Rightwing parties want to follow in US’s footsteps of minimal government intervention, but at what cost?

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ext month, Donald Trump will welcome a poverty-stricken family to peruse his plans for a $300m glitzy state ballroom in the White House. The event will be staged as part of National Poverty in America Awareness Month, the time every year when charities document the number of US residents surviving on low incomes.

Of course, the president will do no such thing, preferring to summon the press to watch him rub shoulders with the billionaire class as he did at last month’s black tie dinner for the Saudi ruler and his entourage.

Trump can be expected to ignore calls for policies to reduce poverty and to dismiss the annual awareness campaign, leaving him unencumbered by any guilt that past presidents might have felt looking in the mirror and seeing Louis XIV starring back at them.