Don't you realize yet that I am never wrong?
1.A key to why
poverty ceased to decline almost as soon as the War on Poverty began, is that the poor and lower-income population stopped working, and this led to the other deteriorating social conditions Murray cites. In 1960, almost 2/3 of lowest-income households were headed by persons who worked.
http://www2.census.gov/prod2/popscan/p60-080.pdf
a.By 1991, this number was down to only one third
.and only 11% working full time. Nor was this due to being unable to find work, as the 80s and 90s were boom times.
2.Here we see
an inherent weakness in Liberal thinking, that is that they are the smartest of folks, and their brilliance is necessary for other to prosper. The sequitur is that the people that they guide are stupid.
No, the problem is that, with
government welfare programs offering such generous and wide-ranging benefits, form housing to medical care to food stamps to outright cash, many reduce or eliminate their work effort.
3.Proof? Sure. The government conducted a study, 1971-1978 known as the Seattle-Denver Income Maintenance Experiment, or SIME-DIME, in which low income families were
given a guaranteed income, a welfare package with everything liberal policy makers could hope for. Result: for every dollar of extra welfare given, low income recipients reduced their labor by 80 cents. http://www.policyarchive.org/handle/10207/bitstreams/12794.pdf
[The results for husbands show that the combination of negative income tax plans tested in SIME/DIME which, as already mentioned, represents on average a relatively generous cash transfer program with a guarantee of 115% of the poverty line and a tax rate of 50% has a significant negative effect on hours worked per year.
]Overview of the Final Report of the SIME/DIME: Report
a.
Further results: dissolution of families: This conclusion was unambiguously unfavorable to advocates of a negative income tax that would cover married couples, for two important reasons. First,
increased marital breakups among the poor would increase the numbers on welfare and the amount of transfer payments, principally because the separated wife and children would receive higher transfer payments.
Second, marital dissolutions and the usual accompanying
absence of
fathers from households with children are generally considered unfavorable outcomes regardless of whether or not the welfare rolls increase. http://www.bos.frb.org/economic/conf/conf30/conf30c.pdf
b. When families received
guaranteed income at 90% of the poverty level, there was a 43% increase in black family dissolution and a 63% increase in white family dissolution. At 125% of the poverty levels, dissolutions were 75% and 40%. Robert B. Carleson, Government Is The Problem, p. 57.
4. Since productive activity not making any economic sense because of the work disincentives of the welfare plantation, other kinds of activities proliferate: drug and alcohol abuse, crime, recreational sex, illegitimacy, and family breakup are the new social norms, as does the culture of violence.