On Thu, 09 Feb 2012 09:09:23 -0800, George Plimpton
wrote:
On 2/9/2012 8:36 AM, Ed Huntress wrote:
On Thu, 09 Feb 2012 08:14:20 -0800, Donn Messenheimer
wrote:
On 2/8/2012 8:07 PM, rangerssuck wrote:
Fer crissakes, you can walk around pretty much any suburban
neighborhood on garbage day and pick up perfectly serviceable TVs,
microwaves and computers for free. If you want to believe that there
are no poor people in America, fine. Go right ahead. But seriously,
John, you may want to take a walk through a homeless shelter some day.
Yeah, they're all livin' the high life there.
How about the families that are splitting a can of soup five ways and
calling it dinner? How about the people who are making a choice
between feeding their kids or buyng their medications? How about the
kids wearing hand me down clothes that are three sizes too large
because it was a choice between paying the rent or buying a pair of
pants at the salvation army?
This is a caricature. It doesn't even have the status of true
anecdotes, let alone an accurate description of a big problem.
I have met some of these people, right here in "affluent" Northern New
Jersey.
I'm sorry, I don't believe you. I don't believe you have met anyone who
has split a can of soup five ways and called it dinner. I don't believe
you have met people who have had to choose between food for their
children and medication.
And no, I'm not going to post their names, addresses and
pictures for your edification. I will, however, suggest that you spend
a little time outside your own comfort zone, and see what's going on
around you. Get some perspective.
Why don't you start from the perspective of telling the truth, rather
than taking extravagantly extremist and *untrue* political rhetoric and
treating it as evidence?
You're talking past each other with different definitions of "poor."
Late last year the Heritage Foundation (conservative) determined that
4% of those below the "poverty line" had no regular place to live and
had insufficient food. It looks like a good study. That's a big
number, actually, and right here in central NJ you can find plenty of
people who fit ranger's description. The church-run soup kitchen in
New Brunswick has plenty of them. My neighbor dishes out soup there
once or twice each week.
That study
(http://www.heritage.org/research/rep...-americas-poor)
said no such thing. What they said was:
Over the course of a year, 4 percent of poor persons become
*temporarily* homeless. [emphasis added]
That's not all it said. What it ALSO said was that 1.5% are homeless
on ANY GIVEN NIGHT. That means,on the average, the "temporarily"
homeless are homeless an average of 4 months per year. They're
probably in-and-out on a regular basis. They have, as I said, no
regular place to live.
And, although the Heritage report appears to be well done, they've
spun their own numbers in a few places to further their (and your)
agenda. The "homeless" number is one such.
Now, if by "no such thing" you were including my statement about
hunger, here's their spin on that:
"96 percent of poor parents stated that their children were never
hungry at any time during the year because they could not afford
food."
"83 percent of poor families reported having enough food to eat."
"82 percent of poor adults reported never being hungry at any time in
the prior year due to lack of money for food."
I was being charitable to Heritage. I counted only children. They took
their data from an Ag Dept. study and credited it. 100% - 96% = 4%.
Right? And 100% - 83% is 17% of adults. Given the nature of
self-reported figures, the children probably were hungry more than the
4% figure, if the adults were hungry four times as often.
Even if it did, it's a pretty small number, actually. The percentage of
people living below the poverty line is about 15.1%. If four percent of
those are living in the conditions you stated, then that's 0.6% of the
population,
0.6% of the CHILDREN are sometimes hungry. As for the number of
homeless, if you can just brush it off, you're part of the problem.
You and the other bleeding heart leftist want to pretend that this tiny
percentage (4% of 15.1%, or 0.6% total) are living in chronic
homelessness. That simply is not true.
Uh, I'd consider an average of 4 months per year to be pretty chronic.
There are two main points in that Heritage Foundation study, both of
which I have been making he
1. Most poor people live materially better than the majority of people
lived even 40 years ago (early 1970s), let alone a century ago.
Most people *below the government-defined poverty line*. That isn't
"most poor people," because, as you say elsewhere, most of them aren't
really "poor" in the sense that most of us think of the term.
2. The number of people living in destitution, i.e. extreme poverty,
is quite small.
Right. Which is what I said above.
The import of that is that Romney was right, even if he said it poorly:
there is no reason to worry much about the poor, as there is a safety
net that keeps all but a small number of the poor from falling into
destitution, and the repairs needed are relatively minor.
Of course he doesn't worry about the poor, and he wouldn't no matter
what the numbers were. That's the nature of his world view.
But those "repairs" will never be made as long as there are people
like Romney in charge of anything. They would cut into
financial-industry profits, anyway.
--
Ed Huntress