[grundle]

The purpose of the "war on poverty" was to keep people dependent on the government. Welfare reform has greatly reduced this problem.

[dirtboy]

Two points:

How much of this increase was from EITC?

How did the middle 60 percent do?

[tcrlaf]

FACTS like this are the enemy of Democrats and the left. Without enslaved voting groups, who the hell would vote Democrat anymore?

[hinckley buzzard]

This same pattern held through the “Decade of Greed,” the Reagan ‘80s. The lowest quintile showed the greatest gains. Both periods of prosperity fuelled by a round of tax cuts.

[IamConservative]

Hillary was just blaming the growing gap between the rich and the poor just yesterday. Facts truly are inconvenient things for the shysters..

[dirtboy]

But now consider that the next-biggest increase in income for the bottom group was from the earned-income tax credit (EITC), a program that, in effect, supplements the wages of parents with low incomes. In addition, most of the children in these families had Medicaid coverage and received free school lunches and other traditional social benefits. In other words, this success story is one of greater efforts to work more and earn more backed by government benefits to improve living standards and, as President Bill Clinton used to say, "make work pay."

Better living through government.

Unless you're a working stiff in the middle class and get taxed everywhere you turn. Including a higher marginal tax rate if you make $65K a year than if you make $130K a year.

[Jagman]

Here's a question to mull during this spring of our conservative discontent:

Do you believe George Bush would have signed the bill to end welfare, given his current behavior?

[Mase]

Bookmarking this for the next debate regarding the ‘wealth gap’and the alleged lack of upward mobility in this country.

[Teflonic]

bookmarking, thanks for sharing

[HamiltonJay]

It wasn’t its purpose, it was its result. The purpose was honest.. but good intentions and all. It certainly became that, as people tried to protect their cushy government jobs, but it wasn’t its original purpose.

Quinn’s Law: Liberalism always generates the exact opposite of its stated intent.

[HarmlessLovableFuzzball]

The purpose of the "war on poverty" ..

The Democrats declare war on everything but America's enemies.

[cherry]

so IOWS....the middle class is still getting the shaft from the ultra rich and now the "poor"...

I'll bet these "poor" get food stamps, free college, free bus passes, free summer camps for their kids, free medical or greatly discounted medical care, and then of course they all get a big chunk of tax money from people like me in the form or "earned income" credits..which means they never paid in this money yet they're getting it just the same.....

of course, TPTB want the middle class gone...they prefer a struggling working class that depends on the govt for survival and votes for DIMS every time...

[KayEyeDoubleDee]

1) See Robert Rector's The [positive] Impact of Welfare Reform

2) When the hell did the Washington Post start publishing good news?

[<1/1,000,000th%]

Despite the recession of 2001, the bottom fifth had a 35 percent increase in income (adjusted for inflation), ...

The bottom fifth increased its earnings by 80 percent, ...

So is it 35% or 80%?

[anglian]

Importing poverty

Since 1980 the number of Hispanics with incomes below the government’s poverty line (about $19,300 in 2004 for a family of four) has risen 162 percent. Over the same period, the number of non-Hispanic whites in poverty rose 3 percent and the number of blacks, 9.5 percent. What we will have with amnesty is a policy of creating more poverty in the United States.