Two days ago, the Census Bureau released its numbers on income and poverty rates for 2016. The report went largely unnoticed, being a release of technical economic data that mostly just showed incremental changes from the previous year.

Digging into the numbers and putting them in long term historical context, we can find some worthwhile insights. We can see the success of tactical social programs that have helped society’s most vulnerable. But we can also a situation that is clearly deteriorating for an increasingly broad swathe of Americans. And as poverty becomes a broader problem, it requires broader solutions.

The Census Report: Good News, Bad News

The Census report this year was generally treated as a step in the right direction. More often than not, the news was framed as the poverty rate returning to a more or less normal level after remaining elevated for several years in the aftermath of the great recession. The poverty rate declined from a high of 15% in 2012 to 12.7% in 2016, just slightly above where it was on the eve of the great of the great recession in 2007, when it registered 12.5%.

And getting into the numbers, there were numerous other positive things to take away. Minorities have seen fairly pronounced reductions in poverty in recent years. The poverty rate for African Americans has declined to 22.7% for African Americans from 33.1% in 1994 and 55.1% in 1959. The poverty rate for Hispanics declined to 19.4% from 30.7% from 1994. The poverty rate for certain vulnerable populations also built on or maintained gains. The poverty rate for the elderly held at a relatively low rate of 9.3%, down significantly from 29.5% in 1967. The poverty rate for households led by single mothers stood at 28.8%, down from 39.7% in 1991. The poverty rate for households led by African American single mothers stood at 34.2%, down from 54.8% in 1991, and 70.6% in 1959. The inner city poverty rate stood at 15.9%, which is the lower rate it’s been at since 1979.

But on the other hand, there’s much to be disappointed with. The 2016 report comes after nearly 7 years of continuous growth. That after such a long period of growth poverty is still slightly above the levels it was at before the Great Recession isn’t very encouraging, especially considering that we’re most likely going to be going into a recession in the near future.

Under the numbers, there are some other insidious trends. People in the prime of their lives, i.e. between the ages of 18 and 64, have seen their poverty rates gradually ratcheting up since the 1970s. Prime age whites, in particular, saw their poverty rate increase from 5.9% in 1974 to 10% in 2014, before settling back down to 8.8% this year. Prime age black and Hispanic workers, who have enjoy marked improvement in their poverty rate since the 90s, none-the-less have also seen their gains hampered by this. Suburban poverty is also ratcheting up, from below 7% in the 70s to almost 12% in the great recession, before settling back down to an elevated 10% today. While the conditions for single parent households have improved, the poverty rate for children has remained fairly consistent.

Elsewhere, statistics tend to show that education tends to be less of a shield from poverty than it once was. Associate degree holders are as likely to be in poverty today as high school graduates were in the 90s. Bachelor’s degree holders are about as poor today as associate degree holders were in the 90s, and so on and so forth. One study showed that, in 2013, 15% of people in poverty held a Bachelor’s degree or higher, which is up from a mere 6% in 1970-72.

What To Make Of This?

Taken together, we get a picture of poverty in America that hasn’t really been clearly moving up or down since the early 80s and 90s, but which has rather been moving laterally. In the early 90s, the picture, poverty was something was something that happened intensely for certain communities or people, who were alternately victims or “blighted” depending on who you asked. Nowadays, though, poverty has become a more general phenomenon, as working class bargaining power has continued to decline, jobs become less stable, and the cost of healthcare and education spiral out of control even as being an educated or able bodied person becomes less of a sure fire deterrent to poverty. So what are we to make of that?

Well, on the plus side, it indicates that there’s actually been substantial success for liberal programs targeted at helping the most vulnerable. Despite literally decades of people trying to write off the Great Society and subsequent welfare programs as failures, we can see that they’ve actually been successful, and often spectacularly so, in helping some of the most vulnerable in society such as the elderly and single mothers. We can also appreciate the fact that the there’s evidently less “punching down” at racial minorities and people in the inner cities in the current economic system than there was back in the early 80s and 90s, though to be sure there’s still a lot of that and the Republican Party and Trump Administration seem intent on reversing that trend.

But at the same time, this should also point to the limitations of seeing economic justice as simply a matter of ameliorating the plight of this or that group at the margins through a set of tactical programs divorced from a broad based strategy of reform and working class empowerment. Relative progress for the most vulnerable is a wash if it’s in the context of a deteriorating situation, and achieving equality of opportunity is empty if there are fewer opportunities or the end reward is becoming increasing hollow. Ultimately what the poor and increasingly insecure middle class people aren’t going to need isn’t a handout or a hand up, but rather greater power to control to control their economic destiny, which means systemic change driven by broad based solidarity from the ground up.

The Time Is Ripe For Broad Systemic Reform To The Economic System

Getting such a broad based coalition to enact reform at such a deep level is, of course, always going to be difficult. Broad solidarity of this type can be undermined by the same old tactics of divide and conquer through racism, xenophobia, and resentment, and, the electoral success of Trump and the modern Republican party certainly suggests that these are still potent forces. But I’d argue that, in many ways, the current geography of poverty makes this a better time than ever to try.

The concentration of poverty of the 90s made it easy for people in the “mainstream”, i.e. white suburbanites, to see the economic system as basically working for them. It was easy to think of the “poor” as basically dysfunctional failures, blighted by dysfunctional cultures, and dangerous to the point that they needed to be kept in check with draconian “tough on crime” measures. It was common to think of people who advocated for economic justice as little more than bleeding hearts or starry eyed utopians, and welfare as something for shiftless losers (Medicare, agricultural subsidies, or countless other programs excluded, or course). Trump and the modern Republican party may be particular abrasive with their politics of beating up on minorities and the poor, but in the 80s and 90s it’s was more or less the bipartisan consensus. Even the people who were for addressing economic injustices, outside of those from the impoverished communities themselves, were inclined to see them as somehow missionaries alien to the whole thing.

But today it’s getting increasing difficult for people to think of poverty as something that only effects “those” people. The risk of poverty is broader, large swathes are one illness or job loss away from falling into poverty. More people have to tread harder and harder to keep their heads above water as debt of one kind or another piles up. And the more people who can experience poverty, the more people out there there are who have a stake in doing something about it.

True, hardship can make some people jealous and reactionary. Some may assume that the relatively rising fortunes of the formerly “blighted” are somehow the result of their success in plundering the system. Likewise, a lot of people will also maintain a false sense of security, presuming that they’re still above insecurity and presuming that the new poor are now, themselves, blighted. But these people will look increasingly delusional, and while a lot of people want to be deluded, it’s not a tenable position. A lot of other will embrace empathy in their recognition of shared economic hardships. They’ll be receptive to the realization that these are just the iniquities of a system that is increasingly indifferent to them. And if enough of these people can be mobilized, they can recreate the economic system from the ground up.

And to mobilize these people, we need big ideas with broad appeal. The Medicare for all plan is a step in the right direction, as are the campaigns for a 15 dollar minimum wage, free college education. We can craft a message in bold terms of more permanently fixing inequality by advancing democracy in the work place, bringing the banks under control, and protecting our republic against the insidious influence of oligarchy. We can emphasize that an injustice against one is an injustice against all, not just on the basis of vague principle, but because in very real terms they could happen to almost anyone.