Give A Hand Up not A handout, Lets Make Taxpayers Out Of Taxeaters

[beenthere]

The same theme was repeated endlessly by President Johnson. The purpose of the "war on poverty," he said, was to make "taxpayers out of taxeaters." Its slogan was "Give a hand up, not a handout." When Lyndon Johnson signed the landmark legislation into law, he declared: "The days of the dole in our country are numbered."

Now, 50 years and trillions of dollars later, it is painfully clear that there is more dependency than ever.
Ironically, dependency on government to raise people above the poverty line had been going down for years before the "war on poverty" began. The hard facts showed that the number of people who lived below the official poverty line had been declining since 1960, and was only half of what it had been in 1950.
On the more fundamental question of dependency, the facts were even clearer. The proportion of people whose earnings put them below the poverty level -- without counting government benefits -- declined by about one-third from 1950 to 1965.

All this was happening before the "war on poverty" went into effect -- and all these trends reversed after it went into effect.




How can anyone with a straight face deny the fact that Government is keeping the poor down?
Even the democrats in the 1960's knew that it was better to enable the poor than to coddle them.
What else could President Johnson have meant when he said, "the days of the dole in our are numbered"
It's been 50 years and over a $trillion, where are the results?
Should we continue this failed policy for another 50 years?

 

[UncleBuck]

yet another unattributed copy and paste from the same hack who says people shouldn't volunteer to feed the homeless because it is a bad idea to "feed those who refuse to work".

nevermind the crippling mental and physical disabilities within the homeless population, just keep repeating that mindless crap.

the war on poverty is working. without food stamps, medicare, and the expansion in social security, the poverty rate in america would be 29% instead of 16%.

if the war on poverty were to end today, 40 million more people would be in poverty overnight.

hacks like beenthere are too stupid to understand this.

 

[Flaming Pie]

I don't understand your poverty percentages, buck.

If someone makes 25k with food stamps or without they are still at the same poverty level.

( They have less money for non food items without food stamps but are still at the same poverty level according to the government.)

 

[Flaming Pie]

If the program were to end, 40 million will be hurting for money, but their poverty level will not have changed according to government.

 

[Canna Sylvan]

Wesley Snipes is my hero. I don't endorse taxes, I also don't endorse taking advantage. You can't claim Robin Hood was good, both were theives. I will only support taxes when my stolen money doesn't go towards killing innocents in the name of our so called freedom..

 

[UncleBuck]

I don't understand your poverty percentages, buck.

If someone makes 25k with food stamps or without they are still at the same poverty level.

( They have less money for non food items without food stamps but are still at the same poverty level according to the government.)

what's not to get?

the 3 major components of the war on poverty were food stamps, medicare/medicaid, and an expansion of social security.

if grandma is just above the poverty level on her current SS check, she would be below the poverty line if you cut her check in half.

if you make just over poverty but had to pay for all your prenatal care and bills associated with your pregnancy, that kind of bill would put you well below the poverty line.

the work was done by researchers at columbia university. full methodology here: http://socialwork.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/file_manager/pdfs/News/Anchored SPM.December7.pdf

(not a rick roll)

 

[Flaming Pie]

Oh shit... I was thinking your post was just talking about food stamps. My bad.

My eye skips a bit when I am tired. I surf politics at night alot.

 

[UncleBuck]

If the program were to end, 40 million will be hurting for money, but their poverty level will not have changed according to government.

if someone makes $12k a year they are under the poverty line.

but if they get $200 in food stamps per month, they are now AT the poverty line.

and if they receive a few thousand dollars worth of medical care thanks to medicaid, those transfers have now put them above the poverty line.

and if they receive school lunch program help, or help with heating, or their phone bill, or housing assistance, or tax credits like the EIC, all of those transfers and payments put them clearly above poverty.

take away all those programs designed to fight poverty and BOOM. 40 million more on poverty overnight.

does that make sense?

 

[UncleBuck]

Oh shit... I was thinking your post was just talking about food stamps. My bad.

My eye skips a bit when I am tired. I surf politics at night alot.

no worries.

if you posted here more often, i would have a much higher opinion of republicans. you're one of the good ones, pie.

 

[MidwesternGro]

How can anyone with a straight face deny the fact that Government is keeping the poor down?
Even the democrats in the 1960's knew that it was better to enable the poor than to coddle them.
What else could President Johnson have meant when he said, "the days of the dole in our are numbered"
It's been 50 years and over a $trillion, where are the results?
Should we continue this failed policy for another 50 years?

You don't think that a low minimum wage, good jobs going overseas and a paucity of labor unions have more to do with Americans slipping into poverty? Why aren't Somalians the wealthiest people in the world if you are correct?

 

[UncleBuck]

You don't think that a low minimum wage, good jobs going overseas and a paucity of labor unions have more to do with Americans slipping into poverty? Why aren't Somalians the wealthiest people in the world if you are correct?

good point about minimum wage.

walmart wouldn't have to have food drives for their own goddamn employees if they just ponied up a livable wage.

 

[beenthere]

"In the late 1950s, the poverty rate for all Americans was 22.4 percent, or 39.5 million individuals. These numbers declined steadily throughout the 1960s, reaching a low of 11.1 percent, or 22.9 million individuals, in 1973. Over the next decade, the poverty rate fluctuated between 11.1 and 12.6 percent, but it began to rise steadily again in 1980. By 1983, the number of poor individuals had risen to 35.3 million individuals, or 15.2 percent"

The graph above shows our poverty rate in 2011 at 15%, 4% higher than in 1969, when we were at our lowest percentage.

 

[UncleBuck]

elderly poverty dropped from 28% in 1964 to 9% in 2009 because of the war on poverty.

 

[UncleBuck]

the war on poverty has reduced poverty by almost 50% and is currently keeping 40 million people off poverty.

 

[Canna Sylvan]

good point about minimum wage.

walmart wouldn't have to have food drives for their own goddamn employees if they just ponied up a livable wage.

Walmart chooses those food drives.

 

[UncleBuck]

the poverty rate right now would be 29% without the war on poverty.

 

[UncleBuck]

other programs that were not specifically part of the official war on poverty but which were designed to combat poverty anyway (heating assistance, reaganphones, school lunch programs, the earned income tax credit, etc) make the war on poverty even more successful.

 

[see4]

This thread was about Finthere serving them up and UB shooting them down. Like skeet shooting.

Quite fun. Let's do it again sometime, shall we?

 

[ginwilly]

This thread was about Finthere serving them up and UB shooting them down. Like skeet shooting.

Quite fun. Let's do it again sometime, shall we?

Don't get hung up on Buck's numbers. It's Keynesian thinking that no senior would have changed their lifestyles and saved for retirement instead of starving later in life. The assumption is that everyone receiving welfare would just lay there like baby birds waiting to be fed instead of finding a way to feed themselves.

Presently if a single parent had to make 30K a year to replace the living welfare gives them, working an entry level job could actually make them worse off financially. If those people had taken that entry level position, they could have advanced to the middle class and self-sufficiency, with welfare, they are stuck. It's made up numbers to justify an ideology.

No doubt some people would be struggling hard without government assistance, but trying to quantify how many is an arrogant approach that you can predict human behavior. The prediction the study makes is that all welfare recipients are only on welfare because they can't help themselves. If instead of just handouts, we had gone with life training instead, there is no telling where poverty would be now.

cliffs: The assumption those numbers Buck posted is that all welfare people are just pitiful losers not capable of anything else, and that seniors who plan retirement around SSI would not have changed habits and planned differently.

I have more faith in my fellow man and the arrogance of Keynesians is astounding. If we could actually predict human behavior the stimulus predictions would have been correct and we'd have trillionaires in the markets.

 

[heckler73]

Don't get hung up on Buck's numbers. It's Keynesian thinking that no senior would have changed their lifestyles and saved for retirement instead of starving later in life. The assumption is that everyone receiving welfare would just lay there like baby birds waiting to be fed instead of finding a way to feed themselves.

That's not Keynesian thinking, actually, unless you are going to bastardize the term.
But if you have a quote from the General Theory which proves it, please let me know.

Presently if a single parent had to make 30K a year to replace the living welfare gives them, working an entry level job could actually make them worse off financially. If those people had taken that entry level position, they could have advanced to the middle class and self-sufficiency, with welfare, they are stuck. It's made up numbers to justify an ideology.

That's an assumption. There is no guarantee of such social-mobility taking place as a norm. I suspect the probabilities of such action are less than 50%.
Especially in light of business failure rates and globalization destroying many of those hierarchical opportunities.

No doubt some people would be struggling hard without government assistance, but trying to quantify how many is an arrogant approach that you can predict human behavior. The prediction the study makes is that all welfare recipients are only on welfare because they can't help themselves. If instead of just handouts, we had gone with life training instead, there is no telling where poverty would be now.

What is "life training"? That sounds like a very broad subject (if it is even definable).
What study are you talking about?

[video=youtube;8JjicvAjGEY]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JjicvAjGEY[/video]