Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Compare & Contrast

1) Census Bureau (at 40), average income of households in lowest quintile (2009): $11,552

2) Bureau of Labor Statistics, average expenditures of households in lowest quintile (2009): $21,611

3) Ratio of 2 to 1: 1.87

How can this be? Robert Rector and Rachel Sheffield at Heritage Foundation explain:
[T]he Census report massively undercounts the economic resources provided to poor people. The Census asserts that a household is poor if its "money income" falls below a specified threshold. In 2009, the poverty income threshold for a family of four was $21,756. However, in counting the money income of households, the Census ignores virtually the entire welfare state. For example, there are over 70 means-tested welfare programs that provide cash, food, housing, medical care, and social services to poor and low-income persons. Major means-tested welfare programs include Temporary Assistance for Needy Families; Supplemental Security Income; the Earned Income Tax Credit; food stamps; the Women, Infants, and Children food program; public housing; and Medicaid. (Social Security and Medicare are not means-tested welfare programs.)

In 2008, federal and state governments spent $714 billion on means-tested welfare programs, but the Census counted only about 4 percent of this as "money income" for purposes of determining whether a household was poor. The bottom line is that the economic resources available to poor persons are vastly greater than the Census claims.
Agreed.

(via Powerline)

2 comments:

Ze Far Left said...

> The bottom line is that the economic resources available to poor persons are vastly greater than the Census claims.

But iff ve report zis truthfully, how can ve justify massif expentitures uff ozzer peoplez money?

So uff course ve tell zem what vill make us able tu increase ze taxis on ze peoplez!!

Anonymous said...

Consider the income and assets of the top 3% and the bottom 30% of the US population over the past 20 years.

See what the greedy, ignorant Republicans have done to the economic vitality of the USA and its population?

Obama is irrelevant. It's the Tea Party, the Republicans and the corporate interests behind the lobbyists and legislation that are destroying our once-great nation.

Erase the national debt ceiling, start a new WPA, fix and upgrade the infrastruction, get the corporations to invest their cash in American manufacturing of real, internationally desired products, increase taxes on the top 2% of the population and we will solve the US financial and social crisis very quickly. Don't let the petty, puppet politicians and greedy corporate interests control. They blew it.