Trump Says He'll 'Revive Inner Cities' but Doesn't Have a Plan to Fight Poverty

Additionally, the moderators and audience members, whose votes were said to be undecided at the time of the town hall-style debate, did get to some policy questions. The candidates talked briefly about energy, reiterated their opposing stances on taxes, and pontificated on how the US should continue their involvement in Syria. But that's kind of it? A woman's right to access abortion care didn't get a mention. The rising burden of student loan debt was ignored. Rising income inequality was scarcely talked about.

Trump did talk about poverty as a non sequitur when an audience member asked a question about the candidates's ability to be "a devoted president to all the people in the United States"—but, unsurprisingly, he really didn't elaborate on how he was going to tackle the issue. "You go into the inner cities and—you see it's 45 percent poverty. African-Americans now 45 percent poverty in the inner cities," he yelled. "The education is a disaster. Jobs are essentially nonexistent." Then Trump basically just said, "Vote for me because it can't get any worse than it is now," which is definitely not true.

Clinton, for her part, directed people to check out her specific policies, oriented toward helping kids and families, on her website, in the context of a strained compliment to Donald Trump's children. So I decided to take her up on her word for it. I also checked Trump's website, for good measure, to see what kinds of policies the former reality TV star would put in place to combat poverty and income inequality. It turns out that the former Secretary of State has indeed spent her 30 years in politics developing an extremely detailed plan to help both middle class and low-income families get a leg up—and Trump is good at pointing out that people are struggling, but he has no real policy proposals that will help them.

Anti-poverty strategies can manifest in myriad ways: Repealing the Hyde Amendment, for example, would help low-income women access abortions under Medicare, which would reduce unwanted pregnancies, meaning women wouldn't have to cut their education and careers short. Clinton supports repealing the Hyde Amendment, as well as supporting women's access to reproductive care; she is also an advocate for equal pay for women. Trump supports none of those things. Both candidates have plans to improve our infrastructure, which would create jobs, though Trump's plan doesn't have any details. Trump does, however, have some fleshed out thoughts on taxes, investing in education, and criminal justice—which are all key factors in reducing poverty and income inequality. I asked Greg Kaufmann, a senior fellow at the American Progress Action Fund, an independent, nonpartisan policy institute, to help me figure out how Trump's take on those issues stack up against Clinton's.

Investing in education
Clinton has proposed doubling number of children served by HeadStart, the government funded pre-kindergarten system for children from low-income households. It's been shown that early education investments have a lifelong positive impact on kids, increasing their ability to graduate from high school and ultimately earn more. Importantly, she also has a plan in place to incentivize schools to reform punitive disciplinary measures. With the increased presence of police in schools, many students, particularly students of color, end up in the criminal justice system for petty infractions. Clinton also says she will increase K-12 funding.

Trump's education policy is slim: He advocates for vouchers for school choice for kids in poverty and, as Kaufmann explains it, this is, at best, a Band-Aid solution. "The problem with the voucher program is that you're still going to have schools in the communities that are struggling," he said. "We're not putting in the resources that people need in these schools. There might be a single counselor for a hundred kids. There's discrepancies in teacher pay between affluent districts and poorer districts. School districts are paid for largely by property taxes, so [poorer districts] just don't have the same resources. If you start pulling kids out of the schools you're still not giving the schools the attentions they need. Trump talks about how schools are failing children, instead of talking about how we are failing those schools." On that note, Trump also says he'll simply dismantle the Department of Education.

Taxing the wealthy
Judging from Trump's website, his tax plan is really one of his only policies that could be seen as anti-poverty, in that he says it will create more jobs for everyone by decreasing taxes on business income and the wealthy. Trump proposes a top income-tax rate of 35 percent, which is down from our current tax rate of 39.6 percent. Kaufmann says that this really wouldn't do anything to help anyone besides those getting the tax benefit. "He's basically talking about trickle-down economics," he told me over the phone. "I don't think we really have to argue about this anymore: We have decades and decades of this policy, and it has not shown good results. Beyond that, he really lacks any details on how he would create jobs."

Indeed, studies have shown that overall economic growth—or more money for top earners—doesn't translate to poverty reduction. The Brookings Institute analyzed cities with the highest growth rates and found that the quality of life for the poorest people didn't improve accordingly. "Our study suggests that growth and prosperity alone are not enough to improve outcomes in inclusion," Chad Shearer, one of the authors of the study, told the Washington Post. "That's especially poignant in D.C., which has one of the highest median incomes and median wages—but also the highest disparities between whites and people of color."

Clinton, on the other hand, is committed to raising taxes on the wealthy so that the rich pay their "fair share." She has additionally called for 4 percent "Fair Share Surcharge" on those who make more than $5 million a year. And while both candidates support closing the "carried interest loophole," which allows hedge fund managers to pay a lower tax rate on their income, experts say that Trump's reduction of the corporate income tax rate to 15 percent would just create another loophole.

Raising the minimum wage
Clinton has called for a $12 minimum wage and for ending the tipped minimum wage, which has been at $2.13 an hour since 1991. She also has a plan to incentivize businesses to share their profits with their employees. Trump's stance on raising the minimum wage is completely incoherent. He's been for it and against it at various points in his campaign. As recently as August, Trump says he supports a federal minimum wage increase to $10 an hour, "but believes states should set the minimum wage as appropriate for their state." He could end up changing his mind again, which wouldn't be a good thing—minimum wage increases are a key component of fighting poverty.

"We just saw the largest single year decline in poverty in nearly 50 years with the recent census report. Incomes rose for everybody, but they rose the most for people at the bottom," Kaufmann said. "That's because of these minimum wage laws that have been passed at the state and local level. In the late 60s, a minimum wage worker could lift an entire family of three out of poverty. Now, even though the average minimum wage worker is on average more educated and more productive, they're more than $4000 below the poverty line. We have to adjust that and get current." Kaufmann also mentions that raising the minimum wage would reduce the number of people on government assistance.

Criminal Justice
Clinton has committed to supporting legislation to end racial profiling and reforming mandatory minimum sentencing laws that disadvantage people of color. Trump repeatedly mentioned of "reviving inner cities" in last night's debate. However, this might be hard to reconcile with his stance favoring heavy policing of those same communities, including stop-and-frisk. Mass incarceration of entire communities of people tends to be at odds with bringing those same people out of poverty. "So far all I've heard from Donald Trump is that we need to 'get tough on crime,'" Kaufmann said grimly.