Posted on 07/06/2012 6:16:40 PM PDT by Starman417
Hear me out. I’ll end this with a cherry on top, a simple five second mental exercise that exposes the fallacy that is known as wealth disparity.
CATO:
Federal welfare spending in fiscal year 2011 totaled $668 billion***, spread out over 126 programs, while the poverty rate remains high at 15.1 percent, roughly where it was in 1965, when President Johnson declared a federal War on Poverty [14.7%].In 1966, the first year after Johnson declared war on poverty, the national poverty rate was 14.7 percent, according to Census Bureau figures. Over time, the poverty rate has fluctuated in a narrow range between 11 and 15 percent, only falling into the 11 percent range for a few years in the late 1970’s.
***“Since President Obama took office [in January 2009], federal welfare spending has increased by 41 percent, [increasing it by] more than $193 billion per year,” the study says.
Yet poverty level remains the same.
Trillions of dollars spent and not a damn difference. A culture of dependence was created. A voting bloc. Cradle to grave. The argument is not to say we shouldn’t help the poor. The issue is the metric by which we define, measure, help, and report on the poor.
The official poverty measure counts only monetary income. It considers antipoverty programs such as food stamps, housing assistance, the Earned Income Tax Credit, Medicaid and school lunches, among others, “in-kind benefits” — and hence not income. So, despite everything these programs do to relieve poverty, they aren’t counted as income when Washington measures the poverty rate.
My conclusion is that the poverty rate is NEVER going to change. It is not DESIGNED that way. It's another way how pols game the numbers
Relatively, the poor are poorer than the other 85%, but the question is how poor in real terms? So poor they can’t afford cable or cell phones?
Not in America. The pols don't measure nor report after the fact, they measure/report before the fact to keep us giving, giving, giving, giving the largess that created a dependent voting bloc.
The end result is an increasing majority of our poor who can live a lower middle class life (everyone gets a ribbon) while the pols maintain a narrative that appeals to pity. Ad Misericordiam. And one that is bankrupting Western Nations.
(Excerpt) Read more at floppingaces.net...
Everybody should see this, nearly nobody will. So it goes.
There will always be poverty but part of our problem is the definition of modern poverty. Today I think i means not having the latest toy from Apple.
LBJ: pass The Great Society and the Democrats will have the ni**er vote locked up for 50 years. His was a conservative estimate.
It’s a sliding scale.
I grew up in 3rd world conditions compared to the impoverished of today “endure”.
2 and sometimes 3 channels of black and white TV was the height of luxury when I was a kid and I didn’t think of us as poor.
If you are close to my age, having a TV at all made you “rich.”
Succoring the poor is incumbent upon any Christian society. Trying to abolish poverty is a fool's errand, as Our Lord told us. And, succoring the poor out of tax revenues is harmful, as one of Christ's more notable followers in the fifth century observed:
“Should we look to kings and princes to put right the inequalities between rich and poor? Should we require soldiers to come and seize the rich person’s gold and distribute it among his destitute neighbors? Should we beg the emperor to impose a tax on the rich so great that it reduces them to the level of the poor and then to share the proceeds of that tax among everyone? Equality imposed by force would achieve nothing, and do much harm. Those who combined both cruel hearts and sharp minds would soon find ways of making themselves rich again.
Worse still, the rich whose gold was taken away would feel bitter and resentful; while the poor who received the gold from the hands of soldiers would feel no gratitude, because no generosity would have prompted the gift. Far from bringing moral benefit to society, it would actually do moral harm. Material justice cannot be accomplished by compulsion, a change of heart will not follow. The only way to achieve true justice is to change people’s hearts first—and then they will joyfully share their wealth.”
-– St. John Chrysostom on the poor from On Living Simply XLIII
I was born in 1964 and the cost of my delivery and a couple day hospital stay was a week and a half’s pay for my dad at a whopping $85 (he was a garbageman)
There is a theory about dealing with part of chronic poverty with what’s called a “technology step-back plan”.
It’s based on the idea that some of the people caught up in poverty just cannot handle information-age technology and society. In a manner of speaking they are befuddled by the speed of the world around them, and need a simpler, slower place. Their brains just cannot handle modern times in its complexity.
The idea is that they need a rural settlement. Oddly enough, this would involve a lot more physical work on their part. But for people in this psychological situation, this is acceptable. Importantly, once set up there, they need minimal support, so the idea is much more cost effective.
Instead of dealing mostly in money, they do a lot more trading with each other, and with those who bring in supplies they can’t make themselves.
It isn’t primitive, more like a 1930s and 1940s small town, with information in a carefully stocked library and a weekly newspaper.
Children are something of a problem, since they need a modern education, and the majority of them are likely capable and interested in living at a faster pace.
But for their parents, who right now lead miserable lives that cost society a fortune, this may be a way to lead a more normal life, living at a pace more suitable to their wiring.
Sounds about right. You told me about it once...Albion, right?
Farming requires a pretty good-sized skill set. I’m not sure banishing the Luddites to the countryside is a good idea, but it’s gotta work better than this gummint imposed Robin Hood system we have.
Farming nowadays can be more complicated and less user-friendly than working a computer, depending on the farm.
And, if you’re stupid with a computer, it doesn’t rip your arm off, trample you to death, stampede into the nearest highway, or drown you in manure :p
Don’t think of them as Luddites, as they are still in the normal range, but overwhelmed.
Alvin Toffler proposed something like what is happening today in 1970, which he called “future shock”, and today, a lot of people are borderline to being overwhelmed by technology in their lives. Often they cross over to ‘overloaded’ and have to back off for a while.
It’s pretty easy to sympathize with that. But the people I’m talking about just get overwhelmed much more easily, and are frustrated into inertia. Everything they want can only be obtained with knowledge that overwhelms them.
In a simpler situation they do okay, and can work and get results and profit from that work. It makes sense and helps them get their sense of self worth back.
This is what I’ve been saying forever.
The people high up running these groups never want whatever they’re fighting to really end. It’s their business.
There are groups like this on the left and right. Each employ naive true believers at the lower levels for plausible deniability. The leftist groups secretly make lots of money but because they think they are smarter and care more than everyone else they deserve it. The groups on the right that do this, mostly unscrupulous businesses, make lots of money but they think they’re doing a favor to the customers they’re screwing over, they deserve it, too.
Farming can be complicated, but it doesn’t have to be.
I imagine such a settlement taking a good decade to get settled in, evolving through subsistence farming to having some degree of abundance, enough to trade for “dry goods” and other supplies.
Not everyone would be a farmer, of course. Plenty of jobs involving lots of traditional work, such as tailoring, shoe making, food processing, storing and cooking, butchering, etc.
And there would be electricity and basic appliances. Again, not primitive, but not an IT culture.
The USA “poverty line” is 20x the world median income.
The biggest health problem of our poor is obesity.
Poverty is, in effect, illegal: between minimum wage and welfare, there is no legal excuse to live in real poverty - and to do so risks a host of legal violations.
Simple matter: one must create more value than one consumes, else one becomes destitute.
Those who create more wealth than they consume sell the surplus, and thus attract money.
Those who create less wealth than they consume buy the difference, and thus run out of money.
You can’t plug a leak by pouring more water into it.
That picture depicts real poverty.
The solution is a ticket to somewhere else.
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