Posted on 09/13/2011 1:19:32 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
As Ed Morrissey reported earlier, the Census Bureau today released its annual poverty report, which showed the number of poor Americans is up from 43.6 million last year to 46.2 million this year — roughly one in seven Americans and the highest poverty rate in 15 years. No matter which way you slice it, that’s not good news. When coupled with declining business and consumer confidence, it’s still worse news — a true sign of these troubled economic times. What policies we adopt to address our economic problems are of the utmost importance — and, unless we want to be classified as insane, we cannot do what we have always done and expect to get results other than those we have always gotten. So, what were the policies that led us to this situation?
“These are the wages of class warfare,” Ed writes. “Even more basically, these are the entirely predictable outcomes of central economic planning, selective regulation, regulatory ambiguity, and mixed messages on tax rates and fiscal burdens.”
He’s right. And, yet, it seems entirely probable that today’s new poverty numbers will only reinvigorate class warfare rhetoric and calls for redistribution of wealth. After all, something must be done to alleviate the burdens on low-income Americans — and rarely if ever is it the politically-endorsed position that the “something” should be shoring up marriage, promoting a strong work ethic, private generosity, a bit of neighborly assistance or simple words of encouragement. And never is it hinted that handouts might actually hurt rather than help those who lack ample material means.
It’s helpful, then, to remember just what poverty looks like in America today — not to dismiss it (for it is a problem to be solved!), but to ensure that the solutions we craft are as likely as possible to be effective. According to a Heritage Foundation backgrounder released today:
In 2005, the typical poor household, as defined by the federal government, had air conditioning and a car. For entertainment, the household had two color TVs, cable or satellite TV, a DVD player and a VCR. In the kitchen, it had a refrigerator, an oven and stove, and a microwave. Other household conveniences included a clothes washer, clothes dryer, ceiling fans, a cordless phone, and a coffee maker. The family was able to obtain medical care when needed. Their home was not overcrowded and was in good repair. By its own report, the family was not hungry and had sufficient funds during the past year to meet all essential needs.
The overwhelming majority of Americans do not regard a family living in these conditions as poor. For example, a poll conducted in June 2009 asked a nationally representative sample of the public whether they agreed or disagreed with the following statement: “A family in the U.S. that has a decent, un-crowded house or apartment to live in, ample food to eat, access to medical care, a car, cable TV, air conditioning and a microwave at home should not be considered poor.” A full 80 percent of Republicans and 77 percent of Democrats agreed that a family living in those living conditions should not be considered poor.
The Census report, according to Heritage’s Robert Rector and Rachel Sheffield, is misleading in two major ways:
First, it provides no information on the actual living conditions of the persons identified as poor. It simply states that a specified number of persons are poor without giving any information on what poverty means in the real world. A detailed description of the living conditions of the poor would greatly enhance public understanding. In fact, without a detailed description of living conditions, public discussions of poverty are meaningless.
Second, the report massively undercounts the economic resources provided to poor people. The Census Bureau asserts that a household is poor if its “money income” falls below a specified threshold. In 2010, the poverty income threshold for a family of four was $22,314. However, in counting the money income of households, the Census Bureau excludes virtually all welfare assistance. For example, more than 70 means-tested welfare programs provide cash, food, housing, medical care, and social services to poor and low-income persons, including Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, Supplemental Security Income, the Earned Income Tax Credit, food stamps, the Women, Infants and Children food program, public housing and Medicaid. (Social Security and Medicare are not means-tested programs.)
In 2008, federal and state governments spent $714 billion on means-tested welfare programs, but the Census Bureau counted only about 4 percent of this as money income in determining whether a household was poor. The bottom line is that the economic resources available to poor persons are vastly greater than the report claims.
When Rector released his first report about the amenities enjoyed by the poor in America, Stephen Colbert ripped into it, suggesting it’s somehow cold or compassionless to want to rethink anti-poverty programs. But is it? As Rector explains, the War on Poverty has both worked and not worked. Federal government assistance has addressed the consequences but not the causes of poverty, two of which are the collapse of marriage among the poor and lack of parental work. As Marco Rubio once put it, “Our poverty does not create our social problems; our social problems create our poverty.” And “fixing” only the consequences of poverty ignores the fundamental reality that earned success leads to a happier life (I cannot harp on that enough!). If President Obama (or, for that matter, Stephen Colbert) was really concerned with poverty in America, he would do whatever possible to encourage a welfare system that promotes self-sufficient prosperity rather than expanded dependence, as Rector suggests.
“As the recession ends,” Rector writes, “able-bodied recipients should be required to work or prepare for work as a condition of receiving aid. Even more important, the welfare system needs to abandon its 50-year-old tradition of ignoring, dismissing, and penalizing marriage. It should embark on a new course to strengthen and rebuild marriage in low-income communities.”
“The United States is the richest, most powerful country in the world and we’re going to change it!”
- Barack Obama
He is on track for a change. . . .
Unfortunately for most of us the change is BAD - REAL BAD. .
If you are poor, then you need to raise your productivity and become more productive
If you’re fat, you’re not poor.
End the war on Poverty. LBJ was wrong. Then let’s spend the peace dividend.
I read a study once that said the richer you are the less TV you watch, and many wealthy people don’t even have a TV. Just like the poorer you are, the fatter you are. Only in America.
I am amazed at how well the “poor” live. It would be nice if they would say thanks for my generosity at least once while in line at Walmart using their Lone Star Card.
They always seem to pull away in a newer vehicle than me and have personal electronic gadgets that make my Razor look quite antiquated. I’m not a tattoo or piercing guy, but I know that stuff is not cheap either. I guess it does pay to be poor.
Let's keep the focus on where it belongs. Rick Perry may want to stick you daughter with needles, Obama wants her to kill her unborn child. Bachman wants you to pray before football games, Obama wants you to die from exposure for lack of energy to heat your house. Romney wants to force you to purchase health insurance, Obama.....Oh Boy!
Gee, I don’t have cable or satellite TV.
RE: Gee, I don’t have cable or satellite TV
You poor man... don’t worry, Uncle Sam will fix that :)
I don’t have ceiling fans. I’m below “poor.”
Well, then roll down the dang window.
I disagree with the assertion that the definition of poverty is irrelevant.
The rhetoric of liberal policy is heavily laden with the term “poverty”, and both policy decisions and money allocations are made on the back of that term.
Actually, I believe some of the largest expenditures we make fall into those categories.
If we cannot have an honest appraisal and evaluation of what poverty is, then why even have a government that takes our money and does things with it?
I readily understand that to some, that is precisely the point.
“In 2008, federal and state governments spent $714 billion on means-tested welfare programs”
Can that be right ? Dividing $714B by 46M people is $15,500 PER PERSON — man woman and CHILD. How can anyone be considered “poor” when government assistance is providing that much money ? A family of four getting $62K in assistance ? Or ... is this a case of government overhead eating the lion’s share and the “needy” receiving just a fraction of the tax dollars spent ?
We should eliminate all of it.
Go back to soup kitchens where people who are really starving can get a meal but not use their food stamps to buy groceries that they can then sell for drugs.
Housing projects were a disaster and the people using housing assistance destroy whatever homes they “rent”, so let them live in cardboard boxes if they aren’t willing to be productive enough to afford better.
Medicaid is a scam and ridiculously expensive — better to fund free clinics where the staff are paid a fixed salary and are immune from lawsuits and taxes than the CYA medicine and opportunism that Medicaid pay-for-procedures model fosters.
A doctor can easily do 6,000 patient visits a year, or 1,000 patients six times per year, so paying him $500 per patient gives him $500,000 income each year to pay himself, a nurse, and office/consumables plus the testing that really needs to be done in a non-CYA environment — $24B to cover all 46M+ “poor” for primary care.
RE: A doctor can easily do 6,000 patient visits a year, or 1,000 patients six times per year, so paying him $500 per patient gives him $500,000 income each year to pay himself, a nurse, and office/consumables plus the testing that really needs to be done in a non-CYA environment
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Here in NYC, a doctor has to pay over $100,000 a year in malpractice insurance. Did you add that in the above calculation? A Gastroenterologist I know tells me he pays close to $130,000/year in malpractice insurance.
Government possesses no ability for creating wealth.
Government possesses no money except that which it confiscates from the citizens who earn it in the private sector through taxes or fees or through printing money (inflation), or through indebtedness to be laid on future generations.
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"To preserve [the] independence [of the people,] we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses, and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes, have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account, but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:39
"I deem [this one of] the essential principles of our government and consequently [one] which ought to shape its administration:... The honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith." --Thomas Jefferson: 1st Inaugural, 1801. ME 3:322
"I sincerely believe... that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale." --Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 1816. ME 15:23
"[With the decline of society] begins, indeed, the bellum omnium in omnia [war of all against all], which some philosophers observing to be so general in this world, have mistaken it for the natural, instead of the abusive state of man. And the fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:40
"Agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and navigation, the four pillars of our prosperity, are the most thriving when left most free to individual enterprise." - Thomas Jefferson
"The enviable condition of the people of the United States is often too much ascribed to the physical advantages of their soil & climate .... But a just estimate of the happiness of our country will never overlook what belongs to the fertile activity of a free people and the benign influence of a responsible government." - James Madison
The point is to defeat this S.O.B. at any and all cost and put a strong Conservative in the White House.
Of course, I agree that poverty in America is certainly better than prosperity in North Korea, but it is still a lack of jobs, earnings and incomes.
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