Tag: war on poverty

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A Better Deal for Black America

Some who claim to represent the black community have correctly pointed to the reality that poverty in their demographic remains higher than the rest of the nation.  They note that young black males have higher rates of incarceration and altercations with police.

Defensively, some respond by pointing to a half-century of anti-poverty and affirmative action programs. Some blame police-black tensions on a higher proclivity to respond negatively to law enforcement on the part of those youth and suggest an absence of fathers as benevolent authority figures leading to that attitude.

Both have a point.  Yes, there have been extensive anti-poverty programs, but those efforts have been a failure.  Nationwide poverty rates remain virtually unchanged in the half century since they were begun.  The fact is, those endeavors have been a great benefit to the politically connected who administer them or who had the opportunity to work in them, but they have done precious little for the intended recipients.  The rise of “poverty pimps” illustrates the problem.

After the elimination of officially sanctioned segregation laws and the end of the Jim Crow era, it seemed that the path to full financial equality would finally begin.  The results have been disappointing.  In truth, because of those programs and the restrictions placed on the American economy at the federal, state and local levels by high taxes and excess regulations, blacks have been inadvertently denied the economic environment that allowed other ethnic groups who were once discriminated against to progress.  It is doubtful that, given these conditions, any prior downtrodden groups would have had a viable shot at moving up the economic ladder.

The National Center for Policy Research has just provided an important study addressing the issue. The just-released “Blueprint for a Better Deal for Black America” notes that “It has been over a half-century since the enactment of landmark civil rights legislation targeting the scourge of racial discrimination. Unfortunately, too many black families today suffer from a non-racial scourge – conditions that undermine upward mobility and perpetuate unacceptable levels of poverty, crime and other social ills. The vaunted social safety net has become a web that ensnares black families in a vicious cycle of dependency.”

This is not a politicized report performed by remote academics. It is the work of “Project 21,” a network of diverse black leaders from across the nation.

The study identified ten key areas of reform.  Here’s a very brief summary of the key points:

Promoting K–12 Educational Choice: Establish federal needs-based vouchers.

Improving Higher Education: Require schools to meet minimum graduation rate standards for both general and minority student populations to be eligible for federal student financial aid.

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Strengthening Faith-Based Communities: Establish federal Tax Credit Scholarships; repeal the Johnson Amendment; create a tax credit for families paying for nursery-12 fees and tuition.

Promoting Self-Determination: End fraudulent election practices that dilute black votes. Require proof of citizenship to register; vigorously prosecute those who target minority communities for fraud.

Improve Police Relationships: Get police out of the regulation business; transfer the resources to support police community outreach programs; increase use of body cameras; end gun bans and put police in charge of safety training.

End Excessive Regulation: Require “Minority Impact Assessments” for new regulations.

Stop Wealth Transfer to Non-Citizens: Bar illegal aliens from using public services, except in emergencies.

Reduce the Economic Harm of Excise Taxes: Repeal federal, state and local sin and gas taxes, all of which have a disproportionate negative impact on low-income families.

Reform the Criminal Justice System: Require convictions for assets to be forfeited; prohibit incarceration for fine-only misdemeanors; require fines and forfeitures be transferred to general funds instead of enforcing agency budgets and consider ability to pay in levying fines.

Photo: Pixabay

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Big Government Hurts Middle Class

How much interference in their daily lives will Americans tolerate from increasingly powerful government, especially when that interference results in a reduced quality of life?

The Foundation for Economic Education notes:

“Government in America was never supposed to engage in the multitude of activities that it does today. When the United States gained its independence more than 200 years ago, the founding fathers envisioned a national government with explicit and restricted responsibilities. These responsibilities pertained mainly to protecting the security of the nation and ensuring “domestic tranquility,” which meant preserving public safety. Especially in the realm of domestic affairs the founders foresaw very limited government interference in the daily lives of its citizens.”

The Institute for Policy Innovation outlines the challenge:

“We have to put Big Government back within its Constitutional restraints because Big Government has led to the establishment of a Government Class that lives at the expense and off the backs of the productive private sector. And when you allow a ruling class to live better than you but at your expense, you are on the way to losing your freedom. …And what happens when we dare suggest that they should rein in their spending by a couple of pennies out of a dollar? They punish us by releasing illegal immigrant felons from prison, by delaying our flights, by closing government buildings and by threatening us with restricted services. This is not the behavior of public servants. This is the behavior of a Ruling Class, punishing its subjects for questioning its authority. And these are but the first few skirmishes.”

As America’s governments, both on the national and state levels have grown increasingly large, powerful, and intrusive, the middle class has suffered accordingly. As the New York Analysis previously reported, A Pew Research Center review  notes that “Middle-income Americans are no longer the nation’s economic majority…The share of U.S. aggregate household income held by middle-income households has plunged, from 62% in 1970 to 43% in 2014.”  According to the U.S. Census Bureau   In 2014, real median household income was 6.5 percent lower than in 2007…The 2014 poverty rate increased for two groups: people aged 25 and older with at least a bachelor’s degree.
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This discloses another reason for the declining fortunate of the middle class:  “Liberals across the country supported the misnamed Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare). The law’s mandates have made health coverage more expensive for both individuals and businesses…when benefit costs rise, employers cut wages. Empirical research confirms this prediction. “ Research from the Heritage Foundation  concurs.

How have “Progressive” ideas affected average Americans? “The curse of the U.S. economy today is the downward trend in “take-home pay, Heritage  notes.  “In the 50 years since that the war on poverty began, U.S. taxpayers have spent over $22 trillion on anti-poverty programs. Adjusted for inflation, this spending (which does not include Social Security or Medicare) is three times the cost of all U.S. military wars since the American Revolution. Yet progress against poverty, as measured by the U.S. Census Bureau, has been minimal, and in terms of President Johnson’s main goal of reducing the ‘causes’ rather than the mere ‘consequences’ of poverty, the War on Poverty has failed completely.”

Scholar Charles Murray believes that “Aspects of America’s legal system have become lawless, for reasons that are inextricably embedded in the use of law for social agendas.

The federal government has a debt of over $18 and a half trillion, Social Security is heading towards insolvency, the nation’s infrastructure remains in poor condition, and the military is significantly underfunded.

While Washington’s spending concentrates on failed poverty programs, (spending on poverty programs has reached its highest level under President Obama) real median income of working Americans has declined.

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U.S. economy hampered by wrong priorities

While U.S. taxes soar, the American taxpayer is enduring a weakened economy and neglected national needs.

U.S. citizens and their businesses are paying increased amounts of taxes. Over the past year, reports the Wall Street Journal, corporate taxes rose 10%, individual income taxes 15%, and payroll taxes, 6%.  Despite that, Washington still runs vast annual deficits. Government spending overall increased 5% in fiscal year 2015, commanding a higher level of gross domestic product “than at any level seen between 1993 and 2008.”

The federal government has a debt of $18 and a half trillion, Social Security is heading towards insolvency, the nation’s infrastructure remains in poor condition, and the military is significantly underfunded.

While Washington’s spending concentrates on failed poverty programs, (spending on poverty programs has reached its highest level under President Obama) real median income of working Americans has declined. The Heritage Foundation notes that Eighty-five percent of the projected growth in spending over the next decade is due to entitlement spending and interest on the debt.

The Washington Times reported in 2014:  “Last year, government spent $943 billion providing cash, food, housing and medical care to poor and low-income Americans. (That figure doesn’t include Social Security or Medicare.) More than 100 million people, or one third of Americans, received some type of welfare aid, at an average cost of $9,000 per recipient. If converted into cash, this spending was five times what was needed to eliminate all poverty in the United States. [in 2014] The U.S. Census Bureau … released its annual poverty report. The report claims that in 2013, 14.5 percent of Americans were poor. Remarkably, that’s almost the same poverty rate as in 1967, three years after the War on Poverty started. How can that be? How can government spend $9,000 per recipient and have no effect on poverty?”

The U.S. Census Bureau reveals that “In 2014, real median household income was 6.5 percent lower than in 2007, the year before the most recent recession. The real median income of non-Hispanic White households declined 1.7 percent between 2013 and 2014. For Black, Asian, and Hispanic-origin households, the 2013-2014 percentage changes in real median income were not statistically significant.”

A 2014 report by the Washington Post  notes that Median inflation-adjusted income in 2013 was still $2,100 lower than when President Obama took office in 2009 — and $3,600 lower than when President George W. Bush took office in 2001. …  “In 2013, most Americans had a good bit less money, after adjusting for taxes, than the year before. That’s because in 2013, a huge tax increase affecting ordinary workers took effect, raising the employee payroll tax from 4.2 percent to 6.2 percent. A worker earning $50,000 a year saw disposable income decline by $1,000.It was the first time the payroll tax had increased since 1990, and previous payroll tax hikes had been smaller.”

Those increased taxes provided  a significant boost in funds to the federal government. A CNS study  discloses “that taxes in fiscal 2015 (which ended on Sept. 30), according to the Monthly Treasury Statement, equaled approximately $21,833 for every person in the country who had either a full-time or part-time job in September. It is also up about $212,927,100,000 in constant 2015 dollars from the $3,035,795,900,000 in revenue (in 2015 dollars) that the Treasury raked in during fiscal 2014. Even as the Treasury was hauling in a record $3,248,723,000,000 in tax revenues in fiscal 2015, the federal government was spending $3,687,622,000,000. So, the federal government ran a deficit of $438,899,000,000 for the fiscal year. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, total seasonally adjusted employment in the United States in September (including both full and part-time workers) was 148,800,000. That means that the federal tax haul for fiscal 2015 equaled about $21,832.82 for every person in the United States with a job.”

According to the Office of Management and Budget, in 2014, 24% of federal dollars went to Social Security, 24% went to Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, and related subsidies, 18% went to defense, 11% to safety net programs, 8% went to government retirees, 7% paid for interest on the national debt, 3% for transportation infrastructure, 2% for education, 2% for science and medical research, 1% for foreign aid, and 2% distributed for miscellaneous purposes.

The problems facing the U.S. have become structural.  To win elections, candidates continue to promise “free stuff,” which the economy cannot possibly provide. (This election year cycle’s big giveaway promise is free college tuition.) To then fulfill the unaffordable campaign promise, vital needs—keeping Social Security solvent, keeping the armed forces adequately equipped, maintaining infrastructure, are stripped of resources to pay for the latest set of “vote for me” promises.

A more rational approach to budgeting must include:

  • a level of taxes that keep U.S. enterprises competitive with global competition (America has the highest corporate tax rate of any of its trading partners) and reduces the tax burden on the middle class;
  • The funding of essential needs, such as providing a powerful defense, maintaining the solvency of Social Security, and keeping the national infrastructure intact, before commiting dollars to entitlements;
  • A commitment to providing a regulatory environment that encourages, rather than inhibits, the development of more job-producing activities;
  • A firm resolve to end deficit spending.

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Washington’s Worst Mistake

Proposals for Washington’s 2016 budget, like so many before it, allow for the continuation of  a failed effort that is so vast it hampers the federal government’s ability to fulfill its traditional responsibilities.  it’s clear that the “War on Poverty” hasn’t produced results.  So why do the programs and concepts of this failed effort continue?

The federal debt was $18 trillion as of the filing of this New York Analysis report in late March 2015, a figure that grew by $483 billion in 2014.  The future looks grim. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) “The deficit in 2025 is projected to be $1.1 trillion, or 4.0 percent of GDP, and cumulative deficits over the 2016–2025 period are projected to total $7.6 trillion. CBO expects that federal debt held by the public will amount to 74 percent of GDP at the end of this fiscal year—more than twice what it was at the end of 2007 and higher than in any year since 1950. By 2025, in CBO’s baseline projections, federal debt rises to nearly 79 percent of GDP.”

The lion’s share of the federal budget goes to War on Poverty-type entitlement programs. According to a Heritage  study, “In 2003, the entitlement share of the budget was 44 percent, compared with 49 percent today. Without reform of these massive and growing programs, Washington will have to borrow increasing amounts of money, piling debt onto younger generations and putting the nation on a dangerous economic course.”  (By contrast, 2014 spending on defense was 3.5 percent of GDP, or less than half of what it was in 1965, and falling.)

Heritage notes that “In his January 1964 State of the Union address, President Lyndon Johnson proclaimed, ‘This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America.’ In the 50 years since that time, U.S. taxpayers have spent over $22 trillion on anti-poverty programs. Adjusted for inflation, this spending (which does not include Social Security or Medicare) is three times the cost of all U.S. military wars since the American Revolution. Yet progress against poverty, as measured by the U.S. Census Bureau, has been minimal, and in terms of President Johnson’s main goal of reducing the ‘causes’ rather than the mere ‘consequences’ of poverty, the War on Poverty has failed completely. In fact, a significant portion of the population is now less capable of self-sufficiency than it was when the War on Poverty began.”

A New American study, discussing the rise in entitlements, emphasized that “Even more troubling is that analysts say the trends look set to accelerate as Washington, D.C., intensifies its failed efforts to supposedly achieve “victory” in the “war” while the Federal Reserve conjures ever greater quantities of currency into existence…Since Obama took office, 13 million more Americans have become dependent on food stamps, with the numbers now hitting a record 47 million — about a third more than when he was sworn in. In 2007, there were 26 million recipients. Spending on the scheme has more than doubled just since 2008. The explosion of the program, along with other welfare schemes, has resulted in countless commentators and critics labeling Obama ‘the Food Stamp President.”

Ironically, the National Tax Limitation Foundation notes that before the War on Poverty began, the U.S. poverty rate had been declining precipitously.  “The poverty rate fell from 32% in 1950 to 17.3% in 1965 to 14.7% in 1966.”

For more information, please see related articles like What Cause Prostatitis Cannot Be Cured? 3 Tips Unveil the Reasons: sildenafil generic from canada In physiology, the prostate is a male specific gonadal organ. But, must remember that these medications work in combination with buy viagra prescription sexual stimulation. It has been used india cheap cialis http://downtownsault.org/category/attractions/page/2/ for centuries for aiding reproductive health. In case of any doubts, free tadalafil sample you should talk to the representatives over phone or chat for complete information. A Forbes review, which termed the war on poverty to be a “catastrophic” failure, found that “Between 1967 and 2012, U.S. real GDP (RGDP) per capita (in 4Q2013 dollars) increased by 127.3%, from $23,706 to $52,809.  In other words, to stay out of poverty in 1967, the two adults in a typical family of four had to capture 26.9% of their family’s proportionate share of RGDP (i.e., average RGDP per capita, times four).  To accomplish the same thing in 2012, they only had to pull in 12.1% of their family’s share of RGDP.  And yet, fewer people were able to manage this in 2012 than in 1967.”

The CATO Institute outlined the amounts spent in a single year: “In 2012, the federal government spent $668 billion to fund 126 separate anti-poverty programs. State and local governments kicked in another $284 billion, bringing total anti-poverty spending to nearly $1 trillion. That amounts to $20,610 for every poor person in America, or $61,830 per poor family of three. Spending on the major anti-poverty programs increased in 2013, pushing the total even higher. Over the last 50 years, the government spent more than $16 trillion to fight poverty. Yet today, 15 percent of Americans still live in poverty. That’s scarcely better than the 19 percent living in poverty at the time of Johnson’s speech. Nearly 22 percent of children live in poverty today. In 1964, it was 23 percent. How could we have spent so much and achieved so little?”

In their book, The Poverty of Nations,” by Dr. Wayne Grudem and economist Barry Asmus explain why they believe government programs have largely failed. They summarized their  analysis in a recent WND interview: “The solutions to poverty come when people … are enabled to produce their own prosperity. The question is not equality. The question is, ‘Is there opportunity? Is there freedom in the workplace? Is there economic freedom? Is there governmental freedom from excessive regulations so that people who are at the lower end of the income bracket can progress and hope to progress toward higher income?…What about the things we’re doing in the United States? Aren’t we having more government regulation, higher taxation, disincentives to productivity, disincentives to work? Aren’t we having moral breakdown in the way that people think of honesty and truthfulness, not breaking contracts and obedience to the rule of law?’” he said. “There are many things our country is doing that are actually hindering our economic growth and, of course, that results in a stagnant economy essentially.”

Why do the failed concepts of the War on Poverty continue to exist, and continue to deplete the taxpayer’s pockets?  Part of the answer is politics. Progressive candidates, who depend on class warfare for their electoral success, view them as a war of redistributing the “wealth” to those on the lower rungs of the economy. But there is another, heavily vested interest as well.  The War on Poverty has created an entire special interest of bureaucratic jobs. As noted in a Philly.com article written decades ago,

“Whatever this approach does for poverty, it’s going to be a boon to poverty workers, the one class that benefits most from anti-poverty programs. They’ll be the ones running the classrooms, job training sessions, work programs, and child-care centers authorized by this bill – all in the name of making the poor independent. Some early studies have shown that any training beyond the most basic seldom gets people off the dole…Back when government actually put millions to work – through the Works Progress Administration, the Civilian Conservation Corps, and a spate of other New Deal programs – job preparation might consist of showing up and being handed a shovel. Yet the country is still rich in libraries built, roads paved, and lands reforested that way.”

It is troubling that the War on Poverty, despite failing to address the problem it was created to resolve, has, due to politics and special interests, grown to the point where it dominates the federal budget.

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The Beleaguered Middle Class

According to a recent Pew Research Center report federal data indicates that the typical wealth of middle-income families was basically unchanged in 2013, remaining at about $96,500.

Combined with Pew’s 2012 study,  in which 85% of self-described middle-class adults said it was more difficult than it was a decade ago for middle-class people to maintain their standard of living, it is clear that middle income Americans continue to face tough times. “Their downbeat,” notes Pew, “comes at the end of a decade in which, for the first time since the end of World War II, mean family incomes declined for Americans in all income tiers. But the middle-income tier—defined as all adults whose annual household income is two-thirds to double the national median —is the only one that also shrunk in size, a trend that has continued over the past four decades.”

It is not coincidental that throughout the past half-century, $22 trillion dollars (not including Social Security or Medicaid) have been taken out of the U.S. economy in the form of taxes for an unsuccessful War on Poverty. That’s more than three times the cost of all U.S. military wars since the American Revolution, according to the Heritage Foundation.
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WallStreetCheat.com  notes “The struggles of the middle class have been well documented and oft-reported. Faced with a tough economy — including hard fights for jobs, adequate pay, and adjustments to compensate for the Affordable Care Act — members of what is supposed to be America’s backbone are finding that the post-recession world is more difficult than many imagined…Jobs that were lost to the recession have returned, but are paying a fraction of what they were previously. Essentially, everyone has had to make sacrifices to return the country to economic prosperity. But the sacrifices have been levied on those in the working class almost exclusively.”

By de-emphasizing free enterprise growth in favor of government programs, the means with which generations of Americans from the earliest days of the nation’s history until the middle of the twentieth century pulled their way out of poverty and into the middle class was handicapped.