I will point out that there are factors working to increase poverty, as noted in my post:
“The structural problems in our economy are growing poverty pretty fast, too – real wages are flat over the last 40 years despite a six-fold increase in worker productivity and greatly reduced job security and retirement benefits, while housing and health care continue to climb as a percentage of income, pushing people closer to the edge.”

Echoing is uncritically repeating something someone else says. Posting an essay is absolutely that – it’s echoing something to give it a stronger signal. I think it’s very interesting you complained about the use of the word echoing, and then ignored all the reasoning that went after. I engaged with the arguments in the article you posted. Will you engage with mine?

Besides, I’m not taking cheap shots, I am pointing out that the information you shared is coming from deep in the world where money is the only measure of value. It’s debatable whether you are echoing, but it isn’t debatable that there is a conservative bubble of reality, nor that this article comes from within it.

How do we fix it? Fix what? The essay proposes that social welfare spending is a an ever-growing waste of money. I reject the framing and the conclusion of the essay.

How do we reduce poverty, maybe? Here’s some good ideas that would do that:
– Raise minimum wage so that workers can support their families without government assistance.
– Universal health care, so that no one has to have their economic mobility and prospects controlled by fear of losing their health insurance. How many new businesses would be created if the stakes for leaving wage slavery weren’t so high?
– Charge 0% interest on student loans to start – moving towards providing education for anyone willing and able to put in the work.
– Invest in repairing infrastructure. We need reliable and safe roads, bridges, networks, power grids, and communications networks. This is not just a jobs program, but a force multiplier that will improve our economy.

If the goal is to have an economy that rewards hard work an innovation, these would be easy. Instead, we have policy makers slavishly devoted to ideology (and re-election, but I repeat myself) who won’t do anything actually different.