I don't think this article has much truth to it, but I'm not informed enough to specify why. The article doesn't seen very good at conveying the message that poverty is a solvable problem.

In the United States, we are generally told that poverty is a deeply complicated problem whose solution requires dozens of reforms on issues as diverse as public schooling, job training, and marriage.

But it’s not true. High rates of poverty can, as a policy matter, be solved with trivial ease. How? By simply giving the poor money.

Claiming that poverty is just an issue of money doesn't seem right to me. I happen to live in a welfare state, where people who can't work or lost their job can apply for financial support. We already have heavy taxes on the riches (52% on income above €54k / $73k). If it was truly only a money problem, we wouldn't have 11% of the population still living in poverty. Besides that, the Demos article linked in the Atlantic article writes this, with the last line seemingly contradictory to the Atlantic:

In 2012, the number was $175.3 billion. That is how many dollars it would take to bring every person in the United States up to the poverty line. In 2012, that number was just 1.08% of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which is to say the overall size of the economy.

To be sure, you probably don’t want to run a program that hunts out every family below the poverty line and brings them right up to it. Such a program would effectively involve imposing a 100% marginal tax rate for all income made below the poverty line.

Maybe someone with a better knowledge of systems can correct me but I'm not convinced yet.