Posted on 09/03/2006 9:00:30 AM PDT by freespirited
The Census Bureau last week released its latest estimate of the U.S. poverty rate... The 2005 poverty rate of 12.6 percent...was substantially higher than the 11.1 percent level back in 1973...
The results seem to suggest a prolonged failure of national policies to address poverty. However, the problem here lies less with actual living conditions than with the flawed and misleading poverty measure ....
Today's poor households are more likely to have telephone and television sets than non-poor households in 1970; much more likely to have central air conditioning than the typical home of 1980, almost as likely to have a dishwasher. ... Most poverty households have microwaves, VCRs or DVDs, and cable television.
In 1973, a majority of the households in the bottom fifth of earners did not own a car. By 2003, nearly three-fourths of [them] had a car, truck or van, and a rising fraction owned two or more...
Why does the official poverty rate fail to quantify the steady improvement in the living standards of America's poor? The answer lies in a simple mistake built into the poverty measure... Contradicting both economic theory and readily observable facts, the poverty rate assumes that a household's annual spending cannot, by definition, exceed its annual income.
Among low-income households in the United States, the gap between reported income and reported spending has widened gradually since the 1960s and now has taken on chasm-like dimensions. In the early 1960s, the poorest quarter of U.S. households spent 12 percent more than their annual incomes. In 1973, spending by America's poorest fifth surpassed their income by almost 40 percent. And in 2004, spending by the poorest fifth of American families exceeded income by a whopping 95 percent; in effect, spending was nearly twice as much as income...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
--and lots of them are fat as is being explored here--
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1694760/posts
Buy now and no payments until 2010!!
Credit problems? Nooooooo problem!!
Buy now, pay later!!
...and let's not forget the proliferation of paycheck loan businesses, interest-only/ARM mortgages, 7-year+ car loans...
This is like decrying the "height problem" in any group of people in which the shortest 20% are -- well, the shortest!
Central air????? I don't have central air!!!!!!
---yep--the "poor" almost all have TV, an automobile, computer access and the majority are overfed--
I'd like to see a census on the poor, for instance what percentage are the "working" poor, and what percentage are the deadbeat lazy pricks we all know are out there ???
In other words, the "poor" in this country live a better life (in terms of material comfort) than the middle class I grew up in during the 1950's.
No wonder the rest of the world is trying to break down our door.
Isn't poverty defined as an income of something like $36,000 per year AFTER your and my taxes are transfered to the recipient in various ways?
The government doesn't have to tell me about their "poverty" until they send the 20 million citizens from Central and South America home. It's not my "yob" to support Central and South America's poor and worry about THEIR "poverty." I'm not a Socialist and I do not support "wealth redistribution."
Well, no, last year it was defined as an earned income of around 20K for a family of four EXCLUDING the assistance that people get from your and my taxes. So if you have a family of four with an earned income of 15K, living in Section 8 housing, receiving food stamps, Medicaid, they are in poverty. Meanwhile a family of four that has an income of 30K but has to pay large medical expenses and substantial rent that brings their income below 15K once that is accounted for is not in poverty.
It takes a government agency to come up with such a stupid definition and stick with it for 30+ years.
Where I live, in the D.C. area, a two bedroom apartment rents for about $1200/month. Then what do they get in food stamps, $500/month? Plus medical care - lets go cheap and say one visit per month (it's a famliy of 4) at $100/month. That's $1800/month or $21,600 per year on top of their $15,000/year tax free income for a total of $36,600 per year. I was low by about $600 per year.
Meanwhile the average monthly income in Romania is between $100 and $150.
What we have here are a bunch of whiners who waste their income on DirecTV, Cell Phones, Gameboy, etc., rather than support their families. Yes, there are a few exceptions to the rule...
The liberals are well aware that poverty in the U.S.A. is a non-issue.
They now proclaim that the "lower rung of the middle class" is not receiving their fair share of the bounty.
They now proclaim that the "lower rung of the middle class" is not receiving their fair share of the bounty.
Very true. It's a jobs program for poverty hustlers much like the jobs program for Jessie Jackson et. al. as race hustlers.
Somewhere I heard that for every dollar of my taxes that are taken from me for welfare, something like 30 cents gets to the recipient. The rest goes to pay a bunch of govt. employee slugs dishing it out.
Poverty is relative. Depends on where you live, how you spend your money, etc. Also we will never decrease poverty when we let in tens of million poor uneducated people to keep our poor class filled. Poverty is the USA is a joke. Just ask someone living in most parts of Africa or Asia. Or ask your grandparents or parents about their poverty compared to what we call poverty today.
Poverty is relative. Depends on where you live, how you spend your money, etc. Also we will never decrease poverty when we let in tens of million poor uneducated people to keep our poor class filled. Poverty is the USA is a joke. Just ask someone living in most parts of Africa or Asia. Or ask your grandparents or parents about their poverty compared to what we call poverty today.
Not only that, the gov stats prove that poor people are the fattest Americans. It's just extremely difficult to work up sympathy for people who are very well-fed to put it mildly. Libs have never understood the basic fact that giving/subsidizing to the poor has only made their situation worse. LBJ's War ON Poverty was a massive failure.
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