Wednesday, August 29, 2007
On poverty
Some forty years ago, President Lyndon Johnson launched a gaggle of Great Society programs in an effort to eliminate poverty in America. Today, decades and several billions of dollars later, Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards is basing his entire campaign on the conceit that widespread poverty requires an even greater Great Society, and thus increased government spending.
Since this is the second time John Edwards has based a national campaign around his belief that massive poverty exists in America, I think we should explore the subject in some detail. To wit:
This week, Robert Rector, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, released a study in which he examines various statistics about America’s "poor." Here is what he discovered:
"Overall, the typical American defined as poor by the government has a car (30 percent of ‘poor’ households own two cars), air conditioning, a refrigerator, a stove, a clothes washer and dryer, and a microwave. He has two color televisions, cable or satellite TV reception, a VCR, or DVD player, and a stereo. He is able to obtain medical care. His home is in good repair and is not overcrowded.
"By his own report, his family is not hungry, and he had sufficient funds in the past year to meet his family’s essential needs. ... A third of ‘poor’ households have both cell and land-line telephones. A third also [have] telephone answering machines."
According to Rector, a major reason for children living in poverty is the breakdown of families. He notes:
"If work in each family were raised to 2,000 hours per year -- the equivalent of one adult working 40 hours per week -- nearly 75 percent of poor children would be lifted out of official poverty. ... If poor mothers married the fathers of their children, nearly three quarters of the nation’s impoverished youth would immediately be lifted out of poverty."
As any thinking conservative knows, no government program(s) can reverse the decline of the American family. However, Rector does identify one area in which "big government" can help the poor and needy. That area is illegal immigration:
"A quarter of legal immigrants and fifty to sixty percent of illegals are high-school dropouts. By contrast, only nine percent of non-immigrant Americans lack a high school degree. As long as the present steady flow of poverty-prone persons … continues, efforts to reduce the total number of poor in the U.S. will be far more difficult.
"A sound anti-poverty strategy must not only seek to increase work and marriage among native born Americans, it must also end illegal immigration, and dramatically increase the skill level of... legal immigrants."
Since this is the second time John Edwards has based a national campaign around his belief that massive poverty exists in America, I think we should explore the subject in some detail. To wit:
This week, Robert Rector, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, released a study in which he examines various statistics about America’s "poor." Here is what he discovered:
"Overall, the typical American defined as poor by the government has a car (30 percent of ‘poor’ households own two cars), air conditioning, a refrigerator, a stove, a clothes washer and dryer, and a microwave. He has two color televisions, cable or satellite TV reception, a VCR, or DVD player, and a stereo. He is able to obtain medical care. His home is in good repair and is not overcrowded.
"By his own report, his family is not hungry, and he had sufficient funds in the past year to meet his family’s essential needs. ... A third of ‘poor’ households have both cell and land-line telephones. A third also [have] telephone answering machines."
According to Rector, a major reason for children living in poverty is the breakdown of families. He notes:
"If work in each family were raised to 2,000 hours per year -- the equivalent of one adult working 40 hours per week -- nearly 75 percent of poor children would be lifted out of official poverty. ... If poor mothers married the fathers of their children, nearly three quarters of the nation’s impoverished youth would immediately be lifted out of poverty."
As any thinking conservative knows, no government program(s) can reverse the decline of the American family. However, Rector does identify one area in which "big government" can help the poor and needy. That area is illegal immigration:
"A quarter of legal immigrants and fifty to sixty percent of illegals are high-school dropouts. By contrast, only nine percent of non-immigrant Americans lack a high school degree. As long as the present steady flow of poverty-prone persons … continues, efforts to reduce the total number of poor in the U.S. will be far more difficult.
"A sound anti-poverty strategy must not only seek to increase work and marriage among native born Americans, it must also end illegal immigration, and dramatically increase the skill level of... legal immigrants."
# posted by Joltin' Django @ Wednesday, August 29, 2007 
