Posted on 08/01/2011 12:39:25 PM PDT by Kaslin
More than 35 million Americans live in poverty, according to the Census Bureau. Imagine what kind of life they must have.
Actually, you don’t have to imagine. Their federal government conducts numerous surveys that contain detailed information about the living conditions of those classified as poor -- information that comes directly from those in poverty.
Are they experiencing significant hardship? Do they just barely scrape by, with no modern conveniences and hardly any food? Some do, unfortunately. But for most, it’s a different story.
Air-conditioning? Cable TV? A car? The average household defined as poor by the government has these, the survey data show. It also has a microwave, a clothes washer and dryer, a dishwasher, a coffee maker and a cordless phone. Half of poor households have a computer. Add to this two color televisions and a DVD player, along with a video-game system such as an Xbox or a Playstation for those households with children.
But what about where they live? One could have any number of modern gadgets and conveniences and still live in a broken-down, cramped residence. That isn’t the case, however. “Poor Americans are well housed and rarely overcrowded,” writes Heritage Foundation welfare expert Robert Rector in a new study. “In fact, the houses and apartments of America’s poor are quite spacious by international standards. The typical poor American has considerably more living space than does the average European.”
Moreover, 43 percent own their own homes, the government data show, nearly all of which are in good condition.
OK, so the average poor family lives in an uncrowded house or apartment, it’s in good repair, and it has many modern conveniences. What about food? Again, the surveys indicate that, on average, the poor are well-nourished. The level of protein, vitamins and minerals that children in poverty consume is virtually identical to what middle-class children get.
Some poor households do experience temporary food shortages. But again, this is a distinct minority. More than 92 percent of poor households say they always have “enough food to eat” over the last four months. Only 6 percent say they “sometimes” don’t have enough, and 1.5 percent say it happens often.
The point of all this is not to argue that there aren’t people in this country living in poverty. There are. And those truly in need deserve a helping hand. But the good news is that the problem isn’t as widespread or as chronic as we’re led to believe. We wind up wasting money when we pretend otherwise.
In addition, we fuel the anti-American propaganda spread by countries such as Russia and China, who accuse the United States of human-rights violations. Why? Because they claim that the millions of Americans classified as poor are enduring a life of desperate poverty -- “like a third world nightmare,” as the Russia Today TV network once put it.
The average poor household in the U.S. isn’t living the high life. But it’s also not the dust-bowl existence pictured in John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath,” or the dramatic “Two Americas” picture painted by John Edwards. As scholar James Q. Wilson notes, “The poorest Americans today live a better life than all but the richest persons a hundred years ago.”
We do those who experience substantial hardship a real disservice when we spread misinformation that inflates their true numbers, especially in a time of tight budgets. We need to base anti-poverty policy on facts, not on lurid anecdotes and exaggerated rhetoric.
I'll never forget anthropology professors at SIUC with pictures of Che on their office doors, picketing because the school paid them "hardly more than the groundskeepers!"
That's what they'd like you to think, but it's not true. In order to cook the books on what percentage of income is earned by those in the "bottom quintile," they've actually defined the "bottom quintile" as being fewer than 20% of income earners.
And few of the members of the "bottom quintile are dead-enders; predominantly they are young people just starting out. More of those who were in the bottom quintile ten years ago are in the top quintile now, than are still in the bottom quintile today.
Let's remember that it has spent the last 50 years "studying" poverty, redistributing the earnings of others in the name of "poverty," and building an ever-larger voting block whose numbers they can count on to re-elect them to positions of coercive power.
That the con man John Edwards is mentioned by Feulner at all is comical--he and his "two Americas" may have been good political theatre, but it was not intellectual honesty about economic matters in America.
As he went about establishing a "poverty center" at his alma mater for the "study" of poverty, one could speculate that he merely was exploiting less fortunate citizens for the sake of advancing his own political goals.
If Edwards truly possessed such "concern" for those in "poverty," he would have been better off to establish a center at UNC for the study of wealth creation--a far better vehicle for lifting people out of poverty. He could have called it the Adam Smith Center and used that great moral philosopher's "An Enquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations" as the Center's primary course of study. (Sarcasm)
Cloward-Piven ideology:
“if each finally found himself in the same relative economic relationship to his fellows ... all were infinitely better off.”
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.