You might find this analysis of poverty in the United States compared with the rest of the world interesting:
A groundbreaking study by Just Facts has discovered that after accounting for all income, charity, and non-cash welfare benefits like subsidized housing and Food Stamps—the poorest 20% of Americans consume more goods and services than the national averages for all people in most affluent countries. This includes the majority of countries in the prestigious Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), including its European members. In other words, if the U.S. “poor†were a nation, it would be one of the world’s richest.
Before posting this I was unfamiliar with JustFacts.com so I did a little checking. It is generally considered to have a center-right bias but the bias takes the form of the facts it elects to check not in its handling of the facts which by all accounts is impeccable.
The post brings two issues to mind. First, how significant is relative poverty? I doubt there will ever be a consensus on that question.
The other point is that real poverty by world standards does exist in the United States and it is mostly localized among the rural poor, rural blacks in particular, and Indians on Indian reservations. As I have said repeatedly, I wish that more attention were focused on those in the U. S. who are poor by world standards. That is a scandal. Focusing on relative poverty will get you more votes, though.
Poverty on Indian Reservations is BIA policy. One of its policies is most reservation land is owned collectively, like Soviet collective farms, with a resultant lack of production. My solution would be to abolish the BIA and force the reservations to sell or parcel out their property to the members of the tribes. Yes, a lot of the land is shitty due to whites having grabbed most of the best ground, but the Jews of kibbutzim fame turned the crappy swamps and deserts they bought in pre-WW II Palestine into flowering oases. I see no reason why the Indians could not too. They just need an incentive to. Ownership of land and the profits they can extract from that ownership might turn the trick. Being able to buy and own land is why so many immigrants came to America, because they could not in the old land and thus the profits they made were always at the mercy of their landlords. Henry George understood this. Just my nickel.
I spent a considerable amount of time on Indian reservations in Arizona and New Mexico. Perhaps the most apt sentiment comes from a movie: “Forget it Jake. It’s Chinatown”. They only partially live in this world.
“parcel out their property to the members of the tribes”
That’s been tried. Clear back in 1887. Most of the divied up land was sold or rented to White farmers. Those who held their land generally died intestate and the land was divided and divided and rents administered by BIA.
Now, tribal buyback is the wave of the future, as most ownership plots are too small to be useful.
Blame the failure on what you want, but I’ve come to the conclusion Native Americans are true socialists. One individual may acquire much, but to retain community status, he cannot be seen to hoard it, it must be spent or shared. Therefore, none can acquire the capital needed to run a modern, (even by 1890’s standards), farming operation. You can pull an individual out of this tribal system, send him to White Man’s school, but he still can’t go back and violate their mores.
https://www.omaha.com/news/nebraska/winnebago-and-omaha-indian-reservations-want-to-buy-back-land/article_85d2cc38-9a74-5cea-a12f-8e91b4f07de5.html