Former senator John Edwards is back in the news. As a politician, Edwards’s main theme was “poverty.” He ran on this issue twice in Democratic presidential primaries and as candidate for vice president in 2004. Edwards famously declared there were “two Americas,” one rich and one poor; as a candidate, he spent most of his time exaggerating the chasm between the two.
In Edwards’s vision of America, nearly 40 million Americans live in “terrible” conditions, their daily life a “struggle with incredible poverty.” According to Edwards, America’s poor, who number “one in eight of us … do not have enough money for the food, shelter, and clothing they need.”
In his stump speeches, Edwards proclaimed, ”Tonight, a 10-year-old little girl will go to bed hungry, hoping and praying that tomorrow will not be as cold as today because she doesn’t have the coat to keep her warm.” Challenged by skeptics, Edwards’s staff reluctantly admitted the girl was “metaphorical.” But that never stopped Edwards from featuring her in speech after speech as the symbol of the “plague of poverty” ravaging an eighth of the nation.
Edwards understood the emotive power of the word “poverty.” To the average American, “poverty” means significant material deprivation, an inability to provide a family with adequate nutritious food, reasonable shelter, and clothing. Liberal activists reinforce this view, declaring that being poor in U.S. means being “unable to obtain the basic material necessities of life.” The news media amplify this idea; most new stories on poverty in the U.S. feature homeless families, people living in crumbling shacks, or lines of the downtrodden eating in soup kitchens.
It is true that, while Edwards was on the campaign trail, the U.S. Census Bureau regularly declared that nearly 40 million Americans were living “in poverty.” The question is, how many of the 40 million people defined as “poor” by the government were actually living in the dire conditions described by Edwards and the mainstream media? The answer: very few. As scholar James Q. Wilson has stated, “The poorest Americans today live a better life than all but the richest persons a hundred years ago.”
While Edwards campaigned for the presidency, the typical “poor” household, as defined by the government, had air conditioning and a car. For entertainment, the household had cable or satellite TV, two color televisions, a DVD player, and a VCR. If there were children in the home (especially boys), the family had a game system such as an X-box or Play Station.
These are verifiable government data, not metaphors. And there are more. The typical “poor” kitchen had a microwave, refrigerator, oven, and stove. Other household conveniences included a clothes washer, clothes dryer, ceiling fans, cordless phones, and a coffee maker.
The home of the average poor family was not overcrowded and was in good repair. In fact, the typical poor American had more living space than the average European. (Note: That’s average European, not poor European.) The family was able to obtain medical care when needed.
By its own report, the family was not hungry; actually, the majority of poor adults, like most Americans, were overweight. When asked, most poor families stated they had had sufficient funds during the past year to meet all essential needs. While poor families struggled to make ends meet, in most cases, they were struggling to pay for a car, air conditioning, and cable TV, while putting ample food on the table.
Edwards lectured the public endlessly about children in poverty, painting pictures of toddlers with empty stomachs living in shacks. But he never discussed the causes of child poverty. These are: very low levels of work among poor parents (even during economic boom times) and the collapse of marriage in low-income communities.
Ironically, Edwards was right about “two nations” in one sense: marriage is now the main economic dividing line among families. Today, over 40 percent of children are born outside marriage. America is rapidly evolving into two castes: Children in the top half are being raised by married parents with college degrees, while children in the bottom third are born to and raised by unmarried mothers with a high-school degree or less.
Another topic Edwards scrupulously avoided was the size of the welfare state. Last year, government spent nearly $900 billion on means-tested assistance, providing cash, food, housing, medical care, and social services to low-income Americans. This sum (which does not include Social Security and Medicare) amounts to over $20,000 for each poor American.
As the nation’s most vocal anti-poverty warrior, Edwards always maintained a pious silence about topics such as the causes of poverty and the size of the welfare state. Instead, living in a $5 million mansion and sporting $450 haircuts, he intoned endlessly about little girls with empty stomachs who walked to school, on cold wintry mornings, without even a coat to keep warm. Behind the empty rhetoric was a man with vanity and ambition, and not much else.
I wonder if he'll channel his dead wife at the trial.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHe got away with it because there is a entire group of individuals who believe that there this group of permanently impoverished class of people and they only got that way because there are "robber barons" all over the place stealing what is rightfully theirs.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYep - and the only way to help those impoverished unfortunates is to give them money... other people's money, of course!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseGuess he should have called his book "Five Trials."
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Behind the empty rhetoric was a man with vanity and ambition, and not much else."
Well he also had po Lizabeth to prop him up as well remember? Bravely facing the press to say she was dyin of cancer but Johnny's quest to be President was very important to both of them. She enabled him and then got cuckolded (can women be that?).
This guy is as big a Wiener as Antney.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAnd what about the ten year old girl who will go to bed hungry and alone tonight and shiver in the cold without warm clothing because her immature, unemployed single mother uses the proceeds of her welfare check for her own benefit rather than for the benefit of her daughter? While she's out partying in the trendy clothes she purchased with a good chunk of her welfare check, her 10 year old daughter is at home alone, hungry and cold. This kind of thing happens all the time and we can throw money at it from now until the end of time and it will continue to happen.
Irresponsible, uneducated, immature parents are a serious problem no entitlement program can fix. Providing welfare checks and other taxpayer-funded benefits to poor adults is no guarantee those benefits will be used to properly care for their children. And when we factor in the fraud and corruption that attaches to every entitlement program taxpayers fund - people receiving benefits to which they aren't entitled - reasonable people should be able to admit that money doesn't cure poverty. Character and opportunity do.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThank You
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSobering, and sadly accurate.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI commend you for acknowledging that there is an actual problem here. Something that this article goes out of its way to deny.
That said, you offer no solutions and apparently believe that there are no solutions. I would say that "character" is a form of social capital and is something that is taught, not some unalterable characteristic you are born with or not.
You have no solutions and insist that nothing can be done. Would your attitude be the same if the ten year old girl in your hypothetical was someone you cared about rather than a stranger where you can comfortable dismiss her poverty as unsolvable?
I doubt it.
Speaking of character, I personally don't think the defeatist conclusion that "nothing can be done" involves a lot of character.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYet I notice that you don't propose any solution, Mr. Welker.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseGenerally, if the woman your interested in has been portrayed in 2 separate novels as a gold digger and all around shallow person, you should skip her!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMy family only has one TV and no air conditioner. I am glad my tax dollars are making their standard of living higher than mine. I am beginning to think I am a fool for being frugal and believing in personal responsibility. I have a friend who is on WIC who is planning an expensive wedding and I know a few other entitlement recieving moms who get their hair and nails done quite often. This one is the best yet, my husband had a paying job for a welfare mom, she was a no show because according to her sister she was out buying lobsters for a party she was having. Don't worry, these are all white welfare folks out in my neck of the woods, so there is no reason to call me a racist.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseEdwards on poverty,
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseGore on pollution,
Obama on racism,
Kennedy on morals,
the hypocrisy list goes on and on.
I while back I remembered reading a story about Edwards in which he made some monetary promises to a charity or a group of people in New Orleans (or was it somewhere else?) that, in the end, he never kept. Does anyone remember this or know where I could find a recounting of it?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseRobert, these kinds of stats are usefull, but it would be a lot more usefull if you cited sources and/or gave links. (I know the Heritage Foundation has provided these kinds of reports based on census surveys.)
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMy jaw dropped while reading this article. Are you, both the author and the like minded commentors, that detached from the real world? Have any of you experienced poverty? Even second hand?
The “The poorest Americans today live a better life than all but the richest persons a hundred years ago” quote is absolute fecal matter of which ever large mammal you prefer, because I can't see anyone living in the projects or trailerpark being better off than any Rothchild in the 1800's.
But I guess since I am not of like mind, I am not the target audience of this piece. Look, if you want to have people "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" or whatever you guys call it, perhaps gutting the public eduaction system is not the way to go. Perhaps cutting foodstamps and programs of the sort is not the proper route to take, this is America, really, should anyone go hungry? Of course not. The right is trying to kill all paths to upward mobility because poor people are "lazy, loose, incompentant slobs," right? The whole abstinance only thing really works well to promote upward mobility, huh?
The entire premise that the poor are doing just fine turns my stomach. There is a reason they are called "poor." "The family was able to obtain medical care when needed," is ingenuine and bogus also. Let me guess, the ER? Good one... I guess they have to pay a premium price for healthcare that is the same they would get from a general practitioner that would be quite cheaper had they had insurance. So if they don't pay, they get free care, right? But they take a credit hit, which keeps them from accumulating wealth, as a poor credit score keeps you from purchasing a home, not to mention, they probably don't have enough money to afford a decent home.
Just because there are some clowns that have no idea how to handle money, and blow it on materialistic junk and can't get their life in order, doesn't mean this is the norm. But God forbid we begin teaching life skills such as how to handle money and such in the public school system that is losing funding every year and only "teaches to the test."
There are 2 Americas, even though you never vist the part of town that is the other America (unless you are trying to get some drugs or something).
Wake up and realize that the more you take from the poor and give to your rich cronies, the bigger the gap you make, the more middle class homes you shove downward toward that "mythical' poverty line, the more you make this an economically and opportunity top heavy society, the sooner the poor, once they have lost hope (you know, that hope FoxNews peddles to poor white America that they can be one of you), they will turn on the "Haves."
We don't live in a Caste System, as much as that bothers you.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseGet a grip, Ace. Turn off the "Kos Translator" and try to pay attention.
Oh, and do try not to spout every hackneyed Class Warrior cliche - no one here buys it.
We're going broke. We can't pay for everything you want from government and, no, it's not because the "rich" don't "pay their fair share." People like you, who play the "More Compassionate than Thou" card to make yourself feel good, are a major part of the problem - your refusal to DO THE MATH only makes the train wreck more likely.
If it comes, the "poor" you care so much about will really be screwed. Your part of the problem, not part of the solution.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBD57 06/03/11 22:29 said: "We're going broke. We can't pay for everything you want from government and, no, it's not because the "rich" don't "pay their fair share."
That's absurd. We're in trouble precisely because the rich don't pay their fair share. Their stooges in Congress have been relieving them of the duty to America for years.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMy entire life, the only answer I've ever heard from a librul as to what "the rich" should pay as "the fair share" has always been: "More."
IOW it's never enough.
There's a simply reply to the moonbat assertion that "the poor" do not live better lives than everyone but the very rich: just look at their life expectancy, which is not much different from the middle class or "rich", and is a full 30 years longer on average than 100 years ago.
QED.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseUm, I think paying 40% of one's income in taxes IS more than paying one's "fair share".
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