Posted on 03/08/2010 6:39:30 AM PST by reaganaut1
This week, the Obama administration announced it will create a new poverty-measurement system that will eventually displace the current poverty measure. This new measure, which has little or nothing to do with actual poverty, will serve as the propaganda tool in Obama’s endless quest to “spread the wealth.”
Under the new measure, a family will be judged “poor” if its income falls below a certain specified income threshold. Nothing new there, but, unlike the current poverty standards, the new income thresholds will have a built-in escalator clause: They will rise automatically in direct proportion to any rise in the living standards of the average American.
The current poverty measure counts absolute purchasing power — how much steak and potatoes you can buy. The new measure will count comparative purchasing power — how much steak and potatoes you can buy relative to other people. As the nation becomes wealthier, the poverty standards will increase in proportion. In other words, Obama will employ a statistical trick to ensure that “the poor will always be with you,” no matter how much better off they get in absolute terms.
The Left has promoted this idea of an ever-rising poverty measure for a long time. It was floated at the beginning of the War on Poverty and flatly rejected by Pres. Lyndon Johnson. Not so President Obama, who consistently seeks to expand the far-left horizons of U.S. politics.
The weird new poverty measure will produce very odd results. For example, if the real income of every single American were to magically triple over night, the new poverty measure would show there had been no drop in “poverty,” because the poverty income threshold would also triple. Under the Obama system, poverty can be reduced only if the incomes of the “poor” are rising faster
(Excerpt) Read more at article.nationalreview.com ...
An inflation indexed poverty level. Well if you’re going to believe in poverty levels at all, then inflation indexing them would seem to make sense. But, will deflation cause these levels to fall?
Ah yes, the old change the game to match the new rules ploy.....
Yes. And we need to do the same.
The bible already says the poor will always be with us.
Median world income is $2/day per person.
If you’re making more than half the people on the planet, you’re not poor.
So Obama denigrates success and elevates failure. Whats new about that? Level the playing field doncha know. And add some numbers to it - call it science - worked for Algore.
Fraud
“Under the Obama system, poverty can be reduced only if the incomes of the ‘poor’ are rising faster than the incomes of everyone else.”
Well, we’ve been GIVING ‘poor’ people money, cheap housing, free food, free medical, free education, free bus passes, not limiting them to the number of kids they can have and paying for each and every one for about 50 years now.
And they’re still poor...and there’s more of them than ever before! If you build it, they WILL come.
This is just another sneaky way the Left can conduct more wealth redistribution. They’re not fooling me...or many others, anymore.
I wonder what our future slave owners, the Chinese, think about this new waste of their money.
There is a vast poverty bureaucracy. This insures that its members will always be employed. Very clever move on their part.
Communism: Keep fixing it until it stays broke.
This should tick a lot of people off.
Just like this dummb move by zero.
Repeat after me...Socialism is your friend....Mmmm,Mmmm,Mmmm
Kiss this experiment goodbye, unless something is done real soon.
“An inflation indexed poverty level. Well if you’re going to believe in poverty levels at all, then inflation indexing them would seem to make sense.”
Current poverty levels already ARE indexed for inflation, so that poverty-level purchasing power stays constant over time. But most families have incomes that beat inflation over time, i.e., their standard of living RISES as the breadwinners increase their earnings through promotions within their own companies, or take higher paying jobs at other companies (or start their own businesses etc.). Obama is proposing to tie poverty levels to median family incomes, which would mean a) the “war on poverty” by definition can never be won (as even if we triple our standard of living instantaneously, there always will be SOME families below X% of the median); b) ever-growing costs of government, since a large number of government benefits programs (Medicaid, SCHIP, Food Stamps, SSI, TANF) are tied to poverty thresholds, thus much larger numbers of people would qualify for benefits over time than would have qualified under an absolute (albeit inflation-adjusted) standard.
Needless to say, that’s the whole point: when put into legislative form, this should be titled the Federal Bureaucrats Full and Permanent Employment Act since that is effectively the really motivation behind this proposal.
Yeah, but the leftists are (as usual) propagating their paychecks at our expense and at the expense of future American generations.
We need to stop this madness. Any way we can.
Obama must have been sleeping in church this day:
Don't Compare Yourself To Others
Romans 12 v 4 - 6
In this way we are like the various parts of a human body. Each part gets its meaning from the body as a whole, not the other way around. The body we're talking about is Christ's body of chosen people. Each of us finds our meaning and function as a part of his body. But as a chopped-off finger or cut-off toe we wouldn't amount to much, would we? So since we find ourselves fashioned into all these excellently formed and marvellously functioning parts in Christ's body, let's just go ahead and be what we were made to be, without enviously or pridefully comparing ourselves with each other, or trying to be something we aren't.
Leftism is a sin.
Let me know if you would like to be on or off the ping list...
They are waging war on all fronts.
Exactly!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.