If so, the opportunity for the most able workers to earn more than before has increased the size of Britain's national income, which should make it easier to help the poor.

ECONOMIST: Poverty and inequality

The priority he said should be to help the poorest of the poor - especially farmers facing myriad financial pressures.

BBC: Profile: Nitin Gadkari

Yes, services provided by the state can and do truly help the poor, but the question should always be whether or not we can do better.

FORBES: Penn Jillette on Atheism and Libertarianism

Economic hardship and tightening spending constraints have brought the resulting tensions into the open: witness the recent row over whether the government should impose a windfall tax on energy companies and use the money to help poor families meet their rising fuel bills (it didn't).

ECONOMIST: British politics

Meanwhile, those branches of the state that actually do help the poor and working class should be maintained.

FORBES: Blogging 'The Conscience of an Anarchist' by Gary Chartier

Christian leaders should be encouraging their flocks to care about the poor and voluntarily help them.

WSJ: Jamie Whyte: What Would Jesus Do? Nothing.

Rich-country governments should help money flow from the markets by subsidising the risk of investing in clean energy in poor countries: public money should be used to prompt larger sums of private capital.

ECONOMIST: The Copenhagen Summit

Focusing on those markets should help Wal-Mart get past the mistakes that forced it to fold its tent in South Korea, where poor real estate choices gave it bad locations, and in Germany, where it misread the local norms for shopping hours and labor laws.

FORBES: A Whole New Wal-Mart