1. The causes of poverty change quicker than political responses and cultural understandings
2. Policies are not coherent or without contradiction
a. Inertia: centralized policy vs. decentralized implementation and enforcementb. Political conflict: compromises and weaking by policy supporters vs. opponents (within federal gov't, across gov't levels)
c. Policy preferences: targeting collective vs. individual impact
d. Attention span: subject to being forgotten or disfavored by next election
e. Bureaucratic: Redundancy and miscommunications between different implementing agencies
f. "Limits of the possible": ideological and political constraints on identifying structural causes and solutions (e.g., state intervention)
3. The causes of poverty are not external to the policies
4. Rising expectations raise the stakes and contentiousness of policy outcomes