We already won the War on Poverty

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The earned income tax credit, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Section 8 vouchers, Medicaid — all these are things sent off to poor people. Yet we don’t include them in our calculations of how many poor people there are.

Effectively, the official poverty measure is a reading of how many people would be poor if there wasn’t any government help. That’s a useful number, certainly. But what we want to know is how many are still poor after what government does. Only with that can we decide whether we need do more, or perhaps even that we should cut back. That’s the one number we’ve not had as an official measurement, until this report.

When we do add in everything we already do, then we get to:
When we use a new, Full-Income Poverty Measure (FPM) that is anchored to 1963 standards — and which thus includes the full impact of government taxes and transfers (both cash and in-kind, including the market value of health insurance); which better accounts for inflation, by using the Personal Consumption Expenditures and which uses the household instead of the family as the sharing unit — we find that the poverty rate declined from 19.5 percent in 1963 to 2.3 percent in 2017.
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It’s difficult to think of anything at all which government gets right to a margin as small as 2 percent. I think it fair therefore to declare victory. We had that War on Poverty, and we won.

It’s worth noting that this is even more so with child poverty, the one thing the American welfare system really is good at is concentrating aid onto families with children.
 
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Wow, not a single comment on an article that shows our govt efforts to reduce poverty in the US are very effective.

Read it it you haven’t, it’s really good news.
 
I am not certain what satirical perspective you are taking?

I have to admit that I only took a cursory glance; the Washington Examiner is not a source that I would generally reference. However, poverty is something that I am certain is prevalent in all our lives and as Christians we should take seriously.

Unfortunately, it is a topic that we politicize because those in poverty find themselves defenseless against criticism. There is a tendency to categorize all of them that are lacking from a shortage of resources as lazy and simply taking advantage of those with greater fortunes in order to prevent themselves from having to make any effort of their own.

Rather than using some diatribe from a poorly ranked website, I would much rather hear your perspective. You can reference material more close to the both of us; economic related topics that have been discussed on this forum. There have been topics on subjects like; "Can you afford a thirty thousand dollar new car", "The Average American is only a paycheck away from poverty" and the endless topics regarding healthcare. We are fortunate to have many people that have been very candid about their situation and provide us a perspective of how our brothers & sisters are doing.

Put politics aside; these people need our prayers and resources. We need legislation that monitors commerce to make certain people are treated fairly and we need our leaders to propose solutions to our ever complexed healthcare crises.

Poverty is not limited to the homeless person you find in the street and simply pass by in disregard. It is also the person that who works multiple jobs and comes home to an empty refrigerator.

I admit that there are those that abuse the system; they put more effort into complaining than production. But, it is a wrong conclusion to assume that everyone that has gone through misfortune is due to a lack of effort.
 
When the agenda-driven keep re-defining poverty, one can never win the war.

I have traveled fairly extensively in the third world (Latin America). By contrast, we have very little actual poverty here.

Do we have cultural/societal problems (single parent etc.), yes! Those, government can only do so much for.
 
Leo2014 said:
Poverty is not limited to the homeless person you find in the street and simply pass by in disregard. It is also the person that who works multiple jobs and comes home to an empty refrigerator.
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Thank you.
 
The Washington Examiner is right up there with the National Inquirer when it comes to news reporting.
Boy trapped in refrigerator eats own foot, etc.
 
That’s a very long post and I’m dissappointed you didn’t bother to read/comment on the article I provided.

The article didn’t say we had eradicate poverty, like we did polio.
The article says when economists include the efforts aimed at helping people in poverty, our programs are very effective in bringing most people above the standard measure. It says the programs are working, not that they are being abused.

Go back and actually read the OP story.
 
YourNameHere said:
The Washington Examiner is right up there with the National Inquirer when it comes to news reporting.
Boy trapped in refrigerator eats own foot , etc.
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You got excellent deflection skills, a master of the Ad Hominem you are.
 
You can put lipstick on a pig, but it is still a pig.
Putting a name like Washington Examiner on it, does not make it a newspaper.
 
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Again, poverty is something that I am certain is prevalent in all our lives. The article you reference begins with a satirical proclamation that current conditions are better than those found during 1963! Seriously?

Sadly, we are seeing the negative ramifications of the Internet. Today we have a resource that is more abundant than what was only available to researchers a generation ago. Yet, it seems like the primary utilization of the media is to propagate tribalism for the small groups that would never have been able to find an audience.

I guess I should have started by asking how do you define Poverty? If you are going by the 2018 Poverty Guidelines that you reference, that can be misleading. We have to consider the individuals that are not homeless, but find themselves struggling financially. What about the person worried about missing work because that will set them back financially. The irony is that we will find reasons to be critical of their condition(s); they drink an expensive coffee, have a mobile phone or their a single parent? That provides us the justification for proclaiming them as lazy or stupid and ignore the situation? Yet we defend the wealthy individual and believe that society should provide even more concessions to help increase their advantage?

I thank Our Lord every day that I do not find myself under these conditions of financial concerns. However, this is an a growing segment that needs our prayers and not our insults.
 
The US Govt started their war on poverty in 1963. It’s commons sense to compare and see if efforts have had an impact. Why do you run from this?

We are discussing ‘official’ measures of poverty. Struggling financial is more about how you manage your wants and income, the challenge is felt up through the middle class. Struggling is life, why do you want to redefine it as poverty?

Where are these insults you mention?
 
In the rarely-seen musical, “Finian’s Rainbow,” Sharon makes a thought-provoking, and IMO, accurate comment about the poor in America–“America has the best-fed and the best-clothed poor in the world!”

I think she’s right.

We don’t have the bloated bellies and disease-ridden people that other nations have. But I understand that before the War on Poverty, we did see this. So yes, we appear to have won the War on Poverty, at least, extreme, death-causing poverty.

Our poor have access to so many government and privately-administered services–housing, food, medical care, education, etc.

But there’s still work to be done.

Now there’s a major emphasis on opioid addiction–good! In my opinion, one of the major causes of poverty in this nation is addiction to harmful substances, not just opioids, but also alcohol and even cigarettes (at $11/pack, an addicted smoker will spend a lot of their paycheck on smokes, and that’s money that won’t be available for rent, food, transportation, insurance, etc.).

I’ve said in earlier posts that the schools need to shift their emphasis away from “subjects” and instead, emphasize from kindergarten on the economic system in the U.S. that requires people to support themselves by getting and keeping a job. I think there are a lot of people that just haven’t bought into this system yet. For some, it’s because the scourge of racism held them back for so many generations that it’s difficult for them to believe that they can get an education and get a job and earn enough money to have a decent life. I think a lot of people are still scared that they’re going to be discriminated against, or that if they do manage to get that job, they’ll end up getting fired.

And their fear keeps them from entering and working with the system. They would rather have the free benefits, as little as they are, that they know they will get rather than taking a chance on facing racism. They’re still afraid of getting lynched, and I can’t say I blame them. I have a theory that every African American family in the U.S. has had at least one family member lynched since the Civil War. And it’s hard for them to trust a nation that even recently (in my lifetime, born in 1957) turned a blind eye to lynchings and race crimes.

But they have to get past that and bravely enter the system and embrace it and make a life for themselves and their children.
 
Leo2014 said:
Rather than using some diatribe from a poorly ranked website, I would much rather hear your perspective.
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Did you read the article?

I would much rather hear your perspective if you critiqued the article than speak in generalities based on its source.
 
niceatheist said:
I am asking for your opinion. Do you think poverty has been eliminated in the United States?
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I think the article summed it up.
Did you read it??

I took away it saying that our programs have been very effective in reducing poverty in the US.
 
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