Posted on 06/21/2019 1:35:32 PM PDT by reaganaut1
“We have . . . almost half the people in the United States living in poverty.”
— Former vice president Joe Biden, in remarks at the Poor People’s Campaign presidential forum, June 17, 2019
What does it mean to be poor? Biden took an expansive view at a presidential candidate forum hosted by anti-poverty advocates.
The Census Bureau calculates the poverty rate in different ways. Using the official poverty measure, 12.3 percent of U.S. residents were below the federal poverty line in 2017. Using the supplemental poverty measure, the rate was 13.9 percent. Biden says it’s much more: almost half the country.
We surveyed several leading researchers on poverty, and almost all agreed Biden was including people who are not poor.
The Facts The Biden campaign told us he was using the supplemental poverty measure (SPM) and counting every individual and family whose income was below 200 percent of the poverty line. That formula gets him to 140 million people, or 43.3 percent of the U.S. population in 2017.
Biden spokesman Andrew Bates said the Poor People’s Campaign, which hosted the candidate forum where Biden made these remarks, uses the same formula.
“Poverty spans every race, creed, color and sexual orientation,” the Rev. William J. Barber II of the Poor People’s Campaign said at the start of the forum. “... All of those numbers combined makes up 43.5 percent of this nation — not 30, not 23, but almost half of this nation — and any nation that ignores half of its people, half of the people, is in a moral and economic crisis that is constitutionally inconsistent, economically insane and morally indefensible.”
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
...and it all happened in TWO SHORT YEARS! Under Obama / Biden, NOBODY lived in poverty in this country. It just shows how bad Trump really is. Trump wants your grandmother to live on dog food.
So, what is it half the people are missing? A new car? When I got my first job some of the other bagboys went out and bought Corvettes. I don’t recall how new they were, but they were Corvettes. Pretty much, we live in a time when the average person lives better and longer than kings did just 100 years ago. God bless air-conditioning and refrigeration. Tonight I will have food somebody else prepared in a factory half a world away. Poor? No.
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Excellent post. Fresh strawberries or oranges in the middle of Winter. Something only a king could have afforded a hundred years ago.
The income level for a family of 4 to be considered in “poverty is $25,750.
200% of that would be a yearly income of $51,500.
I have 2 kids in college presently bringing in about 50K and I am far from poverty.
We watch our spending, bought a used Cadillac SRX 10 years ago and still own it. Live on a lake with beautiful house paid off.
And tomatoes. As a youngster I hated eating mushy tomatoes sold in the off season. I haven’t had a mushy tomato in years and years.
Politicians lie, water is wet, and the sun sets in the west.
Well done, sir!
Air conditioning is a true modern miracle.
I remember very few people in the 70s having more than a window unit.
Going to the 80s, a lot more central air.
Thank you but it’s really not that difficult if you use your head, don’t waste your income on un-needed self indulgences and take care of what you do have.
All you have to do to see what NOT to do is watch the d’bags at Walmart misusing their food stamps. Unfortunately the poor are some of the worst offenders when it comes to pi$$ing away money.
Older men and women get to a point where when you look into their eyes there is a disconnect, much like Pelosi , Biden has it too. Not good
The average American secretary would have to think long and hard about living at Queen Victoria’s standard of living.Victoria had no ability to travel globally, comparatively no health care as we know it, nothing made of plastic, no electronic entertainment . . .
Obviously being Queen has its upsides - but her husband died younger than he would have with modern medicine, and she was a depressed widow for her last 20 years.
Why socialists need capitalism (to create all the new things, like cell phones, that socialists can say “everyone has a right” to).
But half of all Americans have incomes below the median.
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