Walter Williams, On Poverty.

Williams, at CNS, describes what qualifies as poverty in the USA:

"There is no material poverty in the U.S. Here are a few facts about people whom the Census Bureau labels as poor.

Dr. Robert Rector and Rachel Sheffield, in their study "Understanding Poverty in the United States: Surprising Facts About America's Poor" (http://tinyurl.com/448flj8), report that 80 percent of poor households have air conditioning; nearly three-quarters have a car or truck, and 31 percent have two or more. Two-thirds have cable or satellite TV. Half have one or more computers. Forty-two percent own their homes. Poor Americans have more living space than the typical non-poor person in Sweden, France or the U.K. What we have in our nation are dependency and poverty of the spirit, with people making unwise choices and leading pathological lives aided and abetted by the welfare state.

The Census Bureau pegs the poverty rate among blacks at 35 percent and among whites at 13 percent. The illegitimacy rate among blacks is 72 percent, and among whites it's 30 percent. A statistic that one doesn't hear much about is that the poverty rate among black married families has been in the single digits for more than two decades, currently at 8 percent. For married white families, it's 5 percent. Now the politically incorrect questions: Whose fault is it to have children without the benefit of marriage and risk a life of dependency? Do people have free will, or are they governed by instincts?"

Poverty has been redefined to suit the political needs of the Left. There must be a certain minimum comfort level, or the slavishly poor would revolt against their masters. This minimum level is maintained with both taxpayer dollars, as is shown below, and with the inflationary minimum wage, which gives a temporary boost but always finds its inflated level at the bottom. Williams continues:

"Since President Lyndon Johnson declared war on poverty, the nation has spent about $18 trillion at the federal, state and local levels of government on programs justified by the "need" to deal with some aspect of poverty.

In a column of mine in 1995, I pointed out that at that time, the nation had spent $5.4 trillion on the War on Poverty, and with that princely sum, "you could purchase every U.S. factory, all manufacturing equipment, and every office building. With what's left over, one could buy every airline, trucking company and our commercial maritime fleet. If you're still in the shopping mood, you could also buy every television, radio and power company, plus every retail and wholesale store in the entire nation." Today's total of $18 trillion spent on poverty means you could purchase everything produced in our country each year and then some.

There's very little guts in the political arena to address the basic causes of poverty. To do so risks being labeled as racist, sexist, uncaring and insensitive. That means today's dependency is likely to become permanent."

It most definitely is a benefit to the Left to have a Victim class defined by poverty. That class is the most easily sustained by throwing just enought money at it to keep them from having any real desire to work their way out. They best indicator of that intent is the Left's attitude toward jobs, work, and minimum wage, as well as the get-out-the-vote in the Democrat plantation ghettos.

Now jobs and work are seen as getting in the way of leisure time; the minimum wage is a government entitlement to the lowest class. And the lowest class is not in poverty, they are a wanton, unprincipled entitlement class.