Peter Cove is a nationally-acclaimed advocate for private solutions to welfare dependency, and author of the new book, POOR NO MORE: Rethinking Dependency and the War on Poverty. Peter Cove is founder of America Works, the first for-profit, welfare-to-work company. He has created more than 1 million jobs for welfare recipients through America Works and other private sector endeavors. For 50 years, he has been at the forefront of mitigating poverty by promoting jobs as a solution to welfare dependency. He previously served in key posts in New York City municipal government, charitable foundations, and private companies.



Peter Cove is a frequent media guest who has appeared on major radio and television programs nationwide. He has contributed to such publications as the New York Post, New York Daily News, The Hill, City Journal, and the Huffington Post. Peter Cove has testified before the United States Congress. He graduated from Northeastern University and resides in New York City. Check out America Works http://americaworks.com/. 

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Rethinking Dependency and the War on Poverty

By Peter Cove

Washington, DC—In the 1960s, America set out to end poverty. Policy-makers put forth an unprecedented package of legislation, funding anti-poverty programs and empowering the poor through ineffective employment-related education and training. However, these handouts produced little change, and efforts to provide education and job-training proved inconsequential, boasting only a 2.5 percent decrease in the poverty rate since 1965. Decades after the War on Poverty began, many of its programs had failed. Only one thing really worked to help end poverty—and that was work itself, the centerpiece of welfare reform in 1996.

In POOR NO MORE: Rethinking Dependency and the War on Poverty (Transaction Publishers, February 2017), Peter Cove—acclaimed advocate for private solutions to welfare dependency—proposes a radical solution to abolish all welfare and poverty programs and replace them with jobs for all able Americans. As Peter Cove argues, “Simply, I propose that we eliminate all welfare programs except those geared toward people who truly cannot work due to physical or mental problems. Second, we scuttle all poverty programs, including everything from Head Start to Food Stamps. From 1964 until today we have spent over $19 trillion on such programs and have hardly moved the poverty rate down from 17 percent in 1965 to 14.5 percent in 2014. We should wipe the slate clean, take all the money saved, and create jobs—first, in the private sector and then, as a last resort, in the public one. In so doing we will return our country to a work ethic and steer it away from dependency. We will solve poverty with work—a job for all who
are able.”

POOR NO MORE is a pioneering plan to restructure poverty programs by prioritizing jobs above all else. Traditionally, job placement programs stemmed from non-profit organizations or government agencies. However, America Works, the first for-profit job placement venture founded by Peter Cove, has the highest employee retention rate in the greater New York City area, even above these traditional agencies—and almost always beats the competition in markets nationwide. In the 1990s, when the federal government embraced the work-first ideal, inspired by the success of America Works, welfare rolls plummeted from 12.6 million to 4.7 million nationally within one decade.

For 50 years, Peter Cove has been at the forefront of mitigating poverty, starting out as a true believer in income transfers, social services, and a reliance on improving human capital through training and education programs. He gradually came to the realization that these programs were failing individuals by stressing education and training over work itself—leaving those in need without real world work experience and utterly dependent on government largess. Despite these failures, liberal politicians and policy-makers—avowed defenders of the downtrodden—continued to advocate for these failed programs. Why? Peter Cove contends that “making real change threatens the foundations of their own electoral support. Because defending the vulnerable is ultimately less important than kowtowing to labor unions, social workers, community groups, and the welfare-industrial complex. They have thrown the poor under the special interest bus.”

Armed with this new understanding, Peter Cove put these theories into action by founding America Works, the first for-profit welfare-to-work company. America Works offers employment services to state and local welfare agencies with the aim of placing welfare recipients in jobs quickly, with a minimal amount of time spent on training. Instead, America Works weeklong training sessions are narrowly focused on the attributes and skills needed to land an entry-level job. Trainers work with clients on the basics, such as maintaining a businesslike personal appearance, speaking properly, preparing a resume, and showing up on time. Clients quickly learn that success depends on self-discipline and their own motivation and effort. Peter Cove has created more than 1 million jobs for welfare recipients through his for-profit company America Works and other private endeavors.

On the march today are social policies based on progressivism that reject the welfare bill of 1996’s mandate for work and reciprocal responsibility. As practiced by President Barack Obama and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, we are returning to the failed programs and approaches of the past that now threaten the gains made in reducing poverty, dependency, and welfare rolls when a work-first method was adopted. POOR NO MORE is a paradigm-shifting work that guides the reader through the evolution of America’s War on Poverty and urges policy-makers to eliminate training and education programs that waste time and money, and to adopt a work-first model.

To arrange an interview with Poor No More author Peter Cove, please contact Stephen Manfredi at 202.222.8028 or smanfredi@manfredistrategygroup.com .