Panorama: Poor America [BBC - 12/2/2012]

[dgs49]

Back to the issue of poverty in America, some words by Pat Buchanan:

Who are the [American] poor?

To qualify, a family of four in 2010 needed to earn less than $22,314. Some 46 million Americans, 15 percent of the population, qualified.

And in what squalor were America's poor forced to live?

Well, 99 percent had a refrigerator and stove, two-thirds had a plasma TV, a DVD player and access to cable or satellite, 43 percent were on the Internet, half had a video game system like PlayStation or Xbox.

Three-fourths of the poor had a car or truck, nine in 10 a microwave, 80 percent had air conditioning. In 1970, only 36 percent of the U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.

America's poor enjoy amenities almost no one had in the 1950s, when John K. Galbraith described us as "The Affluent Society."

What about homelessness? Are not millions of America's poor on the street at night, or shivering in shelters or crowded tenements?

Well, actually, no. That is what we might call televised poverty. Of the real poor, fewer than 10 percent live in trailers, 40 percent live in apartments, and half live in townhouses or single-family homes.

Forty-one percent of poor families own their own home.

But are they not packed in like sardines, one on top of another?

Not exactly. The average poor person's home in America has 1,400 square feet -- more living space than do Europeans in 23 of the 25 wealthiest countries on the continent.

Two-thirds of America's poor have two rooms per person, while 94 percent have at least one room per person in the family dwelling.

Only one in 25 poor persons in America uses a homeless shelter, and only briefly, sometime during the year.

What about food? Do not America's poor suffer chronically from malnutrition and hunger?

Not so. The daily consumption of proteins, vitamins and minerals of poor children is roughly the same as that of the middle class, and the poor consume more meat than the upper middle class.

Some 84 percent of America's poor say they always have enough food to eat, while 13 percent say sometimes they do not, and less than 4 percent say they often do not have enough to eat.

Only 2.6 percent of poor children report stunted growth. Poor kids in America are, on average, an inch taller and 10 pounds heavier than the youth of the Greatest Generation that won World War II.

In fiscal year 2011, the U.S. government spent $910 billion on 70 means-tested programs, which comes to an average of $9,000 per year on every lower-income person in the United States.

Among the major programs from which the poor receive benefits are Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, the Earned Income Tax Credit, Supplemental Security Income, food stamps, the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) food program, Medicaid, public housing, low-income energy assistance and the Social Service Block Grant.

Children of the poor are educated free, K-12, and eligible for preschool Head Start, and Perkins Grants, Pell Grants and student loans for college.

Federal and state spending on social welfare is approaching $1 trillion a year, $17 trillion since the Great Society was launched, not to mention private charity. But we have witnessed a headlong descent into social decomposition.

Half of all children born to women under 30 in America now are illegitimate. Three in 10 white children are born out of wedlock, as are 53 percent of Hispanic babies and 73 percent of black babies.

Rising right along with the illegitimacy rate is the drug-use rate, the dropout rate, the crime rate and the incarceration rate.

The family, cinder block of society, is disintegrating, and along with it, society itself. Writes Rector, "The welfare system is more like a 'safety bog' than a safety net."

Heritage scholars William Beach and Patrick Tyrrell put Rector's numbers in perspective:

"Today ... 67.3 million Americans -- from college students to retirees to welfare beneficiaries -- depend on the federal government for housing, food, income, student aid or other assistance. ... The United States reached another milestone in 2010. For the first time in history, half the population pays no federal income taxes."

[dgs49]

NOTE TO ANDREW:

I am not disputing that the Court has the ultimate power to determine whether any law (as applied to a particular case) conforms to the dictates of the Constitution. What I was pointing out to Jimmy was that the Constitution does not say that. That principle was established by Marbury v. Madison, not the Constitution itself.

But I maintain (and Jimmy obviously disagrees) that the Court does not have the power to RE-WRITE the Constitution (i.e., create a new right), or to "interpret" it in such a way that its clear meaning is thwarted (e.g., as with the Interstate Commerce Clause).

Hence, I maintain the feeble hope that sometime in the future, some composition of the USSC will say, in effect, "Hold on a minute! This court has gone off on a crazy tangent, and we need to bring it back into line with the actual Constitution."

And the Federalist you quoted does not directly address the situation that confronted Governor Romney, for example, when the Massachusetts Supreme Court (or whatever it's actually called) took it upon itself to re-write that Commonwealth's constitution in a way that no one ever even imagined it could be "interpreted." In that case, I submit that the Governor, based on his oath of office, could have said, "I decline to support this interpretation, and I am issuing an executive order telling the officials and employees of the state offices that they MAY NOT issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, until such time as the Legislature has had time to consider the issue and either affirm the principle or promulgate a revision to the constitution of this Commonwealth."

Carry on.

[Andrew D]

I am not disputing that the Court has the ultimate power to determine whether any law (as applied to a particular case) conforms to the dictates of the Constitution. What I was pointing out to Jimmy was that the Constitution does not say that. That principle was established by Marbury v. Madison, not the Constitution itself.

But the Constitution itself does say that.

What else can one rationally make of:

The judicial Power of the United States shall be vested in one supreme Court ....

The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution ....

What do you suppose that that means, if it does not mean that the Supreme Court has the "Power" to strike down unconstitutional laws?

What, then, is "The judicial Power" -- the power to have no power?

-------------------------

By the way, although Marbury v. Madison is the most famous elaboration of the Supreme Court's power of judicial review, it is not the Supreme Court's first exercise of that power. Check out Ware v. Hylton, 3 U.S. 199 (1796), decided some seven years earlier.

[Grim Reaper]

Back to the issue of poverty in America, some words by Pat Buchanan:

Some words by an individual who whitewashed a bunch of statistics and didn't think too much about what he said.

Well, 99 percent had a refrigerator and stove, two-thirds had a plasma TV, a DVD player and access to cable or satellite, 43 percent were on the Internet, half had a video game system like PlayStation or Xbox.

It's almost like there's been some strange march of technology that causes devices to become cheaper as time goes by. There's also the barely hidden implication that the poor aren't allowed to have any enjoyment, they should just suffer in squalor.

America's poor enjoy amenities almost no one had in the 1950s, when John K. Galbraith described us as "The Affluent Society."

Probably because they didn't exist back then? Pointless comparison.

What about homelessness? Are not millions of America's poor on the street at night, or shivering in shelters or crowded tenements?

We should be concerned about any individuals who are homeless for any length of time.

What about food? Do not America's poor suffer chronically from malnutrition and hunger?

Actually malnutrition is still a big problem, and then there's also the skyrocketing obesity rate.

Half of all children born to women under 30 in America now are illegitimate. Three in 10 white children are born out of wedlock, as are 53 percent of Hispanic babies and 73 percent of black babies.

Maybe if we had better sex education instead of the utterly retarded "abstinence only" garbage along with better access to contraceptives and abortions.

Rising right along with the illegitimacy rate is the drug-use rate, the dropout rate, the crime rate and the incarceration rate.

Maybe if we didn't have the failed war on drugs and prisons driven by profit over rehabilitation. Oh, and the crime rate has been going down for the past decade or so.

[rubato]

Back to the issue of poverty in America, some words by Pat Buchanan:
"...
Half of all children born to women under 30 in America now are illegitimate. Three in 10 white children are born out of wedlock, as are 53 percent of Hispanic babies and 73 percent of black babies.

Rising right along with the illegitimacy rate is the drug-use rate, the dropout rate, the crime rate and the incarceration rate.

The family, cinder block of society, is disintegrating, and along with it, society itself. Writes Rector, "The welfare system is more like a 'safety bog' than a safety net."
"...

The crime rate is falling, not rising:




Drug use rates appear to be down as well. Probably due to Roe v Wade:



Drug use by school children is flat or trending downwards after 96-97:



Smoking is going down even among shool children from about 96-97 as well, driven by the Liberal States anti-smoking programs.:



The biggest cause of higher illegitimacy and youth drug use appears to be living in a conservative state.

(data on this presented before, many times)

yrs,
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[rubato]

The main determinate of poverty is not whether you live in a house, today, or have a TV, today. The biggest determinate of poverty is insecurity; living in rational fear of catastrophic loss. And in the US today we have almost no safety net which leaves tens of millions within 2 months of homelessness.

yrs,
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