Topic: Surprising Facts About America's Poor

[Pandora]

As "poor" is defined, and redefined, by the Feds.

In a new report, Heritage’s Robert Rector and Rachel Sheffield lay out what the U.S. government’s own facts and figures really say about poverty in the United States. The results might surprise you, especially if your view of poverty is the conventional one, perpetuated by the media–namely, destitute conditions of homelessness and hunger. In reality, though, the living conditions of those defined as poor by the government are much different than that popular image. The following are facts about persons defined as “poor” by the Census Bureau:

    80 percent of poor households have air conditioning
    Nearly three-fourths have a car or truck, and 31 percent have two or more cars or trucks
    Nearly two-thirds have cable or satellite television
    Two-thirds have at least one DVD player and 70 percent have a VCR
    Half have a personal computer, and one in seven have two or more computers
    More than half of poor families with children have a video game system, such as an Xbox or PlayStation
    43 percent have Internet access
    One-third have a wide-screen plasma or LCD television
    One-fourth have a digital video recorder system, such as a TiVo

As for hunger and homelessness, Rector and Sheffield point to 2009 statistics from the U.S. Department of Agriculture showing that 96 percent of poor parents stated that their children were never hungry at any time during the year because they could not afford food, 83 percent of poor families reported having enough food to eat, and over the course of a year, only 4 percent of poor persons become temporarily homeless, with 42 percent of poor households actually owning their own homes. Want an international comparison? The average poor American has more living space than the average Swede or German. You can read even more of those facts in their report, “Understanding Poverty in the United States.”

H/T Rush Limbaugh

What I'd like to see a report of, for comparison purposes, is what middle/upper middle class used to "look" like pre-Obama.

[LadyVirginia]

My daughter took an economics class at Hillsdale with Dr.  Wolfram.  I saved the email she sent one day after a class discussion they had 4 years ago this week.

Here are some statistics from my political economy class that I thought were really interesting. People don't realize how good they have it.

90% of the poor in the U.S. have a color tv. 60% have a car. 48% own their own home.

We concluded that people see poverty as relative. They compare themselves to their neighbor instead of viewing through a historical context or even comparing themselves with the poorest person in the world. Dr. Wolfram told us on the first day of class that we all think we're middle class, but historically we're very well off.

[Libertas]

Anybody who has traveled in Southeast Asia, Central America, the Middle East and Africa know beyond a shadow of a doubt that our so-called poor are wealthy in comparison.  But Pan's question is most astute, comparing the segments in the middle class and how they have fared, even on just a pre vs post Obama timespan I think would shock most people.  The hidden tax of currency debasement and inflation alone have had to eroded personal wealth.  Throw in personal debt to income and property devaluation I bet the hit is even more stark.  But what morons don't see morons don't understand...

[jpatrickham]

The Goal is to Keep the Poor in Poverty

Filed under Culture, Economics


 

"The threshold for determining if a family is living below the poverty level in 2011 is an income of $22,350 per year for a family of four. Keep this number in mind as we take a brief look at some older poverty numbers. This will shock you. Well, maybe it won’t. We've come to expect gross incompetence from our government officials, and that’s the problem.

In 1982, the total U.S. welfare bill at all levels of government (federal, state, and local) came to $403 billion. If we take figures from the Bureau of the Census (August 1984) which state that the number of people living in poverty in the U.S. was 15.2 percent of the population or 35.3 million people, an amazing fact emerges. Had we simply divided the 403 billion dollars this nation spent on poverty at every level of government among the estimated number of poor people, each poor person could have received $11,133.

For a family of four, this would have totaled $44,532. (Remember the above number for 2011: $22,350. That’s about half of what was being spent in 1982!) Since the official poverty level per family for that year was $9,287, it is clear that America’s fight against poverty involves enormous overhead costs. Most of the tax dollars collected to fight poverty end up as Thomas Sowell notes, “in the pockets of highly paid administrators, consultants, and staff as well as higher-income recipients of benefits from programs advertised as anti-poverty efforts.” Clearly, the bucket used to carry money from the pockets of the taxpayer to the poor is leaking badly. Many think the real beneficiaries of liberal social programs are not the poor and disadvantaged but the members of the governmental bureaucracy who administer the program."

http://godfatherpolitics.com/933/the-goal-is-to-keep-the-poor-in-poverty/

When Cortez, or one of the Spanish Conquerors arrived in the New World, he had his Ships burned. His reasoning, was to make sure his Men were highly enthused on returning. The same could be said for the least fortunate among us. The poor in America want entitlement, and the Liberals are well known for them. Obama is the Piped Piper of the Rats. He plays his flute and all wishing for a hand out or crumbs dance to his music.

Charlie Rangel,  Maxine Waters, Jim Clyburn, and Sheila Jackson Lee, are especially good at this. Before election time, they let there voters eat cake, so to speak. Then, after election feed them with food stamps. Throw a few crumbs and they dance to your tune, almost every time. Of course the last three of these are the ones who cry Racism the loudest. They know they will be reelected no matter what.

[Pandora]

My daughter took an economics class at Hillsdale with Dr.  Wolfram.  I saved the email she sent one day after a class discussion they had 4 years ago this week.

Here are some statistics from my political economy class that I thought were really interesting. People don't realize how good they have it.

90% of the poor in the U.S. have a color tv. 60% have a car. 48% own their own home.

We concluded that people see poverty as relative. They compare themselves to their neighbor instead of viewing through a historical context or even comparing themselves with the poorest person in the world. Dr. Wolfram told us on the first day of class that we all think we're middle class, but historically we're very well off.

I don't know who she compared herself to, but that sounds my sister, almost ten years ago.  Making an annual extra mortgage payment on the house, two fairly new vehicles, multiple TVs and computers, an above-ground pool, a vacation every year, AND they're "hiding" their income, and she says to me "We're poor".

Good thing we were on the phone.

[charlesoakwood]

http://itsaboutliberty.com/index.php/topic,2897.msg32487.html#msg32487

One generation passes on to the next knowledge it has obtained for survival.
Today, "poverty" is a lifestyle not an unfortunate event.
As long as we allow poverty to be defined by a government whose perpetuation
depends on votes from the "poor" growth of the impoverished will increase.

Ownership of real property is the simple definer of who may vote and who may not.