Posted on 09/25/2003 10:06:29 PM PDT by dogbyte12
Edited on 04/13/2004 1:41:12 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
More than a million Americans sank into poverty last year, an annual Census report is expected to show today. It would be the first time in nearly a decade that the number of poor rose two years in a row.
(Excerpt) Read more at usatoday.com ...
You may technically not be in poverty if you are a family of 4 and ya pulled in $12,208, but let's not kid ourselves. It does suck that one million more americans are in this category.
Basically, if ya have one family member earning $6 an hour, working 50 weeks a year, 40 hours a week, they earn $12,000.
I am not offering suggestions, just sympathy. I was poor for a stretch as a kid after my parents divorced and dad didn't pay child support. Poverty sucked, badly. I pray that those who are in this state work to improve their skills, that there are jobs there that pay more for them when they have the ability to compete, and I hope that this time next year, we will be talking about declining numbers.
How does the government pull this one off? Very simple, really. To determine whether or not some poor soul is "living in poverty," the government measures one thing -- just one thing. Income. It doesn't matter one bit how much you have, how much you own, how many cars you drive or how big they are, whether or not your pool is heated, whether you winter in Aspen and spend the summers in the Bahamas, or how much is in your savings account. It only matters how much income you claim in that particular year. This means that if you take a one-year leave of absence from your high-paying job and decide to live off the money in your savings and checking accounts while you write the next great American novel, the government says you are 'living in poverty."
This isn't exactly what you had in mind when you heard these gloomy statistics, is it?
Do you need more convincing? Try this. The government's own statistics show that people who are said to be "living in poverty" spend more than $1.50 for each dollar of income they claim. Something is a bit fishy here. just remember all this the next time Peter Jennings puffs up and tells you about some hideous new poverty statistics.
And please remember this: The average person in this country described as "poor" has a higher standard of living than the average European. Not the average "poor" European, the average European.
Why has the government concocted this phony poverty scam? Because the government needs an excuse to grow and to expand its social welfare programs, which translates into an expansion of its power. If the government can convince you, in all your compassion,that the number of "poor" is increasing, it will have all the excuse it needs to sway an electorate suffering from the advanced stages of Obsessive-Compulsive Compassion Disorder."
1. The individual frequently lacks sufficient food to eat or is significantly undernourished due to an inability to afford or obtain sufficient food.
2. The individual lives in housing that is severely overcrowded (with more than 1.5 persons per room); is severely dilapidated; or is unsafe.
3. The individual has a significant, health impairing, medical condition requiring treatment and cannot afford or otherwise obtain medical care.
The notion of poverty or hardship is strengthened if the individual suffers from multiple problems rather than a single isolated condition.
OWNERSHIP OF PROPERTY AND AMENITIES
Table 3 shows property and consumer durable ownership among all US households and among households who are "poor" according to the official government definition. Some 41 percent of poor households actually own their own homes. The median value of homes owned by these households is $65,000 or 70 percent of the median value of all homes owned in America. Some 900,000 households classified as poor, own homes worth over $150,000. The typical home owned by the poor is a three bedroom house with one and a half baths. It is in good repair, has a garage or carport, and was constructed in 1962. It has a porch or patio and is located on a half-acre lot (US Department of Commerce, American Housing Survey 1997).
Table 3 (Check out the table it is definitely eye opening -EiV)
Roughly 70 percent of poor households own a car or truck. Remarkably more than one quarter of poor households own two or more cars or trucks. Modern conveniences are very common and, in some cases, almost ubiquitous among poor households. Two thirds of the poor have air conditioning; a similar number have microwaves while almost 30 percent have automatic dishwashers.
It is not surprising that nearly all poor households have color television, but nearly half actually own two or more color television sets, nearly three quarters of the poor now have VCRs, and more than one in five own two VCRs. While these numbers do not suggest lives of luxury they also seem quite distant from conventional images of poverty.
HOUSING CONDITIONS
In the US, both the overall population and the poor live, in general, in very spacious housing. As Table 4 shows, nearly 70 percent of all US households have two or more rooms per tenant. Among the poor overall, this figure is 60 percent.
Among the urban poor, it is 55 percent. Crowding is quite rare; only 0.5 percent of all households and 1.9 percent of poor households are severely crowded with 1.5 or more persons per room. Moderate crowding (1.01 to 1.50 persons per room) is slightly more common, characterizing 2.1 percent of all households and 5.6 percent of poor households. By contrast, social reformer Jacob Riis, writing on tenement living conditions around 1890 in New York City, described crowded families living with four or five persons per room and some 20 square feet of living space per person (Riis 1971:6, 41, 59).
Table 5 places current crowding figures in an international perspective. Measured by a room-per-person basis, poor US households have about as much living space as the general population in developed nations such as Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands. But with two rooms per person, American poor have twice as much living space as the average household in Poland, Hungary, and Romania; three times as much living space as the average household in Iraq, Mexico, and Panama. Finally, they have four times the room of the average family in Peru, Honduras, and India who have only a half a room per person or less (United Nations 1995).
Excerpted from here. There is much more in this long report.
It is difficult to define poor ---- because the many government programs ensure that the permanently not working people have a higher standard of living than those who are working. You can earn $0 a year and have a television in every room, plenty of food in the cupboards, nice clothes, cell phones, and all the rest because the taxpayers are providing all that for you.
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