For the past several decades, the so-called "progressive" politicians in America have claimed to be "studying poverty," and they have spent billions and billions of the dollars of coercively-taken tax dollars from hardworking citizens on "solving the problem of poverty." The problem persists.
They would have been better off to have dusted off the cover of Adam Smith's work, then re-read their nation's Declaration of Independence from the taxing and regulating policies of King George in 1776. Then, they might have figured out that the great burst of freedom, innovation, productivity, wealth creation, and plenty actually resulted from the principles of liberty understood by Smith in Europe and the Framers of America's Constitution--not from any planning by government officials.
Of course, we know that their interest never has been solving poverty: their interest has been in accumulating and centralizing power in a political elite in Washington, D. C. They simply use handouts and freebies as political currency for the purpose of buying votes.
Somebody needs to call it what it is: it is not "progressive." It is "regressive" and destroys freedom, opportunity, productivity, and wealth. So-called "progressive" policies produce tyranny and want. They have failed in every nation in which they have been allowed to prevail.
The question now for America is the same one asked by Smith: how do nations create wealth? It is not how do they "redistribute" what their citizens have created?
"Agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and navigation, the four pillars of our prosperity, are the most thriving when left most free to individual enterprise." - Thomas Jefferson
"The enviable condition of the people of the United States is often too much ascribed to the physical advantages of their soil & climate .... But a just estimate of the happiness of our country will never overlook what belongs to the fertile activity of a free people and the benign influence of a responsible government." - James Madison