Marshall here. Welcome back to The Realignment.

Today's episode builds on Tuesday's conversation with Melissa Carney. There, we focused on

the role of family structure and inequality issues in the United States. Today, I'm looking at

the role of government when it comes to alleviating poverty in the US, especially after COVID

payment supports expired last year. My guest today is Nikhil Goyal, a sociologist and policymaker

who served as a senior policy advisor for Senator Bernie Sanders. Nikhil has two things that he

recently wrote that are especially worth reading. The first is a guest essay in the New York Times

from September titled, America Pold, Children Out of Poverty. Now it's set to reverse course with

inventions and he also released a new book back in August, lived to see the day coming of age

in American poverty. The underlying story here is as part of the response to COVID, the US federal

government significantly reduced the child poverty rate by pouring resources into vulnerable families

and the obviously affected children. As part of the expiration of those benefits, child poverty really

came rolling back. Now, you can have all sorts of qualms with our approach to poverty in this

country and the obvious philosophical debates about the role of government in those issues,

but I just think the stark increase in poverty after the supports expired gets to the core of the

debate that we should be having in this country about how government should impact the lives of those

back home. This is a great conversation and I really recommend you engage with all Nikhil's work.

He is very young, few years younger than me, but I don't think he's a voice who we'll all be hearing

from more in the future. Hope you all enjoy this conversation and a huge thank you to the Foundation

for American Innovation supporting the work of this podcast.

Nikhil Goyle, welcome to the Realignment.

Thanks so much for having me. I am so excited to speak with you. I want to just say a quick

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