American Elephants

You probably saw the headline in the New York Times last year about the Swedish economists who said that the average Swedish citizen was poorer than America’s poorest. Well, no. Didn’t happen. The Swedish economists did indeed, but the New York Times didn’t mention it.

The government released its annual report on household incomes yesterday, and if the media did not have Senator Craig to distract them, you would hear a lot more about poverty today. There is a standard poverty theme: the left expresses moral outrage that in the world’s richest country there are still Americans living in poverty. The right, greedy and mean of course, believes that poverty is a result of government meddling.

Well, no. The fact is that government statistics don’t really tell us very much about poverty. The “poor”, technically, are a family of four who had cash income in 2006 of $20,614 or less, or a single person who had cash income of less than $1o,294. That isn’t much, but multiple studies show that Americans consume way more than their reported income.

How can this be? Take Joe college kid. He graduated in June, moved back home, took a couple of months vacation, spent a month getting his resume together, getting interview clothes and taking a part time job as a barista, so he could job hunt. After 3 months he found the job he wanted which paid pretty well. His total income from the coffee shop was only $2,340. The new job paid $40,000, but unfortunately he had only a month’s income from it. He is one of the “poor”. And there’s Bob business owner. He had a pretty good income, but some major business expenses to write off, and his wife had heavy medical expenses. By the time he finished his deductions, he had little formal income. You can think of many circumstances which would leave someone with little taxable income.

46% of all poor households actually own their own homes. The average home described as “poor” by the Census Bureau is a three bedroom house with one and a half baths, a garage and a porch or patio. 80% of poor households have air conditioning. Over 60% have more than two rooms per person. In 1970 more than 25% of the poor lived in overcrowded conditions (more than one person to a room) today it is only six percent.

The typical ‘poor’ American has more living space than average citizens of most European cities: Paris, London, Vienna or Athens. 75% of poor households in America own a car, 31% own two or more cars. 97% have a color television, over half own two or more colot TVs, and 62% have cable or satellite reception. About 33% of poor households have both landline and cell-phones. A third have answering machines, but a tenth of the poor have no telephone at all.

The percentage of Americans in poverty is decreasing, and their situation is improving. Sorry, Mr. Edwards, but it’s so.

There is real poverty among us. We are usually urged to think of poor children, because we are more sympathetic towards children, children can do little about their own situation, and because those discussing poverty have an agenda and want to influence us .

There are two main reasons why American children are poor. Their parents don’t work much and their fathers are absent. The typical American poor family, in good times or bad, is supported by only 800 hours of work a year. If one adult in the family worked for 40 hours a week throughout the year (2,000 hours) 75% of poor children would no longer be in official poverty.

Roughly two-thirds of poor children live in single-parent homes. Every year more than 1.5 million children are born out-of-wedlock. If the fathers of these children married the mothers, nearly three quarters of children would no longer be in poverty .

Work and marriage are reliable ways to escape poverty, but the welfare system is hostile to both. The major programs such as public housing, food stamps and Medicaid penalize marriage and reward idleness.

The left wants to eliminate poverty, but they think in terms of government programs. They have been outraged by welfare reform, for they believe it is harming the poor. They want more programs and more generous programs for they care about groups, and hope to woo those groups as Democrat party voters.

The right wants to eliminate poverty, but they think in terms of getting people back to work and discouraging out-of-wedlock childbirth. Republicans think in terms of individuals and recognize that welfare is both demeaning and discouraging, and that only through personal responsibility can one escape poverty. They would rather give people a boost up. They would rather “teach them to fish” as the proverb goes.

Labor unions have invested millions of dollars in the attempt to unionize Wal-Mart, whose employees apparently do not wish to be unionized. The unions have made every attempt to demonize Wal-Mart for paying low wages to their employees while helping those employees to get government health care. Wal-Mart is the largest employer of welfare-to-work women, and for the first year those women are required by the government to have Medicaid, as they begin to get on their feet and learn how to hold a job.

Is Wal-Mart helping women to get off welfare or are they just getting cheap labor? Should society insist that those who are able to work do so? Does giving the poor more money really help? How long should we keep it up? What about those who fail at their first job? There are many hard questions and few easy answers. Playing politics with poverty is not only unnecessary, but cruel.