Busted: 10 myths about poverty

by Ben Reilly Wed Dec 24, 2014 3:41 am

Tired of seeing these repeated over and over by the ignorant!

And you know who I mean by "the ignorant" Smile

Stats are for the U.S.

1. Single moms are the problem. Only 9 percent of low-income, urban moms have been single throughout their child's first five years. Thirty-five percent were married to, or in a relationship with, the child's father for that entire time.*

2. Absent dads are the problem. Sixty percent of low-income dads see at least one of their children daily. Another 16 percent see their children weekly.*

3. Black dads are the problem. Among men who don't live with their children, black fathers are more likely than white or Hispanic dads to have a daily presence in their kids' lives.

4. Poor people are lazy. In 2004, there was at least one adult with a job in 60 percent of families on food stamps that had both kids and a non-disabled, working-age adult.

5. If you're not officially poor, you're doing okay. The federal poverty line for a family of two parents and two children in 2012 was $23,283. Basic needs cost at least twice that in 615 of America's cities and regions.

6. Go to college, get out of poverty. In 2012, about 1.1 million people who made less than $25,000 a year, worked full time, and were heads of household had a bachelor's degree.**

7. We're winning the war on poverty. The number of households with children living on less than $2 a day per person has grown 160 percent since 1996, to 1.65 million families in 2011.

8. The days of old ladies eating cat food are over. The share of elderly single women living in extreme poverty jumped 31 percent from 2011 to 2012.

9. The homeless are drunk street people. One in 45 kids in the United States experiences homelessness each year. In New York City alone, 22,000 children are homeless.

10. Handouts are bankrupting us. In 2012, total welfare funding was 0.47 percent of the federal budget.

*Source: Analysis by Dr. Laura Tach at Cornell University.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/03/10-poverty-myths-busted

by veya_victaous Thu Dec 25, 2014 9:36 am

and at the same time Big Business got how many Billion in handouts ?
Similar here they focus On Costs not tax reductions that mean many millionaires Pay less tax than Me !
it is no Accident that the Gap between rich and poor has grown like it has

by Ben Reilly Fri Dec 26, 2014 3:04 am

veya_victaous wrote:and at the same time Big Business got how many Billion in handouts ?
Similar here they focus On Costs not tax reductions that mean many millionaires Pay less tax than Me !
it is no Accident that the Gap between rich and poor has grown like it has

Yeah, somehow it's crucial to the economy to keep those businesses running, but not crucial to keep people fed and housed. I don't know whether I'm more upset with the manipulators or the dummies who get manipulated at this point Neutral

by Guest Fri Dec 26, 2014 1:17 pm

Lets has some real honesty here Ben the views equated above claiming to be real poverty is far removed from actual poverty by for example some in Africa.
Yes these people are less well off and many stigma and stereotypes placed against them are absurd and utterly wrong. Even worse that in the west, where it is rich, that people suffer such a daily struggle, which is completely wrong for anyone to be in the above situations.

Though I hate the word poverty being so badly used out of its true meaning, because it actually is insulting the very people who are suffering real poverty, where they do not even have the basics for example like water in their own homes, that all of us have in the west and take for granted.
Real Poverty is what we see in parts of the world like Africa, where they do not have the basics we all take for granted. What you present above is people who have at least some basic necessities but very much struggle in a wealthy nation when they should never have to. I agree the poor views to have a go at the poor is very wrong.I completely agree that we are not doing enough to help those struggling, where they never should in a rich country
But we have two different groups here altogether who are miles apart in terms of real poverty. Where using poverty to describe people less well off in America for example given the fact, they have many of the basics we in the west take for granted, is actually lessening the meaning of poverty itself, for those who suffer real poverty, where we see for real in places like Africa.

by Lone Wolf Fri Dec 26, 2014 7:46 pm

"THE WEST" has their true struggling and subsistence 'poor' as well, Didge'...

DON'T believe everything that the über-right propaganda machine feeds you ~ NOT everybody in the "Western world" has running water and electricity..

THERE ARE millions of homeless people in the USA, Canada, Australia, Brazil and Argentina ~ they can't afford even minimal housing because escalating property prices overtook their meagre incomes years ago ~ and at a lot higher rates than you may think. Try 15% of the population in the USA (that's 48 million people ! A country within a country..), and near 10% here in Oz.. (AND let's not mention Brazil..).

AND greedy employers' clubs ["associations"] keep on applying more-and-more constant downward pressures on minimum wages and welfare payments ==> leading to even more child neglect and abuse; rising crime levels as incomes are cut off; rising suicide and mortality rates; usury/exploitation and effective slavery conditions; more homeless people living rough, out on the fringes, and on city streets..

AND the beat goes on...

ON TOP of this, there are millions more who don't have running water, electricity and telephones available to them ! (And they are not all 'indigenous'/blacks/immigrants - despite fallacious rumours to the contrary..).

AND many of these might never have access to what is considered minimum health and education services, because of where they are forced to live..

AND never forget that the children [and the elderly, disabled and infirm, also..] in these situations also never have any say in their circumstances, either. HOW are they expected to even cope, let alone 'escape' these poverty traps ? Neutral

by veya_victaous Sat Dec 27, 2014 2:18 am

do you have running water if you can only rent a room? Neutral

while yes there are places far worse than the west on average there is large segments that are suffering hardship because of the greed of the few.
the gap between average and medium incomes has grown but not as much as the gap between average and maximum incomes.. and the biggest insult is that most of the super rich are paying very little in actual tax and contribute very little towards society (in terms of the common good) yet are one of the biggest receivers of hand outs and tax reductions.

by Ben Reilly Sat Dec 27, 2014 6:33 am

I can see both sides of the argument. The poor in the West by and large do have it better than the poor in the third world ... but at the same time, rich countries have no excuse to have anyone living like that.

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