Why California is the 'poverty capital of the America'

American Thinker ^ | 01/15/2018 | Rick Moran

[SeekAndFind]

An excellent op-ed in the LA Times today by Kerry Jackson on why California - with its liberal politics and generous welfare system - is the "poverty capital of America."

According to the Census Bureau, one out of five California residents are poor. This despite the state's per capita GDP rising twice as fast in the last 5 years as the national average. From 1992 to 2015, state and local governments spent nearly $1 trillion to help the poor. The state, with 12% of the American population, is home today to about one in three of the nation’s welfare recipients.

Jackson then reaches the not so astonishing conclusion: "The generous spending, then, has not only failed to decrease poverty; it actually seems to have made it worse."

One of the big reasons for this is the total lack of welfare reform that would require those receiving government assistance to work.

The state and local bureaucracies that implement California’s antipoverty programs, however, resisted pro-work reforms. In fact, California recipients of state aid receive a disproportionately large share of it in no-strings-attached cash disbursements. It’s as though welfare reform passed California by, leaving a dependency trap in place. Immigrants are falling into it: 55% of immigrant families in the state get some kind of means-tested benefits, compared with just 30% of natives.

There is also the "Self-interest in the social-services community":

As economist William A. Niskanen explained back in 1971, public agencies seek to maximize their budgets, through which they acquire increased power, status, comfort and security. To keep growing its budget, and hence its power, a welfare bureaucracy has an incentive to expand its “customer” base. With 883,000 full-time-equivalent state and local

[ctdonath2]

Indeed, most overlook the high cost of building a massive oasis in a desert.
Having been created, more people want to live there than carrying capacity allows.
Supply-and-demand dictates that SOMETHING provide “friction” to limit the number of people jammed into the relatively small oasis, and that becomes cost of living. The gov’t _CANNOT_ dig people out of poverty there, precisely because there isn’t enough for that many people to live on. Hand every poor person the price of an apartment (be it monthly rent or outright purchase), and prices will shoot up because there is simply not enough units available.

To phrase it a different way, as we’re in need of a linguistic escape from the “help the poor!” trap:

The carrying capacity of the CA ecosystem has been maxed out.

[Lurkinanloomin]

Because they keep importing more poverty.

[5th MEB]

WHY?
Because the Commucrats in California have turned us into a THIRD WORLD SHITHOLE!

That’s why.

[sparklite2]

one out of five California residents are poor.

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There will always be a lowest fifth of the population. Always. Poverty is a relative term. Those in poverty here would be elites in the shithole nations they probably came from.