Posted on 07/19/2011 7:22:58 AM PDT by kiki04
When Americans think of poverty, we tend to picture people who can’t adequately shelter, clothe, and feed themselves or their families.
When the Census Bureau defines “poverty,” though, it winds up painting more than 40 million Americans — one in seven — as “poor.”
Census officials continue to grossly exaggerate the numbers of the poor, creating a false picture in the public mind of widespread material deprivation, writes Heritage Foundation senior research fellow Robert Rector in a new paper.
“Most news stories on poverty feature homeless families, people living in crumbling shacks, or lines of the downtrodden eating in soup kitchens,” Rector says. “The actual living conditions of America’s poor are far different from these images.”
Congress is tying itself in knots figuring out how to cut spending and bring down a $14 trillion national debt. Lawmakers might well take a much closer look at the nearly a trillion dollars spent each year on welfare even though many recipients aren’t what the typical American would recognize as poor and in need of government assistance.
What is poverty? Americans might well be surprised to learn from other government data that the overwhelming majority of those defined as “poor” by the Census Bureau were well-housed and adequately fed even in the recession year 2009. About 4 percent of them did temporarily become homeless.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
Alot of interesting facts.
BOOKMARK for reference!
Alot of interesting facts.
BOOKMARK for reference!
I am with you. We are consignment sales/second hand stores for clothes, and are trying hard to teach the kids the value of money. I’m just upset our system allows for the “poor” to have more, at no expense to them, than the working class.
“Luxuries for Leaches” Program
I know, it’s always couched as “for the children” but there is plenty of private charity that will take care of the truly needy.
If we forced people to take responsibility for the numerous children they choose to have without any intention of providing for the children themselves I think the problem would solve itself.
I see people buying a cart or two of EBT groceries, a cart of beer and ciggies with cash and then separating out the milk and cheese and whipping out one of those freaking WIC checks every time I go to Wal Mart. Which always takes another 5 minutes to fill out. It’s sickening.
Good luck figuring out what “poverty” means at the Census Bureau...
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/methods/definitions.html
Whatever they want it to mean it seems...
I see what you mean.
“Absolute vs. relative thresholds”, “average monthly poverty”, “episodic poverty”, etc. etc. etc... It’s too painful to attempt to decipher, and likely impossible anyway, LOL.
“Definitions
...”Absolute thresholds are fixed at a point in time and updated solely for price changes.... In contrast, relative thresholds, as commonly defined, are developed by reference to the actual expenditures (or income) of the population.”
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/methods/definitions.html
>>They will be good employees,<<
If that’s your measurement you need a sit down, a serious talking to about teaching entrepreneurial skills to your kids. The freedoms and financial benefits far outweigh being a number on a payroll list.
Perhaps you should attend school with your children so that you can learn how to properly write and spell.
Let me clarify. What they choose to be is up to them, and having a servant’s heart is biblical whether you are self employed or an employee of someone else.
Wow. Are you that nasty to people you meet at work or is it just reserved for the Internet?
True, but in the days to come being an employee of someone else will mean slave to someone else.
You must be a hateful conservative. I noticed that the government-educated doofus splits infinitives real good.
We have a separate freezer, but it’s not a luxury item, it saves money. It allows me to keep deer and fish in bulk for us to eat inexpensively later. It also means that when the market has an out-of-season half-price turkey sale I can get four of them.
2 Blackberries and not a job between the husband or wife.
Ain’t life grand!!!!
My blood pressure went up by simply reading your post! Arghhhhh!
You just described(Fat ass and all!) what my husband and I see everyday right across the street from us!
Our neighbors(very loose description) have 4 kids and NOBODY is working! Yet the husband and wife both own Blackberry’s, each child has a DS, they have direct TV and yes the wife is so fat that she can barely walk to the corner to meet the youngest child getting off the school bus. They are living off of food stamps, and what is left of his “unemployment checks(running out shortly)”. The husband is trying to find some way to scam the system and go on disability so that they can go back to his native Ecuador and live well off of it! I didn’t know that being a lazy bum that sits on the couch drinking and smoking all day(who is paying for that?) was a disability!
They have somebody paying their utilities as well! The only reason the bum husband doesn’t work is due to pure laziness! He has hemorrhoids(reason for disability-not kidding) for crying out loud. If that doesn’t tell you that you need to get off your ass I don’t know what would!
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