Posted on 09/18/2023 5:44:51 AM PDT by MtnClimber
As I have written many times, I don’t think that the federal measure of “poverty” in the United States was originally created with fraudulent intent to deceive the voters. However, as the measure of poverty has evolved over the years, the thing deemed “poverty” by the statistics no longer bears any meaningful resemblance to what normal people think of as poverty. Rather than measuring anything that might resemble actual physical deprivation, the statistics have evolved into an artifact to manipulate the voters. In a post about a year ago I described what I call the “poverty scam” as follows:
[T]he government cynically manipulates the poverty statistics so that the official measured rate of poverty never goes meaningfully down, no matter how much taxpayer money is spent, thus manufacturing a fake basis to hit up the people for ever increasing funding at regular intervals.
Over the past week or so we have just been treated to the umpteenth iteration of this poverty scam.
On September 12 the Census Bureau put out a press release announcing its latest income and poverty data, covering the year 2022. The New York Times covered the release with a big piece the same day: “Poverty Rate Soared in 2022 as Aid Ended and Prices Rose.” From the Times:
The poverty rate rose to 12.4 percent in 2022 from 7.8 percent in 2021, the largest one-year jump on record, the Census Bureau said Tuesday. Poverty among children more than doubled, to 12.4 percent, from a record low of 5.2 percent the year before. Those figures are according to the Supplemental Poverty Measure. . . .
Now, an increase in the poverty rate from 7.8% to 12.4% in one year sounds like a huge jump — more than 50% in terms of the number of people deemed to be living “in poverty.” How could that have happened in a year which had seemed to be a year of recovery from the pandemic, and with an apparently tight labor market? According to the Times, the key factor was the ending of government aid programs, specifically those related to the Covid pandemic:
[S]afety net programs that were created or expanded during the pandemic. . . included a series of direct payments to households in 2020 and 2021, enhanced unemployment and nutrition benefits, increased rental assistance and an expanded child tax credit, which briefly provided a guaranteed income to families with children. Nearly all of those programs had expired by last year, however. . . .
But the expenditures the Times lists were never intended as anti-poverty measures. What happened to actual anti-poverty spending between 2021 and 2022? As far as I can determine, it did not go down, but rather went up, and not by a little. According to a Cato Institute study here, federal anti-poverty spending in 2021 was approximately $1.1 trillion; and according to a House Budget Committee release here from March 15, 2023, federal spending on its welfare and anti-poverty programs for fiscal 2022 (ending on September 30, 2022) was approximately $1.19 trillion. In other words, there was an increase of close to $100 billion, or over 8%.
So can we get to the bottom of what is going on here? Note that in the Times article they specifically state that the increase in the poverty rate is as measured by something called the “Supplemental Poverty Rate.” That’s the New Coke poverty rate created during the Obama administration to introduce a definition of “poverty” as something no longer absolute, but rather relative to median income, and that therefore would be resistant to ever decreasing no matter how much the incomes of low income people might rise. So what happened in the same year to poverty as measured by the so-called “official” poverty rate (based, supposedly, on an absolute measure of poverty)? Read deeper into the Times piece — like, fifteen paragraphs deeper — and you get this:
The “official” poverty rate — an older measure that is widely considered outdated because it excludes many of the government’s most important anti-poverty programs, among other shortcomings — was nearly flat last year, at 11.5 percent, . . . By that measure, the poverty rate for Black Americans was 17.1 percent, the lowest rate on record.
In other words, this Official Poverty Rate isn’t useful for our purposes in this round, so we will emphasize the other one. A chart accompanying the article shows that the measure of the “official” poverty rate did not budge between 2021 and 2022, despite the large changes in funding including expiration of Covid-related programs and increases in anti-poverty programs:
Now that the Supplemental Poverty Rate has bounced back to be slightly above the Official Poverty Rate, it looks like the natural order of the government poverty statistics has been restored. $1.2 trillion or more of federal anti-poverty spending every year, and the poverty rate, by either measure, just stays right around the same 12% or so. And so the stage is set for the next round of advocacy for increased spending to alleviate poverty, none of which will ever bring the measured rate down meaningfully for any period of time.
The government employees working in the poverty industry need the poverty to keep their jobs.
Milton Friedman had something to say about government statistics.
He was right.
L
Manhattan Contrarian Ping
You are exactly right. “Poor people” in the U.S. are nothing more than livestock for bureaucrats.
A lot of people make a good living on the poverty industry.
Poverty used to mean struggling to have enough to eat, to have shelter, to afford clothes.
Now it means having a used car, only one phone per person, and no official job...
The main purpose of government appears to be to lie to its public in order to get them to approve its wishes to expand its power. “When matters get important, you have to lie.” - some IMF functionary
I used to tell my Freshman econ students I could end poverty overnight. Back then, poverty was defined as an income of about $12000 for a family of four. The students asked me to tell them how I could end it.
I said: “Simple. You line up everyone who makes $12000 or less and you shoot them.” Their eyes went as big as hubcaps. I went on to ask: “How long will it take before the person making $12001 starts bitching because they are the poorest person in the country?” We went on to have a meaningful discussion of how poverty can’t be eliminated because it is artificially defined: politicians continually move the goal posts. Indeed, poverty now allows the poor to own a car, flat screen TVs, and cell phones. Compare that to the “poverty” seen in many Third World countries. The measure in this country is a bad political joke.
Are we the only country where people living in “poverty” are often obese?
Check out the UK.
SSDDS.
Same ****, different Deep State.
I believe so.
Read later.
Good post.
Almost every term the leftists use can be deconstructed in similar ways—they do a “bait and switch” every time.
They take a commonly used and understood term and change the definition to fit their agenda of the day.
Of course “the issue is not the issue, the revolution is the issue”.
Recent examples include changing the definition of man and woman, democracy, vaccine, hate, climate....
It would take several volumes just to fully deconstruct one paragraph of text from the New York Slimes or the Washington Compost.
They use words as weapons of war against us.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.