Liberal Forum

LowIQTrash » Today, 3:53 am » wrote: ↑

Today, 3:53 am

I missed this post so let me address this, because your take is severely flawed.

1) The federal poverty rate is laughable based on their income thresholds, so I would take the Census’ numbers with a heaping pile of salt, just as I do with every number pumped out from the BLS - Bureau of Lies and Sh*t.

2) “We’ve had welfare for decades and the poverty rate hasn’t changed, therefore it must be ineffective.”

You cannot draw this conclusion because welfare and poverty is a complex subject. There’s a reason multivariate regression analysis exists in statistics and natural sciences.

The goal of “welfare” - at least in the US - is to keep those who are poor from sliding into extreme poverty, not to lift people out of poverty. When viewed this way, “welfare” is actually a resounding success.

(The other goal is to recycle the currency into the hands of the poor - also a success)

Aside from disability benefits, there are few if ANY welfare payments that cover actual expenses (e.g. food stamps are around $300 / month but grocery bills are easily $350-450 / month per person if you eat healthier foods and not ramen noodles and milk/cereal/Campbell’s soup 2x a day)
 
Maybe @Cannonpointer  can chime in since he has more experience dealing with poor people, I just know by doing the MATH that “welfare” is certainly not designed to lift anyone out of poverty - so the assumption is invalid

At some point, we have to accept "the numbers" as at least ball park figures. Statistics can be highly accurate or fatally flawed depending inputs. Regardless, there are 16 million more people living in poverty today than 50 years ago in the US.

Poverty can be a good motivator to rise above or a lifetime trap (perpetuated by government).  

Interesting read:

Since funding for the War on Poverty ramped up in 1967, welfare payments received by the average work-age household in the bottom quintile of income recipients has risen from $7,352 in inflation-adjusted 2022 dollars to $64,700 in 2022, the last year with available household income data. This 780% increase was 9.2 times the rise in income earned by the average American household. Since 1967 defense spending has fallen from 68% of unobligated general revenue to 37.2% in 2023, almost a mirror image of the growth in means-tested welfare benefits. As defense spending plummeted, swords weren’t beaten into plowshares, which would have increased economic growth and wages, but were instead used to fund welfare payments. As a result, the U.S. today redistributes a larger share of its gross domestic product, 29.4%, through transfers and taxes than any developed country in the world except France with 30.1%. After counting all transfer payments as income to the recipients and taxes as income lost by taxpayers, and adjusting for household size, the average households in the bottom, second and middle quintiles all have roughly the same incomes—despite dramatic differences in work effort. With the explosion of means-tested transfer payments, the portion of prime work-age persons in the bottom quintile who actually work has fallen to 36% from 68%. In the second quintile, households with a work-age adult who actually works have declined to 85% from 90%. While work effort fell in the bottom two quintiles, the percentage of middle-income households with a prime work-age person who works has risen to 92% from 86%.  The injustice of this government-created income equality is palpable. For about the same income, 2.4 times as many work-age persons in the second quintile actually work and on average work 85% more hours than those in the bottom quintile. And 2.5 times as many work-age middle-income persons actually work and work on average 108% more hours.