What is the theme in All Our Kin: Strategies for Survival in a Black Community by Carol B. Stack?

The inadequate welfare system is a major theme in the book. Stack points out that many researchers of the black urban poor, even those who are genuinely sympathetic, believe that the solution lies in tweaking and reforming the existing welfare system or expanding it with more funding. Such a plan has at least initial plausibility: Poverty is, at its root, a lack of money, so it seems as if it could be solved by giving the poor more money. Stack draws a different conclusion, however. She believes that the current economic system depends upon having a large pool of people who lack any useful skills and are perpetually unemployed.