Posted on 07/06/2012 6:16:40 PM PDT by Starman417
Hear me out. I’ll end this with a cherry on top, a simple five second mental exercise that exposes the fallacy that is known as wealth disparity.
CATO:
Federal welfare spending in fiscal year 2011 totaled $668 billion***, spread out over 126 programs, while the poverty rate remains high at 15.1 percent, roughly where it was in 1965, when President Johnson declared a federal War on Poverty [14.7%].In 1966, the first year after Johnson declared war on poverty, the national poverty rate was 14.7 percent, according to Census Bureau figures. Over time, the poverty rate has fluctuated in a narrow range between 11 and 15 percent, only falling into the 11 percent range for a few years in the late 1970’s.
***“Since President Obama took office [in January 2009], federal welfare spending has increased by 41 percent, [increasing it by] more than $193 billion per year,” the study says.
Yet poverty level remains the same.
Trillions of dollars spent and not a damn difference. A culture of dependence was created. A voting bloc. Cradle to grave. The argument is not to say we shouldn’t help the poor. The issue is the metric by which we define, measure, help, and report on the poor.
The official poverty measure counts only monetary income. It considers antipoverty programs such as food stamps, housing assistance, the Earned Income Tax Credit, Medicaid and school lunches, among others, “in-kind benefits” — and hence not income. So, despite everything these programs do to relieve poverty, they aren’t counted as income when Washington measures the poverty rate.
My conclusion is that the poverty rate is NEVER going to change. It is not DESIGNED that way. It's another way how pols game the numbers
Relatively, the poor are poorer than the other 85%, but the question is how poor in real terms? So poor they can’t afford cable or cell phones?
Not in America. The pols don't measure nor report after the fact, they measure/report before the fact to keep us giving, giving, giving, giving the largess that created a dependent voting bloc.
The end result is an increasing majority of our poor who can live a lower middle class life (everyone gets a ribbon) while the pols maintain a narrative that appeals to pity. Ad Misericordiam. And one that is bankrupting Western Nations.
(Excerpt) Read more at floppingaces.net...
On his Thursday broadcast, he made me fall off my chair when he responded to an email that said, plainly, that nowhere in the constitution is the federal government empowered to provide unlimited welfare (or any welfare for that matter.)
His response?
He conflated the 18th century word "welfare," (general well being) with the current synonym for "charity!"
The last time I saw that assertion was when a fruitloop Amish woman was touring the country making the same argument. She was quickly laughed off the national public stage.
Was there national required charity established in the late 1700s?
Was there a food stamp program?
Aid to dependent children as a national obligation to all citizens?
Free mail for the poor?
Free food?
Free housing?
Free entertainment?
If it was a real part of the Constitutional enumerated powers why did it not exist for over 100 years afterwards?
Remember, the federal income tax did not sneak into the national consciousmess until 120 years later, and there was no mention whatsoever of mandatory national charity during Congressional debates prior to its adoption.
If an idiot with an Ivy League education can't grasp the obvious, what can we expect from the parasites who are 90% of Hussein's electorate?
Mind-boggling does not begin to describe it.
You know more about it than I, so I defer. I guess I can’t relate....’Cause here I am at 10PM banging on the laptop, which I’ve been doing in one form or another since 6AM.
I’m no luddite but I sure don’t mind being imprisoned here in the countryside. In fact I think the cities should have high walls to keep me out.
Nice try, but I'm not buying.
The urban poor are an urban creation which show signs of being able to handle technology just fine, as long as it suits them.
Don't export the problems of inner cities to the countryside where we'll have to bury them.
We have rural poor, too, often without the technology of their urban counterparts, partly because many won't go on welfare. That doesn't mean they are incapable, just not familiar with the technology--a technology which is less reliable in a rural setting and often more expensive in rural 'limited markets'.
I must note that in both cases, poverty is not so much a question of available resources so much as the disposition of those resources. You have to put a bottom in that bucket before you can fill it, and there are those who would starve in the midst of a garden ripe for harvest.
There will always be poverty but part of our problem is the definition of modern poverty.....My definition of poverty i seeing the people of the Phillipines, Zambia, Rhodesia (after we got thrown out), and Viet Nam. We have NO poverty in the US. Poor, as compared to the working, sensible, able people, yes. But no poverty.
We need poverty so we can either appreciate or be embarassed about how well we are doing (we wouldn’t appreciate the sun if it weren’t for the clouds). The poverty level now is akin to middle class in the ‘50s because the Left needs high poverty levels to pull of the class warfare thing.
Well, perhaps the best way to put it is to think of a visit to your rural grandparents, or going to summer camp for a week, just to go on vacation and “get out of town’.
A lot of people fantasize about this sort of thing, because they are overwhelmed with the pressure and routine of an IT society. And some people just can’t deal with it at all.
In perspective, it does make you ask why Obama and Washington have to be in the news every single day. Washington used to be far away and a lot quieter, but the egomaniacs in the place now think of themselves like Hollywood stars trying to steal the limelight in any way they can. So they keep forcing themselves on our attention.
Which is really annoying when they have nothing new to say, but act like wired cheerleaders to excite everyone over nothing of importance. And the media helps them to do this a lot, to fill up their 24 hour news cycle.
And, as you just pointed out, the Internet and computers are a time consuming monster.
So, with an emphasis on reasonably modest logistics, imagine living in a settlement away from all of that. There could be all sorts of diverse ways of doing so, but the emphasis is a more relaxed life, for those who just can’t adapt to fast paced everything.
Whatever the merits of the plan, it is built on the axiom of elitism: that some people are too stupid to run their own lives, whatever the situation, and they need otherwise uninvolved third parties to commandeer their lives nigh unto gunpoint to save them. This is at odds with the core American axiom of freedom & liberty.
Any links to proponents of this theory?
As Jesus pointed out, there will be no end to poverty, until He makes an end of it. He also pointed out that individuals have a duty to render alms to the least of us, as those who live in poverty are. But that is the Almighty’s commandment to individuals- not governments.
Poverty has a parallel in racism, as indicated by these words of wisdom:
“There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs. There is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don’t want the patient to get well.” - Booker T. Washington
If the poverty pimps cure the condition, they are out of a job.
Even an IT culture has a need for people to push brooms, bag groceries, paint houses. Your proposed solution is unecessary.
I am a little curious about your basis for it, what kind of farm do you run? Or, how many farms and what types have you worked on?
This is kind of a “forest and trees” argument.
Similar rural settlements have been suggested in past for unemployable ex-convicts, older fourth world immigrants who do not grasp our technology at all, and those who are functionally retarded but able to do simpler tasks.
This just adds to that list people who are not retarded, but just cannot function in a more technological society.
The idea of farming and animal husbandry is solely that they can help to feed and partially clothe themselves. Anything beyond that is incidental, so it is not a great goal in and of itself.
The goal is that many of these people will lead better lives doing this than living in small, filthy, inner city projects apartments, doing nothing other than what they are told to do by government workers.
And at significantly lower costs in the long run.
You still didn’t answer my questions. That’s ok, I can tell what your answers would be.
Kindly do all rural folks a favor, stick to the concrete.
And you might stop doing the government favors by asking people biographical questions on the Internet.
Sorry, not yours. Not theirs, either.
Nothing personal. Literally.
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