MHP show: What if we solved poverty?

By Barbara Raab, Senior Producer, NBC News

"Poverty in America can be solved."

So says our colleague on MSNBC, Melissa Harris-Perry, and Sunday morning, she's devoting her show to finding solutions to poverty in America, putting the issue and the possible solutions in plain sight.

"I keep wondering what our country would be like if we solved poverty," Harris-Perry says.

What if children in our classrooms didn't question if there would be dinner that night? What if mothers didn't have to huddle in parked cars at night because they don't have a home? What if veterans didn't have to beg for pocket change? The first step to finding meaningful solutions to our crisis of poverty and inequality is to ask the question, what if? We do not have to simply accept inequality. We can choose a different future. We will certainly not have all the answers on Sunday, but we are going to at least ask the questions.

Sunday's guests do not march in lockstep. They come from across the ideological and political spectrum. They will tackle everything from economic mobility in America -- is it a myth? --  to housing, hunger and criminal justice reform.

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Diana Furchtgott-Roth, Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, suggests in a blog post written for the show that school choice could go a long way to lifting people out of poverty. "Food stamps recipients can choose their grocery stores and their groceries," she says, "but parents can't choose their schools. Parents should be given school stamps, and told to choose their schools." And, she argues, get rid of the minimum wage and other policies that she says make it hard for firms to hire workers. "The economic solutions to reducing poverty are simple," says Furchtgott-Roth, "but the politics of implementing these solutions appear overwhelming, helping the poor to stay poor."

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FOR SUBSCRIBERSAmerican passenger drafted goodbye texts to her family as Flydubai plane plummeted

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FOR SUBSCRIBERSAbdul El-Sayed tries to woo MAHA voters as Democrats seek inroads with RFK’s supporters

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Other guests on Sunday's show will address how prisons keep many locked into poverty even after they're released, how something as simple as a new pair of boots can make it possible to get a better job, and how supporting mothers will go a long way toward lifting struggling families out of poverty.

"We refuse to see women who are low-income as they really are: kind, hard-working, smart, tenacious, and downright entrepreneurial," says Mariana Chilton, Director of Drexel University's Center for Hunger-Free Communities. "How do we end poverty in America? By honoring America's mothers."

It's bound to be an interesting and in-depth Mother's Day conversation. We'll be watching.