Stay safe !
Posted on 09/04/2004 10:43:45 AM PDT by wagglebee
At the Republican National Convention this week, there was a lot of talk about money. Pay raises for firefighters. Money for Swift Boat ads. Money to rebuild Iraq, and so on. One thing the pundits and presidential candidates didn't say much about, however, is how much money has been spent fighting the "war on poverty"--$9 trillion and counting. Yes, $9 trillion.
Yet, as the Census Bureau just reported, poverty in America is up. So what do the candidates propose we do?
Well, one candidate believes the solution is to spend more money on social programs, while the other believes the solution is to spend more money on ... social programs. Since 2000, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (the traditional welfare program) spending has increased 6 percent. What did we get for that money? A higher poverty rate. Obviously a stagnant economy and poor job market are responsible for the increase in those living below the poverty line. However, spending more money on social programs is not raising them back out of poverty.
The best way to reduce the poverty rate is to convince people to avoid poverty in the first place by finishing school, delaying parenthood, and getting a job (any job). High school dropouts are roughly three times more likely to end up in poverty than are those who complete at least a high school education. A common reason why teens drop out of high school is out-of-wedlock births. Teenage pregnancy initiates a single mother into a life of dependency that is difficult to overcome, especially if she goes on to have additional children. Over half of welfare money is spent on families that began with a teen birth.
Getting a job as a solution to poverty may seem like common sense. Granted, not every job pays a wage that will catapult a family into the middle class. However, every job provides job experience, and that leads to a better job. Maybe today's minimum-wage, service industry employee is not on a track for management. But he is showing that he is a reliable worker who can learn and perform duties, something a future employer will value.
Despite all this common sense, Democrats refuse to endorse welfare reform that would emphasize actual work experience. They would spend money to send single moms to college or train them in a specific skill for which there may be no demand in the job market. Republicans are not doing much better by encouraging social spending on programs like marriage initiatives, suggesting that coupling off the poor will somehow raise them out of poverty. In the past 40 years, we have spent at least $8.9 trillion (in constant 2003 dollars) on the "war on poverty." Isn't it time that one of the candidates admit we cannot spend our way out of poverty?
If education, pregnancy prevention, and employment are the solutions to poverty, we need a candidate that advocates policies that promote them. Education reform, including school choice, would provide a real opportunity for children to start on an equal playing field, prevent "at risk" students from dropping out, and produce a more competitive national workforce. Pregnancy prevention programs need to educate teenagers about how to avoid pregnancy, as well as emphasize the life-altering repercussion of parenthood as a minor. Finally, job growth results from a dynamic economy. Lower taxes, less regulation on business and industry, and freer trade would produce the jobs necessary to escape the bonds of poverty.
So, listen this campaign season as candidates offer their solution to the rise in poverty. Be wary of promises to throw more money at the problem. That clearly doesn't work.
Poverty is a term thrown around that has nothing to do with the conditions people live in. The answer is to overhaul the tax system and create an even stronger economy.
Private ownership has always been the answer; in all but a few areas, government has always been the problem.
Stay safe !
Doesn't this woman realize that her ideas are not unique, and Not PC?
You are looking at the right topics, but it won't be easy getting to the right answers. There is a lot of heavy reading to be done.
But we had to send the lifting-oneself-out-of-poverty type jobs to Mexico so they could try and do that there. It was decided that America doesn't need garment industry jobs, nor manufacturing and assembly work jobs or other factory jobs. The welfare class can't all become computer programmers or physicians to end their poverty.
"Since 2000, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (the traditional welfare program) spending has increased 6 percent. What did we get for that money? A higher poverty rate."
A little over 2000 years ago, we were told, "Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach him to fish, and you feed him for life".
I wish the politicians would take this advice, and make it the center of the War on Poverty.
Gimme my money back.
If they can help themselves then they wouldn't need social programs from Bush.
How about getting away from permissive and excuse-based lifestyles and actually having some real standards and expectations in society? Seems to me that many of our social policies just make people weaker, not stronger. Low expecations yield low results. At least that's my experience as a parent.
Take away the multitude of expensive social programs and these people would get out there and teach themselves how to fish. When the food stamps and generous welfare checks don't show up on time --- many might start looking for a job. When the government stops subsidizing the home mortgages of teenage mothers who keep having babies without husbands, they might start realizing they should wait for a husband.
Exactly. As long as doing little or nothing pays as well as doing something, people will choose to do little or nothing. They keep giving someone a free lunch, and then wonder why the recipients don't cook their own meals.
Stay Safe !
You are exactly right. The welfare state is a major reason for the moral rot of recent decades because the much-maligned traditional middle class morality is no longer a lifestyle necessity, but merely a lifestyle option. People no longer have to suffer the consequences of their stupid behavior -- in fact, they're rewarded.
You are also correct about the massive loss of jobs suitable for people with limited education, skills, and even intelligence. Even in the 60s, there were plenty of jobs, many well-paying, for high-school dropouts. It's much harder to find such work now and such jobs usually pay little. The ex-welfare recipient turned nurse's aide is probably still collecting government subsidies such as food stamps and day care for her children. I recall reading an article speculating that "welfare reform" might actually cost more than welfare because of the costs involved with tracking down deadbeat dads, day care, transportation assistance and education.
Bump for later reading.
What was that last sentence doing in the article?
It's also very interesting the rapid increase of those in "extreme poverty". This region is seeing a lot of that. Slight poverty is something many of us actually had at one time or another in our lives -- between jobs or while putting ourselves through college but for many who are coming with no ability to learn English or to learn to read and who have no job skills, poverty will be much worse than we've seen and far more chronic.
Reparations?
10 Trillion? ;)
"No ability to learn English"? No ability? Why? Are they deaf and blind? Did you mean they have no "opportunity" to learn English? Why? English-As-A-Second-Lanuage classes can be found just about everywhere. Interacting with English speaking people is also a great -- if rough and ready -- way to learn English. Where there's a will, there's a way.
To learn how to read and/or write? No "ability"? Are they mentally handicapper to that degree? B/c, like EAASL, communities all across the country offer classes on adult literacy -- many of the free or at nominal cost. Besides, one can learn to read and/or write the nothing more than the help of a family member or friend. Again, where there's a will, there's a way.
No job skills? Whose fault is that? Not mine, not yours, no anyone reading this. Off hand, I'd say that 95% of everything we do in life is the result of a choice we make ourselves. You know, the old saying "As ye sow, so shall ye reap." If John Doe has zero job skills and/or can't read or write and/or can't speak (correct) English and therefore continues to live in "chronic poverty", (whatever the heck that is) whose fault is that?
Those who constantly apologize, make excuses for, and condemn those who dare to pass moral judgment on the John Does of this country are, IMHO, damning with faint praise. We don't go out of our way to apologize for, excuse, etc. a capable, mature individual. We do, however, do it for someone more along the line of an untermensch
9 trillion would end all my problems.... all of them
Births, immigration, and the fact that many start in poverty and work their way out of it?
Since the "poverty line" is arbitrarily set by the federal goverment, the government could simply lower the "poverty line", and by doing so, instantaneously lift millions of Americans out of poverty. Today, a family of five with a combined income of $21,539 is considered to be living in poverty. Living below the "poverty line" and being poor aren't necessarily the same thing.
Thomas Sowell in his book, The Annoited, demonstrated that the War on Poverty was started by the left in an era where people were winning the war on poverty without government help. The succeeded in scaring the public and elected officials responded with scads of dollars in handouts. The result, people gave up on jobs and work and became part of the permanent welfare class. (This was of course just what the leftists wanted.) We are seeing it again.
Careful with the "deadbeat dad" reference. Lots of child support orders are way too high.
That's why the statistics on the increasing poverty in the USA are pretty glum --- poverty is increasing and it's of a kind that isn't going to be cured for many generations.
There are deadbeat dads though --- there is a guy here for example who makes $6 an hour but brags about having 7 kids with 6 different women --- and he's not supporting any of his kids --- he really couldn't if he wanted to -- but he feels macho for siring so many.
That is $74 a month for 40 yrs for 250,000,000 citizens. Or $35500 per citizen over 40 yrs. Unbelievable.
It's to the point that in some places assimilation almost can't take place --- when 80% speak Spanish and maybe no one you come across in your daily life knows any English --- how will you get assimilated?
Check out this link for such an example ---
http://www.borderlandnews.com/stories/borderland/20040827-161266.shtml
The percent of people with a high school diploma is actually dropping.
Then they had best not come here and if they do, they had best not be allowed to be here or to stay here. It's called a sensible immigration policy. Many countries have it. Unless you can provide a good reason for being in that country and have a method of supporting yourself - and your family - already in place, then you don't get in. Viz., Australia
Sorry, giving anyone federal welfare who shows up at the door, or who illegally enters this country is not only not right, it is tragically destructive.
You can tell all your bleeding heart stories about people who have such hard times and can't make it, but it isn't the government's job to give them anything. You can offer your money, time and help to anyone you want, but don't offer mine or anyone else's - because it isn't yours to offer.
"To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his father has acquired too much, in order to spare to others who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it." --Thomas Jefferson
"Government must not supersede the will of the people or the responsibilities of the people. The function of government is not to confer happiness, but to give men the opportunity to work out happiness for themselves."- --Ronald Reagan, 1968
Again Fitz whines: poverty is increasing and it's of a kind that isn't going to be cured for many generations
Well, it certainly won't be cured by you and your brilliant schemes of goverment charity.
There is no virtue in compulsory government charity, and there is no virtue in advocating it. A politician who portrays himself as "caring" and "sensitive" because he wants to expand the government's charitable programs is merely saying that he's willing to try to do good with other people's money. Well, who isn't? And a voter who takes pride in supporting such programs is telling us that he'll do good with his own money -- if a gun is held to his head. -- P.J. O'Rourke
Maybe it is a concept that is beyond the capability of your liberal mind and you just can't grasp it, but there was once a very wise man who said, The poor shall always be with you. And that has held true for over two millenia. He also advised us individually to help others as we would like to be ourselves, but I have yet to see any basis for instituting into goverment, programs that give those who can't, won't or refuse to work, a steady income that allows them to continue in that chosen lifestyle.
And yes, they choose it. In general, it is their choice to be lazy and not work, to not learn the language, to not learn to read or write. Those are all choices people make. It is a simple rule of the animal kingdom that those that are fittest, survive- those that aren't, won't.
And before you go jumping to conclusions about my stinginess or lack of caring, may I offer some of my past experience on the welfare state for you. I worked in the original Office of Economic Opportunity programs as a "youth case worker". My job was to go out and find jobs for teenagers and others on welfare- to try to assist them in breaking the welfare cycle and making something better of themselves. I went out and found jobs for these people that paid better than my job. When these "poor, underpriviledged welfare recipients" were supposed to show up for the job "interview" (the job was already a given, the interview was basically a meet the new employer and get your schedule thing), wonder of wonders, they didn't show up! And that was the rule, not the exception! They didn't want a job, because they were being paid for not working. Why would anyone who was getting paid for not working want to screw that up with having to go to work at a job?
Do yourself a favor and read the record of William Bradford, (Second) Governor of Plymouth Colony and find out exactly how communism/socialism among the first colonists worked out. It is taught that those first colonists had a dreadful time surviving their first several winters, with disease and famine througout. However, little is written that they had agreed to a socialist/communist [from each according to his ability, to each according to his need] form of government before they ever embarked for Plymouth. That socialism quickly self-destructed and caused the disease and famine. When Bradford changed to a capitalist form of government, allowing each to reap what he sowed and then do with it what he wished (consuming, trading, selling, giving it away, etc.), the colony flourished.
You can damn well do whatever you want with your money, but don't try to rob everyone else through the government and redistribute everyone else's fruits to those who you (or the government) christen as "poor".
If I want to contribute my money or property to someone who is having a bad time or who is less fortunate, that's my business, not yours or the governments.
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery. -- Winston Churchill
There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences. -- P.J. O'Rourke
"When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic." --Benjamin Franklin
I didn't mean to aim that directly at you, Fitz. Just got into the rant mode aimed at the wrong person. Was fired up by Zell Miller's speech and haven't gotten over it yet. < grin>
Nine trillion dollars of socialism hasn't ended poverty, but compassionate consertivism will?
Has anyone heard of those stats, and does anyone have any access to those stats, furthermore can they be posted in the form of graph charts? I`d love to print them out and blow them up for posters
All I can say, as someone that has to deal with vicissitudes of the State regarding this, is that I think this is WAY overblown.
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