults (reading comprehension substantially below expected grade level) places the U.S. well down the international list;

Oh, and we had (when this was written) the highest teen birth rate among advanced nations.

What I find particularly troubling is that our easy strategies for dealing with declining economic opportunities (e.g., stagnating incomes for most along with growing societal inequality) appear exhausted. We have already delayed marriage, had fewer children, thrown our spouses and partners into the labor market, saved less and borrowed more (using housing equity as personal ATMs), and added more advanced educational credentials after our names. And our children often delay establishing their own households (good luck kicking them out of the nest). And still, economic outcomes and opportunities grow more unequal.

Yet, we see remarkably little outrage across the country. When new policies are posed, not enough people ask … ‘what does this do for the poor and those falling further behind in an increasingly bitter Darwinian struggle for success.’ So, let us ask again, did we lose the ‘War On Poverty?’ (I should note that this was one of five question I had on my Ph.D. preliminary examination back when the war was a recent and ongoing conflict.)

On a superficial level, the answer is yes … at least in terms of anticipated expectations. But let us think about the question in a slightly different way. Think of the adverse trends over the past several decades that would be expected to exacerbate poverty here in the States and also increase the economic struggles for so many. Here are a few of those salient trends:

Demographic changes … consider the dramatic rise in single-parent households raising children;

Globalization … American firms seek to lower labor costs by outsourcing higher-paying jobs overseas.

Technology driven changes, automation, and especially artificial intelligence … tasks formerly done by humans are increasingly performed by digital technology and robotics. After all, can robot driven trucks or college courses being led by AI technologies rather than troublesome professors be far off?;

Immigration … with migration opening up in the mid-1960s, we saw the proportion of foreign borns jump from 5 percent to 13 percent, many (though surely not all) of whom were low-skilled individuals;

Deunionization … unionized workers in the private sector fell from about one-third of the workforce in the 1950s to about 7 percent in recent years;

A Fractal Economy … within specific sectors of the economy, compensation packages have grown wildly unequal even in the face of modest differences in talent and contribution. A typical CEO’s remuneration went from 27 times the average worker’s pay in 1973 to 262 times that average in 2008. A professional baseball player who gets one additional hit for every 10 plate appearances earns multi-million dollar contracts as opposed to another who fails to get that hit and struggles to make a living in the minor leagues;

Macro-Policy Changes … aggregate federal taxes and benefits to individuals reduced inequality by 23 percent in 1979 but by only 17 percent in 2007. In effect, our overall policy structure became less favorable to struggling families;

When you consider these adverse trends as a whole, including others that might be added, perhaps we did better than many of us thought, at least in moderating the deleterious impacts associated with an increasingly hostile world for those stuck toward the bottom of the income distribution. Without the efforts of so many since the mid-1960s, there would be even more hunger, insecurity, and suffering across the land. Still, so much remains to be done.

I remember asking a colleague many years ago why he thought the United States had such an impoverished social safety net for the vulnerable and disadvantaged. He gave a one word answer … heterogeneity. I dismissed his answer as overly simplistic. Over the years, though, I came to fully appreciate his terse response. We are too tribal and have no common culture or identity. It is too easy for us to say, and to believe, that the less successful are ‘them’ and not ‘us.’ They are ‘the others’ who did it to themselves. In effect, we are not all in this together. It is instructive to note that Americans are more likely (by some 30 percentage points) than our European counterparts to respond positively to questions that assign success to personal efforts as opposed to luck or social environments or inherited family fortunes. If you struggle, it is your fault. You should have made sure you were born to a wealthy family.

Alas, we are getting to the end of our journey through the poverty and policy thicket. Next time, however, some final thoughts.