Obama's class warfare on a Grand Scale

[editec]

The EIC is targeted to individuals and especially families who earn low to moderate wages.

Ah...I think that's plain wrong.

I don't think "individuals" are eligible for EIC, folks.

Doesn't matter how little you make, if you're not supporting kids under 18 you're just not eligible.

 

[PeterS]

Ah...I think that's plain wrong.

I don't think "individuals" are eligible for EIC, folks.

Doesn't matter how little you make, if you're not supporting kids under 18 you're just not eligible.

The EITC is available to individuals.

 

[editec]

The EITC is available to individuals.

Hmmm...You are correct, PeterS, I was very misinformed.

Next year, I really must employ a tax accountant.

 

[DiamondDave]

Are you ******* nuts?

The poor are living high on the hog?

In terms of getting something for no effort.. yep...

I don't think it was said under the impression that they are living a lavish lifestyle

 

[Care4all]

Hmmm...You are correct, PeterS, I was very misinformed.

Next year, I really must employ a tax accountant.

Without children it is $14,500 total combined income for a married couple to qualify...

I doubt many married couples without children would qualify....

 

[Care4all]

Thanks for admitting the war on poverty is a complete failure, even more reason why a redistribution of income will only lead us to more failure.

What evidence is there to support President Reagan’s contention that we lost the War on Poverty? If we take a careful look at the statistical data compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau, we find ample evidence that the incidence of poverty remains disturbingly large, both as a percentage of the population and in absolute numbers. To document the point, we will have to struggle through a few paragraphs of statistical data, but the numbers are important if we are to state the case correctly.

The Census Bureau reported in August 2005 that the poverty rate in 2004 had actually increased since 2003, up to 12.7 percent in 2004 from 12.5 percent in 2003. This translated into an additional 1.1 million people in poverty, with some 37 million Americans living in poverty in 2004. The progress eliminating poverty in the forty years since Lyndon Johnson declared war on poverty is negligible. In 1964 the Census Bureau estimated that 19 percent of the U.S. population lived in poverty, approximately 36 million people. In that forty-year interval, poverty never measured less than 11 percent of the population. In 1983, under President Reagan, poverty registered 15.2 percent; in 1993, at the beginning of Bill Clinton’s presidency, poverty was measured at 13.7 percent of the population. In 2004, under George W. Bush, a president often accused by the political Left as not caring about the poor, the poverty rate declined to 12.7 percent. Still, some 37 million Americans remain poor.

Putting the best possible face on the War on Poverty, we should note that in 1959 and 1960, before the War on Poverty began, poverty was measured at approximately 22 percent of the population, some 39 million Americans. We can argue that a reduction from 22 percent in 1959 to 12.7 percent in 2004 means that the incidence of poverty has been reduced by roughly half over the last forty-five years. Yet some 39 million Americans were counted as poor in 1959, nearly the same number as the nearly 37 million Americans counted as poor in 2004. Despite all the money and effort expended by government, a core group of poor persists, resistant to any and all efforts to remove them from the poverty rolls. It is this core group of “underclass” Americans that the War on Poverty and the political Left has failed. If the War on Poverty was meant to eliminate poverty, rather than merely reduce poverty, then a new strategy is needed.

In addition, attributing causal effects is very difficult in social science. How can one prove that the reduction in the incidence of poverty since 1959–60 is a direct result of the Great Society’s War on Poverty programs? A reasonable alternative explanation is that the U.S. economy has experienced a world-historic expansion since 1958–60, a time when the country was emerging from an economic recession. In 2004 the World Bank measured the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) at $11.7 trillion, up from $9.8 trillion in 2000.4 A historical database maintained by the U.S. Department of Commerce shows the dramatic straight-line rise of the GDP from $526 billion in 1960 to $10.9 trillion in 2003 and $11.7 trillion in 2004.5 The U.S. economy remains the largest in the world. U.S. job growth has also more than doubled since 1960. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports total nonfarm employment at 54 million jobs in 1960, a number that has expanded to an estimated 131 million jobs in 2005.6 This dramatic economic expansion, plus an aggressive federal War on Poverty, should have eliminated poverty, that is, if eliminating poverty through government programs alone were possible. Still, in 2004 we have 37 million poor Americans among us.

The War on Poverty has spanned the terms of eight different Democratic and Republican presidents: Lyndon B. Johnson (D, 1964–69), Richard M. Nixon (R, 1969–74), Gerald R. Ford (R, 1974–77), Jimmy Carter (D, 1977–81), Ronald Reagan (R, 1981–89), George H. W. Bush (R, 1989–93), Bill Clinton (D, 1993–2001), and George W. Bush (R, 2001–present). These presidents seriously took on the hard question of poverty; their administrations did their utmost to apply techniques they honestly believed to be politically sound methodologies designed to eliminate poverty. We have tried both conservative and liberal solutions to the problem, all without realizing success. If anyone could have eliminated poverty, these gentlemen should have accomplished the task, especially since they commanded the full resources and authority of the U.S. government and were backed by multiple Congresses willing to pass countless antipoverty laws.

On August 22, 1996, President Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, announcing that he had fulfilled his promise to “end welfare as we know it.” Looking critically at the legislation, we could see that a liberal Democrat was trying to take ground that had traditionally been the preserve of conservative Republicans. Clinton was trying to change welfare into work-fare, devising a plan to get welfare recipients off the public dole and onto the private sector’s payroll. Perhaps by 1996 the political Left had come to the conclusion that the American public was so tired of funding antipoverty programs that the only way to save the governmental welfare programs was to redefine them as work programs. Welfare bureaucrats were being redirected to get welfare recipients into the private workforce or lose their welfare jobs. Clinton legitimately considered this a major redirection of the poverty program. Still, poverty persisted. Thus, even a Democrat president willing to embrace proposals that were typically advanced by conservative Republicans could not solve the problem.

Nor is the problem that we have failed to spend money generously. The public expenditure on the variety of governmental schemes devised in the last forty years to eliminate poverty has been extraordinary. Since 1964 we have spent $8–10 trillion on antipoverty programs. In 1996, at the midpoint in the Clinton administration, the federal government expended $191 billion on poverty programs, fully 12.2 percent of the federal budget. President George W. Bush actually increased the effort. The 2006 budget, at the midpoint of Bush’s administration, calls for a massive increase in poverty programs, increasing the expenditure $368 billion to 14.6 percent of the federal budget.7 The Bush administration oversees a host of continuing poverty programs that includes Medicaid, food stamps, supplementary security income, temporary assistance to needy families, child day-care payments, child nutrition payments, foster care, adoption assistance, and health insurance for children.

The conclusion is virtually inescapable: if the availability of nearly an unlimited amount of money and the determination of countless government bureaucracies were the necessary and sufficient conditions to eliminate poverty, then in 2004 we should not still have more than 12 percent of the U.S. population—nearly 37 million people—in poverty.

Even though the political Left wants to make all biblical references suspect, we are led to affirm the admonition of Jesus in the New Testament: “For ye have the poor always with you” (Matthew 26:11). Some two thousand years ago, one of the wisest teachers suggested that the problem of poverty was truly intractable. Is there any governmental poverty program left that we have not implemented one way or another in the literally hundreds of antipoverty laws Congress has passed since 1964? Maybe we should just take another $10 trillion and hand it out as a lump-sum payment to the 37 million Americans who are poor. The expenditure might be cheap if a one-time massive payment would make poverty disappear. Apparently, there are dimensions of poverty that money alone cannot solve. That is our first important conclusion.

Yet there is a more subtle point that we will want to consider. As we noted, President Johnson followed the liberal tradition of Democratic Party politics founded by his mentor, Franklin D. Roosevelt. Central to Roosevelt’s New Deal thinking was the assumption that massive governmental intervention in what before had been considered a largely private economy was needed to solve the problems of the Great Depression. When Johnson initiated the Great Society, he almost intuitively reasoned that governmental action would be required if we were to end poverty. Alternatives to government intervention and spending were never seriously considered by his administration. Conservative opponents, who at the time opposed the creation of a massive new government bureaucracy, were a minority whose views seemed out of step if not downright dangerous. Even today, the political Left is hard pressed to consider that we have no choice but to persist and fine-tune government antipoverty programs. How many more years of failure will it take before the political Left is finally willing to admit that the approach to eliminate poverty through massive government programs has fundamentally failed to meet the originally stated goal of the Great Society?

Democrats' War on Poverty Has Failed - HUMAN EVENTS

when Clinton took office from Bush 1, the poverty level was 13.7%, when Clinton left office it was 11.3%, Where Bush 2 took control....poverty has risen every year he's been in control....NOW it is at 12.7% and rising each year...http://www.census.gov/prod/2006pubs/p60-231.pdf

The war on poverty worked, under clinton, and MILLIONS of people came out of poverty...

The author of the article made it sound as though clinton was at 13.7% his whole term and also PRETENDED that president bush brought it down to the 12% range...it did not mention that clinton brought it down to 11.3% nor did it mention that under Bush it has GONE UP each and every year from the 11.3% UP TO the 12.6% in 2005, and his term isn't done yet....

Using scewed articles that support your view is okay i suppose, but it does not in any way project the truth, imo.

I realize that what a president does, may not affect this level as much as some like to claim, but i also recognize that presidential policies DO AFFECT IT in some manner...


Care

 

[DiamondDave]

And if people work themselves out of poverty... more power to 'em...

But it is not our responsibility to give them handouts to give an 'awwwwwwwww, poor baby' approach to poverty.. and it is not the government's job to redistribute wealth to make you feel better about those who earn less than others... you want to help them, you donate to a cause that you support to help them... you and ones like you are very generous with money to the poor, as long as it is not yours

 

[Care4all]

And if people work themselves out of poverty... more power to 'em...

But it is not our responsibility to give them handouts to give an 'awwwwwwwww, poor baby' approach to poverty.. and it is not the government's job to redistribute wealth to make you feel better about those who earn less than others... you want to help them, you donate to a cause that you support to help them... you and ones like you are very generous with money to the poor, as long as it is not yours

Our government redistributes wealth daily.....

taking nearly a trillion when all is said and done in Iraq, of taxes and giving them to military complex....

taking taxes from us while giving a tax break to enron, who paid ZERO in taxes due to the credits they got from the gvt...

taking taxes from us and paying for a bridge to nowhere in Alaska....or a road to nowhere ...

taking all the taxes from us while givng a tax credit/break to Exxon mobile, the most profitable company in the America...

Taking from us the 1 trillion dollars in taxes and giving it to the bankers on Wall Street...

Can you really say REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH is only one way in this country?

these type things are redistribution of wealth and it ain't taking from the wealthy and giving to the middle class, but taking from the middle class and making other people or other corporations richer...

 

[DiamondDave]

Our government redistributes wealth daily.....

taking nearly a trillion when all is said and done in Iraq, of taxes and giving them to military complex....

taking taxes from us while giving a tax break to enron, who paid ZERO in taxes due to the credits they got from the gvt...

taking taxes from us and paying for a bridge to nowhere in Alaska....or a road to nowhere ...

taking all the taxes from us while givng a tax credit/break to Exxon mobile, the most profitable company in the America...

Taking from us the 1 trillion dollars in taxes and giving it to the bankers on Wall Street...

Can you really say REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH is only one way in this country?

these type things are redistribution of wealth and it ain't taking from the wealthy and giving to the middle class, but taking from the middle class and making other people or other corporations richer...

The military and national defense are the responsibility of the federal government... your personal portfolio, bank account, and whether you earn what you need to earn or put forth the effort necessary to take care of yourself, is not

And point out where I EVER supported corporate bailouts... I'll be waiting... welfare on either side of the fence is WRONG and not the job of the government

 

[Care4all]

The military and national defense are the responsibility of the federal government... your personal portfolio, bank account, and whether you earn what you need to earn or put forth the effort necessary to take care of yourself, is not

And point out where I EVER supported corporate bailouts... I'll be waiting... welfare on either side of the fence is WRONG and not the job of the government

for the last year there has been one bailout after another for private corporations, to the tune of $350 BILLION, and this is without the aditional $700 billion which they are voting on...

that's probably more than we have spent on poverty in 10 years and we did it in a matter of a few months....

I haven't seen thread after thread or the bitching and moaning of those that oppose redistribution of wealth against these bailouts and help the gvt has given these wall street guys until this $700 billion bailout, but before this it was happening daily by them?

 

[editec]

I haven't seen thread after thread or the bitching and moaning of those that oppose redistribution of wealth against these bailouts and help the gvt has given these wall street guys until this $700 billion bailout, but before this it was happening daily by them?

Nor are you likely to do so on this board.

A whole lot of folks here benefit directly from the distribution of wealth via the military.

I guess you could say they're living high on the hog, just like those (mostly children) on welfare if you were so inclined to such absurd thinking.

 

[dilloduck]

Nor are you likely to do so on this board.

A whole lot of folks here benefit directly from the distribution of wealth via the military.

I guess you could say they're living high on the hog, just like those (mostly children) on welfare if you were so inclined to such absurd thinking.

Distribution of wealth via the military---that's rich

 

[Chris]

Military pensions are ridiculous.

You can retire when you are 45 for Christ's sake.

 

[DiamondDave]

Military pensions are ridiculous.

You can retire when you are 45 for Christ's sake.

You couldn't handle the pressure of the military for 20 days, let alone 20 years...

You, of all people, complaining about when it is appropriate for a military career person to retire... ******* laughable

 

[DiamondDave]

Nor are you likely to do so on this board.

A whole lot of folks here benefit directly from the distribution of wealth via the military.

I guess you could say they're living high on the hog, just like those (mostly children) on welfare if you were so inclined to such absurd thinking.

You saying that the military does nothing... like a welfare/handout recipient does?

Comparing the 2 is just ridiculous

 

[Chris]

You saying that the military does nothing... like a welfare/handout recipient does?

Comparing the 2 is just ridiculous

My Dad was in the Navy, and he fought in the Pacific on a battleship. He was at Iwo Jima and Okinawa. He never got a pension.

When I told him there were 200,000 people in my area employed by the Navy, he said, "Yea......and 150,000 of them are staring at the wall or making paper airplanes."

 

[SwingVoter]

Reagan failed.

Tell that to the East German government.

 

[Chris]

Tell that to the East German government.

The Soviet Union collapsed of its own weight. The CIA told Reagan it was going to happen, years before it did.

Reagan had nothing to do with it.

That was a nice speech though.

 

[Care4all]

Military pensions are ridiculous.

You can retire when you are 45 for Christ's sake.

you can retire AFTER GIVING THEM 20 years....my father was 39 when he retired from the service and received his pension.

Then he spent anoter 25 years working for the FAA before he retired from that....when he retired from the FAA, he had to GIVE UP one of his retirements, even though he gave both branches of government over 20 years....this would NEVER TAKE PLACE in the private market place...if you worked 20 years for one employer and got their pension for it, and then worked another 25 years with another private sector job or for the gvt in civil service, you would be able to collect both pensions earned....this came about during Reagan's term, the cutting of pensions, for what they labeled, double dippers....

 

[Chris]

Reagan was a millionaire and a big time double dipper. He received SS payments, and pension payments from the state of California, and plus his salary as president from the U.S. Treasury, and then he complained about "welfare queens" getting money from the government.