8/09/2007

Poverty in America












Watch the Video:

at 8/09/2007 Posted by Andy Rand

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Many (not all, but many) of those below the poverty line could not only hang on but actually pull themselves up and over it by giving up the socially destructive behaviors that put them there in the first place.
Sociologists tell us that young people who graduate from high school, don't have children out of wedlock, and get married before they do start building families are far, far less prone to ending up poor and/or on welfare. The number married couples with children living in poverty is quite small when compared to the number of single mothers with children in poverty. Study after study shows that children raised in a traditional nuclear family are far more likely to be well adjusted and cared for, do better in school, and live above the poverty line.
The real problem for society is figuring out how to break the cycle of socially destructive behaviors, which often passes from one generation to the next as children pattern their lives after their mother or the transient men in their mother's life. One thing the sociologists know for sure is that subsidizing socially destructive lifestyles not only doesn't work, it usually makes matters worse.
ON a positive note, the 1996 Welfare Reforms have been extremely successful in getting people permanently off of welfare. The fact is, Welfare Reform is one of the biggest social policy success stories of the past 50 years.

August 10, 2007
Andy Rand said...

Some of what you say is true but
I'll bet you didn't go the the website at the end of this video because you care more about your tax dollars than the working poor. If you had you could have read this:

The Working Poor in PovertyUSA

The U.S. Census Bureau defines poor families as those with cash incomes of less than $15,577 a year for a family of three—or $19,971 for a family of four. Yet many families with children have family members who work.(?)

Since 2000—the last year before unemployment began to rise–—the number of people in poverty has risen by 5.4 million. 2005 marked the first year since 1999 in which real median houshold income showed an annual increase, although medium earnings for individuals fell.

The number of people with no health insurance increased from 45.3 million in 2004 to 46.6 million in 2005.

The average amount by which poor people’s incomes fell below the poverty line was greater in 2005 than any other year since recordkeeping began in 1975. The average amount by which the poor fell below the poverty line was $8,125 per family in 2005.

A single parent of two young children working full-time in a minimum wage job for a year would make $10,712 before taxes—a wage $4,865 below the poverty threshold set by the federal government.†

Yup, the current Administration's policies are working wonders!

August 10, 2007
Sunny Badger said...

Below are figures from 2001 US Census Bureau statistics on reason people are below the poverty line.



TOTAL 13,715 100%
Ill/Disabled 3,861 28%
Retired 3,576 26%
Familyreasons 3,009 22%
Can't find work 280 2%
School/other 2,688 20%

August 16, 2007

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