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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: koan who wrote (513241)	9/15/2009 5:17:37 PM
From: Brumar89	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1577188

The stats supporting that don't count government benefits to the poor. In fact, government spending on programs for the poor is 4X what would be needed to bring every poor family to the poverty level. ..... In 2008, federal and state governments spent $714 billion (or 5 percent of the total economy) on means-tested welfare aid, providing cash, food, housing, medical care, and targeted social services to POOR and low-income Americans. (This sum does not include Social Security or Medicare.) If converted into cash, this aid would be nearly four times the amount needed to eliminate POVERTY in the U.S. by raising the incomes of all POOR households above the federal POVERTY levels. How can the government spend so much and still have such high levels of apparent poverty? The answer is that, in measuring POVERTY and inequality, Census ignores almost the entire welfare state. Census deems a household POOR if its income falls below federally specified levels. But in its regular measurements, Census counts only around 4 percent of total welfare spending as “income.” Because of this, government spending on the POOR can expand almost infinitely without having any detectable impact on official POVERTY or inequality. Also missing in most Washington discussions about the POOR is an acknowledgement of the behavioral causes of official POVERTY. For example, families with children become POOR primarily because of low levels of parental work and high levels of out-of-wedlock childbearing with accompanying single parenthood. ..... Even in the best economic times, the typical POOR family with children has, on average, only 16 hours of work per week. Little work equals little income equals more POVERTY. Nearly two-thirds of POOR children live in single-parent homes, a condition that has been promoted by the astonishing growth of out-of-wedlock childbearing in low-income communities. When the War on POVERTY began, 7 percent of American children were born outside marriage; today the number is 39 percent. .... article.nationalreview.com

To: koan who wrote (513241)	9/15/2009 6:19:29 PM
From: bentway	1 Recommendation Respond to of 1577188

"The rich own more of the wealth in our country than for decades. That is not good, unless you are rich." Our country is MUCH stronger when the wealth is more distributed, more "spread around", as Obama would say. The vast majority of Americans are less likely to fall for wacky financial schemes, as so many of our wealthy did during this last near depression. With the wealth more distributed, satisfaction with their own lot is a much more common feeling. Mexico is a perfect example of what happens to a country with wildly bifurcated wealth. The only opportunities, hell, decent "jobs" at ALL, for the common folk, are in crime, or in El Norte.. I was in Tijuana and went to the Hard Rock Cafe there for a beer and some lunch. I asked my waiter what he made. He told me he made the minimum wage, $.65 an hour, plus tips. He said, because of the tips and Americans, this was a "good" job in Tijuana. He said most folks made $.65 and hour and that was it.