Jeff Maskovsky: So the first question to discuss is around the priorities for research topics on impoverishment in this moment. Are there particular aspects of this particular moment, this conjuncture, that stand out to you as requiring a particular kind of research response? Or are the old questions still good enough to answer?
Frances Fox Piven: I think the old questions would be very good – and actually, we have a lot of answers to the old questions but the answers are not much attended to, they don’t get much illumination or attention. I mean, everybody, I suppose, is tired of, but also knows, that poverty has persisted and increased sharply in relative terms in the United States. I think most reasonable people also know that the policies that would alter those trends are at hand. They’re available technically, intellectually, and in resource terms. We could eliminate this kind of poverty – but there isn’t a chance that it’s going to happen under current political conditions….
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