Each of us may have his own idea of what poverty means — especially those of us who grew up in poverty. But what poverty means politically and in the media is whatever the people who collect statistics choose to define as poverty.
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This is not just a question of semantics. The whole future of the welfare state depends on how poverty is defined. “The poor” are the human shields behind whom advocates of ever bigger spending for ever bigger government advance toward their goal.
If poverty meant what most people think of as poverty — people “ill-clad, ill-housed, and ill-nourished,” in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s phrase — there would not be nearly enough people in poverty today to justify the vastly expanded powers and runaway spending of the federal government.
Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation has for years examined what “the poor” of today actually have — and the economic facts completely undermine the political rhetoric.
Official data cited by Rector show that 80 percent of “poor” households have air conditioning today, which less than half the population of America had in 1970. Nearly three-quarters of households in poverty own a motor vehicle, and nearly one-third own more than one motor vehicle.
Virtually everyone living in “poverty,” as defined by the government, has color television, and most have cable or satellite TV. More than three-quarters have either a VCR or a DVD player, and nearly nine-tenths have a microwave oven.
As for being “ill-housed,” the average poor American has more living space than the general population — not just the poor population — of London, Paris, and other cities in Europe.
Various attempts have been made over the years to depict Americans in poverty as “ill-fed,” but the “hunger in America” campaigns that have enjoyed such political and media popularity have usually used some pretty creative methods and definitions.
Actual studies of “the poor” have found their intake of the necessary nutrients to be no less than that of others. In fact, obesity is slightly more prevalent among low-income people.
The real triumph of words over reality, however, is in expensive government programs for “the elderly,” including Medicare. The image often invoked is the person who is both ill and elderly, and who has to choose between food and medications.
It is great political theater. But, the most fundamental reality is that the average wealth of the elderly is some multiple of the average wealth owned by people in the other age brackets.
Why should the average taxpayer be subsidizing people who have much more wealth than they do?
If we are concerned about those particular elderly people who are in fact poor — as we are about other people who are genuinely poor, whatever their age might be — then we can simply confine our help to those who are poor by some reasonable means test. It would cost a fraction of what it costs to subsidize everybody who reaches a certain age.
But the political Left hates means tests. If government programs were confined to people who were genuinely poor in some meaningful sense, that would shrink the welfare state to a fraction of its current size. The Left would lose its human shields.
It is certainly true that the elderly are more likely to have more medical problems and larger medical expenses. But old age is not some unforeseeable misfortune. It is not only foreseeable but inevitable for those who do not die young.
It is one thing to keep people from suffering from unforeseeable things beyond their control. But it is something else to simply subsidize their necessities so that they can spend their money on other things and leave a larger estate to be passed on to their heirs.
People who say they want a government program because “I don’t want to be a burden to my children” apparently think it is all right to be a burden to other people’s children.
Among the runaway spending behind our current national-debt problems is the extravagant luxury of buying political rhetoric.
"In fact, obesity is slightly more prevalent among low-income people."
Anyone familiar with low-income people would see there is no "slightly" about it. We have the fattest "poor" class in history.
And BTW, my income and family size classifies me as officially "poor," and I have two cars, TV, VCR, DVD player, and due to a lucky break in the local rental market I live in a huge four-bedroom house.
And most importantly, I have access to music at any time of the day or night and books in huge numbers, something no king of old could boast.
There isn't a sentence in this evil screed that isn't contrived, irrelevant, or just plain false. My favorite is, "But the political Left hates means tests." This is just plain wrong as to Medicare and disingenuous as to Social Security:
Isn't it interesting that MikeB can only find one objection in an essay he characterized as "evil".
What that tells me is that MikeB cannot refute the baseline facts upon which Mr Sowell relies. Mr Rector's essay appeared last week, it is factually based and stunning in its conclusiions.
Since MikeB cannot refute the fact that the left's "human shields" are neither poor nor vulnerable he must attack the only thing remaining: Sowell's depiction of the attitude of liberals.
The simple fact is that we are experiencing the ultimate failure of our grand experiment with liberalism. We're watching Europe as it runs out of money and contending with our own fiscal crisis.
there will scarcely be a better time to assault the core dogma of the left. America's conservatives must take a page from Mr Obama's play book and not let this crisis go to waste.
Read both of your links: HuffPuff and Mother Hubbard....it would appear that Obione only came to the table on July 15th 2011, probably because he was on the back foot trying to defend the indefensible - Obamacare & Debt Ceilings. Mother J is interesting: as it points out high income earner are already means tested with the tax rate. But why pick on just one aspect of the article and call the entirety "Garbage"?
The reality is that Means Testing has been an long term mental block for the “left” as is “universal” healthcare. To attempt to try and state otherwise is disingenuous.
But to the point of the article: “This is not just a question of semantics. The whole future of the welfare state depends on how poverty is defined. “The poor” are the human shields behind whom advocates of ever bigger spending for ever bigger government advance toward their goal.”
The question on the table is “for how much longer can we afford 20% (real numbers) unemployed, 132Million on welfare (2010 Census) and 50% of the working population paying no Federal Income tax?”
Based on the projections and as the PIGS and the EU continue to establish, not for much longer and that includes the ramifications of the recent action to increase the Debt Limit.
Nothing like referencing two leftist publications to make your point. Huffington Post and Mother Jones aren't exactly "fair and balanced" in anything they report.
The sad fact is that poverty, the real deal, does exist in our country. But it's in the rural areas where there are not as many voters. Let's take some of the wealth from the urban "poor" and spread it around to the rest of fly-over country.
CC, start with the proposition that "Each of us may have his own idea of what poverty means — especially those of us who grew up in poverty. But what poverty means politically and in the media is whatever the people who collect statistics choose to define as poverty."
Why do we care about statistics? Poverty is when two people, working diligently at 40 hour a week jobs, can't raise a couple of kids, feed them, clothe them, put a roof over their heads. Is that satisfactory to you? If not, is it because, by that definition of poverty, tens of millions of decent, hard working Americans are sitting below the poverty line?
This is something like the third NR piece in a couple of weeks to push the "they have air conditioners and XBoxes!" line. Why do you think that's important, other than to give conservatives the "It's their own blank fault!" excuse to turn away from the reality that America is evolving rapidly into a country with a small class of very well off people served by a vast army of low-paid service workers who realistically don't have a prayer of achieving the American Dream.
Go ahead. Blame it all on the character of that segment of poor people who really should know better but make bad decisions. That way, you can ignore everyone else who is not as smart as Sowell and can't expect to do anything more than what a high school grad does in this country, which used to be turning a union lathe for $20 an hour but is now flipping burgers for half that.
Well MikeB, the fact is I live in the hood. I interact with people living on tax payer largesse each and every day.
I am far from alone in my frustration with the current situation and the core problem is NOT something that misguided liberals funded with my money can solve.
Again, you've worked hard to miss the point. I think the articles about the material wealth of the so called poor are important for a variety of reasons. Among them:
(1) Facts about the real situation serves to disarm the left as it relies on emotion rather than fact to advance its agenda. Was it you or some other liberal commenter who complained about grandma cutting pills to make ends meet last week?
(2) These articles demonstrate the true nature of the problem facing us as a society: the folks on the recieving end of my money are, in the vast majority, not materially poor but spiritually poor. They lack the drive necessary to jump into the mainstream and we simply enable them by throwing my money at them. I worked my way out of poverty because I didn't like it. That was before the great society offered me a viable choice between easy riding and hard work.
(3) At a time when the president is demanding still more of my money it is important to understand the uses to which the money already confiscated from me are put. How willing are the working Americans to pony up still more when the government is already wasting or misusing what has already been taken?
(4) Envy is an important fact of human nature. My belief is that ordinary working Americans envy the welfare recipients, the SS recievers who are getting far more than they ever paid in and the government employees who have overseen this fiasco while working far less hard than us and retiring 15 years sooner. If the left wants to use class envy as a tool, they should recognize the monster they've awakened.
You like Dr. Sowell's explanation of poverty, don't you? Yes, you do, you clever little curmudgeon. Why? Because even if they do have all those things that Dr. Sowell's source says they have, they aren't feeding, clothing, and sheltering their children because they are stuck in low-wage jobs because of global competition.
Kind of works for you, doesn't it?
Look, you often cite the low-wage jobs that plague many of our lower-wage earners, but you rarely examine the root cause—poor education and low expectation. You correct for those two things, and low wages become the domain of the teenagers living with mom and dad, and mom and dad move up to middle income status. Why? Because there are plenty of higher paying jobs in this country.
Ask any corporate HR director. Many of the best jobs are being filled by H-1B’s because companies just can’t find enough qualified Americans. There are currently 35,000 H-1B’s filled, on the way to a cap of 85,000 for bachelors and masters for the year. Many categories of degreed applicants have no cap at all!
85,000 jobs a year!—what do you think the impact of that number of jobs would do to the poverty statistics?
MIkeB, you said, "Poverty is when two people, working diligently at 40 hour a week jobs, can't raise a couple of kids, feed them, clothe them, put a roof over their heads." Do you have statistics on that? How many of these working poor are there?
I submit that some "poor" people have only one person working, not two, and the jobs may be part-time. You may want to amend your criteria, or not.
I don't know how two people working 40-hour jobs could fail to provide a roof over their own heads. Decisions to have children are elective. If they cannot afford children, they should not have them. Why should taxpayers have to pay for the elective choices of others? But let's say your example is of people who were able to afford the children when they had them, but their fortunes have reversed.
If the place they are in is too expensive to live, why don't they look for work elsewhere? Live in a smaller home? If I cannot afford my expenses, that's what I do. In fact, having been unemployed for awhile, that's my plan. I'll get my house ready for sale and move. I have enough savings to make up the difference on the underwater mortgage.
All this said, I suggest that if these are the only people you want to provide for, that would be more sustainable. But as a taxpayer, I think we have the right to demand that the problem be constrained. Anyone who collects welfare submits to a sterilization procedure. I can think of no other problem where we feel compelled to just throw money at it without attempting to limit the problem.
nice little rant there mikeyb, but when you are all said and done and out of the breath the simple fact remains that its MY money going to buy luxuries for the "poor". at the point where they spend gov't money to buy those things is the point where the spigot needs to be turned off.
I believe that means testing is crucial to make social security solvent. Why should someone who relies totally on ss have to reduce their income or not receive their COLA to keep the guy making $75K receiving his ss? Also Medicare, many can easily afford their own insurance but choose to save the money and let us pay for it. I don't mind paying for those to can't, but like welfare, I resent paying for those who can and choose not to.
