The Single Scariest Line In Paul Ryan's Poverty Plan

Paul Ryan’s poverty plan (or perhaps anti-poverty plan) has been released and there’s a lot of very good suggestions in it. It’s entirely true that the EITC is one of the most effective poverty plans the US has and thus if we’re all serious about reducing poverty then that looks like a good program to expand. There’s two points I’d make though, one being a constructive suggestion for how to achieve one of the plan’s goals. The other is to point to the single scariest line in the entire presentation. It’s on page 54: 37.1% or 1 in 3. Clearly, you’d like to have a bit of context for that. It’s from a chart entitled “working-age men behind bars” and it contains the rates of incarceration by race, age, gender and education in 2008. And that 1 in 3 rate is for black 20 to 34 year olds without high school diploma/GED.