poverty - Fausta's Blog

July 19, 2011 By Fausta

“When I was little, we were so poor we didn’t have cable”

The analysis showed that median poor households most frequently had the following 14 items: air conditioning, a clothes washer, a clothes dryer, ceiling fans, and a cordless phone.

For entertainment, these households had two color televisions, cable or satellite TV, a DVD player, and a VCR.

In the kitchen, these poor households had a refrigerator, an oven and stove, a microwave, and a coffee maker.

These items may then be considered representative of the living standards of the median or typical poor U.S. household in 2005.

John Hinderaker:

In contemporary America, poverty is not so much a material condition as a spiritual one, often characterized by drug abuse, alcoholism, mental illness and illegitimacy. Until voters have a better understanding of what today’s poverty is and is not, it will not be possible to craft effective solutions to the very real problems–mostly behavioral–that afflict a significant portion of our population.

Go read the whole report.

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December 3, 2010 By Fausta

Five ways to keep the poor in poverty

Ruinous economic policies affect the poor acutely, particularly at a time when the national unemployment rate is 9.8%. My friend Paul Budline explains,

With all the talk about “tax cuts for the rich,” it’s worth looking at the other end of the income spectrum. Our public policy now features some sure-fire recipes for ensuring that poor people remain that way. Namely:

– Tax the hell out of cigarettes. Smoking is pretty much relegated to the poor these days, who cough up – literally – about 5 to 8 bucks a pack. It’s the most regressive tax imaginable, even before considering that these folks die a whole lot earlier and thus receive far less government largess in their nicotine-tinged golden years.

– Have states run and promote lotteries. Again, it’s usually the poor who play, and the implicit message from the government is that luck is the best (only?) way to strike it rich. As a corollary, put casinos in Tunica, Mississippi, Bethlehem, PA and other depressed areas.

– Make sure all poor kids are herded into public schools where unionized teachers have no incentive to perform and can pretty much never be fired. Of course, anyone with enough money can live in a fine district or send their little ones to private schools. In a singularly grotesque move, Congress voted to kill a pilot voucher program that allowed some DC kids to attend private schools. All because the teacher unions pull the strings.

– Deduct 15.3% from the very first dollar earned for Social Security and Medicare, and then stop the SS “contribution” when a worker’s salary reaches $107,000. How regressive can a tax get? Also, employ terms like “trust fund” and “lockbox” to disguise the fact that these programs are often a direct transfer of income from the working poor to retirees, many of whom are very well-off.

– Make believe that never-married moms are just fine when it comes to raising kids, and have Hollywood glamorize single parenthood. It’s been pointed out, accurately I believe, that avoiding poverty in America is pretty easy if you do just three things – graduate from HS, don’t have kids out of wedlock, and steer clear of the joint.

I’ll mention that all of the above are generally, but by no means exclusively, created and promoted by folks on the left. They claim to champion the poor in America, but what have their schemes wrought? The carnage is visible everywhere.

The above post was written by Paul, and I cross-posted it at The Green Room.

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June 20, 2010 By Fausta

Thank your dad

Fathers Who Are Husbands Spare Children from Poverty

About two of every three poor children live in single-parent households. Yet if poor single moms married the fathers of their children, nearly two out of three would be lifted out of poverty.

And contrary to the mainstream media line, teen pregnancy is a small part of the picture: In 2008, the most recent year for which data is available, babies born to girls under 18 accounted for 130,000, or 7.5 percent, of the total 1.72 million out-of-wedlock births.

It’s not as simple as young men “manning up” and becoming the lawfully wedded husbands of their girlfriends, live-in or otherwise. These unmarried mothers tend to be in their 20s, without much income or education. They come to depend on public assistance; many learn how to work the welfare system.

Research shows that a child raised in a home where Dad is married to Mom is much less likely to live in poverty, get arrested as a juvenile, be suspended or expelled from school, be treated for emotional or behavioral problems, or drop out before completing high school. Taxpayers foot the bill for more than $300 billion a year in means-tested government spending on low-income single moms – and, in relatively rare cases, single dads.

Read it all.

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Happy Father’s Day!

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May 31, 2010 By Fausta

How to make sure the poor will always be with us

Robert Samuelson, writing in the WaPo:

The existing poverty line could be improved by adding some income sources and subtracting some expenses (example: child care). Unfortunately, the administration’s proposal for a “supplemental poverty measure” in 2011 — to complement, not replace, the existing poverty line — goes beyond these changes. The new poverty number would compound public confusion. It also raises questions about whether the statistic is tailored to favor a political agenda.

The “supplemental measure” ties the poverty threshold to what the poorest third of Americans spend on food, housing, clothes and utilities. The actual threshold — not yet calculated — will almost certainly be higher than today’s poverty line. Moreover, the new definition has strange consequences. Suppose that all Americans doubled their incomes tomorrow, and suppose that their spending on food, clothing, housing and utilities also doubled. That would seem to signify less poverty — but not by the new poverty measure. It wouldn’t decline, because the poverty threshold would go up as spending went up. Many Americans would find this weird: People get richer but “poverty” stays stuck.
…
The new indicator is a “propaganda device” to promote income redistribution by showing that poverty is stubborn or increasing, says the Heritage Foundation’s Robert Rector. He has a point. The Census Bureau has estimated statistics similar to the administration’s proposal. In 2008, the traditional poverty rate was 13.2 percent; estimates of the new statistic range up to 17 percent. The new poverty statistic exceeds the old, and the gap grows larger over time.

Go read the rest.

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