ABSTRACT
This chapter discloses how the market economy in the United States creates inequality and poverty among families, how unequal resources among communities help to maintain poverty and how inequality has increased over the past 15 years. It declares that market systems and market-based policies are in many respects antisocial, anticommunity, and antifamily. The chapter argues that the coexistence of poverty and wealth in the United States is not a paradox. Social service providers find themselves working, to a large extent, with families in poverty. The chapter examines disparities among cities in four metropolitan areas in 1980 and 1990, using an approximation of H. F. Ladd and J. Yinger's index of fiscal health. Orthodox economic theory has in the last 20 years become the dominant paradigm in the public policy arena, producing a whole range of policies and programs. Public policy has contributed to the intensification of competition in US labour markets and the extension of markets into new areas of life.
