10 Poverty Myths, Busted

Great article and compilation with valid sources.

10 Poverty Myths, Busted

1. Single moms are the problem. Only 9 percent of low-income, urban moms have been single throughout their child's first five years. Thirty-five percent were married to, or in a relationship with, the child's father for that entire time.*

2. Absent dads are the problem. Sixty percent of low-income dads see at least one of their children daily. Another 16 percent see their children weekly.*

3. Black dads are the problem. Among men who don't live with their children, black fathers are more likely than white or Hispanic dads to have a daily presence in their kids' lives.

4. Poor people are lazy. In 2004, there was at least one adult with a job in 60 percent of families on food stamps that had both kids and a nondisabled, working-age adult.

5. If you're not officially poor, you're doing okay. The federal poverty line for a family of two parents and two children in 2012 was $23,283. Basic needs cost at least twice that in 615 of America's cities and regions.

6. Go to college, get out of poverty. In 2012, about 1.1 million people who made less than $25,000 a year, worked full time, and were heads of household had a bachelor's degree.**

7. We're winning the war on poverty. The number of households with children living on less than $2 a day per person has grown 160 percent since 1996, to 1.65 million families in 2011.

8. The days of old ladies eating cat food are over. The share of elderly single women living in extreme poverty jumped 31 percent from 2011 to 2012.
9. The homeless are drunk street people. One in 45 kids in the United States experiences homelessness each year. In New York City alone, 22,000 children are homeless.

10. Handouts are bankrupting us. In 2012, total welfare funding was 0.47 percent of the federal budget.

*Source: Analysis by Dr. Laura Tach at Cornell University.

**Source: Census

reply to post by soficrow


Excellent article!!

........I wonder if the same applies in the UK.......

reply to post by soficrow


The truth will not matter to the media induced propaganda machine that wishes to hurt and destroy the poor and underclass.

What side is ATS on?

reply to post by soficrow

1. Single moms are the problem. Only 9 percent of low-income, urban moms have been single throughout their child's first five years. Thirty-five percent were married to, or in a relationship with, the child's father for that entire time.* - See more at: www.abovetopsecret.com...

Then after 5 years they are single or if in a relationship to not the original father, and then the new man if he leaves her the laws are set up so she can take his assets because governments prefer that system than paying them social security.

LDragonFire
reply to post by soficrow

 

The truth will not matter to the media induced propaganda machine that wishes to hurt and destroy the poor and underclass.

What side is ATS on?

Very good question!

AthlonSavage
reply to post by soficrow

 

1. Single moms are the problem. Only 9 percent of low-income, urban moms have been single throughout their child's first five years. Thirty-five percent were married to, or in a relationship with, the child's father for that entire time.* - See more at: www.abovetopsecret.com...

Then after 5 years they are single or if in a relationship to not the original father, and then the new man if he leaves her the laws are set up so she can take his assets because governments prefer that system than paying them social security.

Can you prove this or are you just repeating what rush, fox news, and hannity assert?

the self back slappers that think "go to college and work hard and you wont be poor" are gonna dislike this thread.

There are not enough positions for all the deserving hard workers to escape poverty.

I am glad to have this data.

And the 0.47%. just WOW.

imagine if we spent 10% of the budget on our people.

I FIRMLY BELIEVE that every American could live the equivalent of a $150,000/yr lifestyle (today's money) if the top 5% were not so flippin' GREEDY.. sickening greed.

I remember a day when I was working on a building site and a young mother walked past with a baby. At first she was ogled, then someone said "Another single mum scrounging my tax money".

I asked how he knew she was single. "Oh come on, just look at her" was the response.
So I said ok, tell me what you can see that tells you she's single. Total silence was his response.
Then another guy started up about the single mums, and why should he have to pay for her to have kids.
Then a full scale discusion started up about the benefit scroungers.

So I said "How many of you claim child support". Total silence and a look of horror on their faces! One eventualy got brave and said "My wife claims that, not me". So I said "Your wife is a scrounger then?"

At break time not one of them spoke to me, the silence was golden

We aren't really that surprised, are we?
poor people don't have a voice so the news is always the rich man's spin.
They own the papers, the TV channels, they can write a cheque to get someone elected. ..that's why their reality is the one that gets publicised.

Any time that the poor band together to get a piece of the pie they're demonised as a mob, commies or some such.

Look at how unions are demonised. People talking about too much union power in politics, yet that power comes from the thousands of members voting and chipping in to payroll a candidate who'll back THEM. If anything, it's more democratic than letting a small group of filthy rich pay for their representative.

reply to post by soficrow


I would take a gander that most "poor" are the working poor. Sad that I work 40 hours a week and sometimes have to decide if I want to eat or pay my rent. Lots of corn out of the can for dinner, and I work full time.

Most poor are children, disabled or the elderly.

Just read some of these threads, every time someone will say poor people really don't need help because on occasions they have spotted nice cars in a low income neighborhood. This is their big proof. Never mind they don't know if the family receives aid or if someone is visiting. And of course these few cars must mean all poor people are undeserving.

The other claim is church's and charities can take care of the poor and if the rich didn't have to pay taxes they would have more money to give. They ignore the fact that when this system is in place (the past history of the US and some current countries) millions of people starved to death.

1. Single moms are the problem. Only 9 percent of low-income, urban moms have been single throughout their child's first five years. Thirty-five percent were married to, or in a relationship with, the child's father for that entire time.*

Only 9% have been single throughout their child's first five years ... why are we only measuring the first five years? Is it because that percentage gets much larger as the children get older? Remember, Gwynneth Paltrow just became a single mother, and her children are both over five. Now, she's not anywhere near poverty, but I think you see the point. About 10% of marriages end in those early years, but many more end after that. Maybe that's why they cut off their count at five years?

35% were married to or in a relationship with, or in a relationship with, the child's father ... if you are only in a "relationship" with the child's father, you can still claim full benefits as the sole provider, even if the father is making full-time pay. Also, people who cohabitate are less likely to ever be married and less likely to have marriages that last.

Also, children raised in homes without successful marriages, will be less likely to ever have successful marriages themselves.

By the way, between 35% and 9% there is a whole lot of that 100% pie that is left out of the picture. What about them?

2. Absent dads are the problem. Sixty percent of low-income dads see at least one of their children daily. Another 16 percent see their children weekly.*

Simply seeing one's child, or children (how many with how many different baby mommas, btw), isn't being a father. This really shouldn't be implying that it is.

3. Black dads are the problem. Among men who don't live with their children, black fathers are more likely than white or Hispanic dads to have a daily presence in their kids' lives.

Where does race get pulled into this? Either you are married to your child's mother and actually a father or you are not. Simply being that guy who drops in from time to time isn't the same thing. Ask any man who has gone through a divorce and been more or less forced out his kids' lives and now gets to watch them change in ways he never anticipated or wanted because he can't be in their lives the way he should be, how effective being a "daily (or weekly) presence" is.

4. Poor people are lazy. In 2004, there was at least one adult with a job in 60 percent of families on food stamps that had both kids and a nondisabled, working-age adult.

Often when we talk about poor people being lazy, we aren't talking them being unwilling to hold down a job. What we talk about is how they are unwilling to recognize that they will never get ahead if they remain at their current skill set. Many of the poor did not get the necessary education to get a decent job when they were in school and it would have been easiest. They made poor choices about how to handle things then and put themselves in an unenviable position, but the answer to their problems isn't to just languish on handouts. It's to take a grip on their life and go out of their way to get those skills they missed. Take initiative and responsibility.

5. If you're not officially poor, you're doing okay. The federal poverty line for a family of two parents and two children in 2012 was $23,283. Basic needs cost at least twice that in 615 of America's cities and regions.

That's when you go away from those 615 cities and regions. Again, this is taking initiative and responsibility instead of relying on everyone else to carry because you live where you can't afford to. If you can't move, then see above. There are plenty of programs designed to help people, but I see precious few people taking advantage of them. Handouts are so much easier.

6. Go to college, get out of poverty. In 2012, about 1.1 million people who made less than $25,000 a year, worked full time, and were heads of household had a bachelor's degree.**

This is part of the problem with kids going to college. Who in their right mind gets a degree in Women's Studies and expects to walk away with a high paying job? There are lots of "trash" degrees you can get at University where the professional fields you can expect to go into are very restrictive, so your odds of getting work in them are very poor (see OWS). Additionally, thanks to the unending hikes in college tuition, there are also very few college degrees that do offer immediate work in your degree field where you can expect to immediately make a good return on your investment.

In fact, most of the only really solid degree investments left are in the STEM fields these days, so if your son or daughter isn't going for one of those ... maybe you should explore other options for post high school training.

7. We're winning the war on poverty. The number of households with children living on less than $2 a day per person has grown 160 percent since 1996, to 1.65 million families in 2011.

So, can we declare the War on Poverty lost? All we seem to do is keep throwing money at it, and it never solves the problem. Maybe someday government will learn that if you want more of something, you subsidize which is effectively what we are doing with endless handouts. We need a different approach if we are going to make headway.

8. The days of old ladies eating cat food are over. The share of elderly single women living in extreme poverty jumped 31 percent from 2011 to 2012.

Thank the inflation of basics like food and fuel which they refuse to measure. Have you shopped the store lately? Paid your energy bill? And yet, we keep on regulating the energy industry so the prices go up and we keep on printing more money to deflate our dollar. I sincerely hope most of those ladies have relatives who can help them because I don't see any of this getting any better anytime soon.

9. The homeless are drunk street people. One in 45 kids in the United States experiences homelessness each year. In New York City alone, 22,000 children are homeless.

It's sad, but what kinds of choices are their parents making? There was a series of articles that ran about a girl who was going to a charter in New York. Her family was homeless, and they made an endless series of bad choices. As soon they got money, they blew through it.

10. Handouts are bankrupting us. In 2012, total welfare funding was 0.47 percent of the federal budget.

We are spent $3.7 trillion over the last 5 years.

*Source: Analysis by Dr. Laura Tach at Cornell University.

**Source: Census

In England benefits total 5 billion a year... however corporate tax avoidance costs britian over 25 billion in lost revenue a year

10. Handouts are bankrupting us. In 2012, total welfare funding was 0.47 percent of the federal budget.

I wonder how they came to this conclusion? Maybe they are only counting the money that makes it to the recipient, not the actual money spent?

For what ever it is worth, in 2012, Federal welfare expenditure was $411.2 billion. Total expenditures was $3,537.1 billion.

Government Spending Details

Star and flag. Total truth.


Poverty is a lot more complicated than people seem to realize. Going to college and working hard doesn't mean you will get anywhere. It's all about knowing the right people, having the right networks, ect.

reply to post by soficrow


I think somebody has cooked the books in favor of political correctness. I'll point out one of the "safe" reasons I take that view.

The thread reports: : "The share of elderly single women living in extreme poverty jumped 31 percent from 2011 to 2012." - See more at: www.abovetopsecret.com...

I don't believe that is physically possible to be the case. The only way it can be shown is by cooking the books, changing the rules by which such a judgment is made. So if that factual statistic is not trustworthy, than none on that list are.

soficrow

1. Single moms are the problem. Only 9 percent of low-income, urban moms have been single throughout their child's first five years. Thirty-five percent were married to, or in a relationship with, the child's father for that entire time.*

All I see here is, nearly 2/3 of all poor mothers are not with their child's father for a minimum of 5 years after the child is born.
Which raises the question as to how many of those 2/3 of absent fathers pay child support. With these numbers I would say society needs to change the way they view having children, you should at least be in a stable relationship first.

reply to post by ketsuko


Because you don't get welfare (cash benefits) for kids over 5 unless there's medical issues.

HanzHenry
the self back slappers that think "go to college and work hard and you wont be poor" are gonna dislike this thread.

There are not enough positions for all the deserving hard workers to escape poverty.

I am glad to have this data.

And the 0.47%. just WOW.

imagine if we spent 10% of the budget on our people.

I FIRMLY BELIEVE that every American could live the equivalent of a $150,000/yr lifestyle (today's money) if the top 5% were not so flippin' GREEDY.. sickening greed.

This is why I'm an optimist. Things can't possibly continue for very long like they are. Enough of the trickle-down zombie generation will die of old age and then something will snap. That fulcrum that keeps people ignorant will tilt and nobody will be able to justify what has been committed against the citizens. It's truly just a matter of time.

reply to post by MasterOfTheDamned


hard to say due to birth control and abortion not being available in some areas.