Poverty In America

[PokerMatt]

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And my point was that the number of people in perennial poverty is much lower than most people think. It exists and there are arguments on both sides on the way to "solve" it, however it's important to have an understanding of the scope and size of the problem.

By using the number of people that fall under the povert line to show that poverty is a problem in America drastically overstates the problem.

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I think you're underestimating how many people are entrenched in poverty.

Historical Poverty Statistics - Families

Historical Poverty Statistics - All People

For families, the poverty rate dropped from 18.5% in 1959 to 9.7% in 1969, and has hovered around 10% since then (with a high of 12.3% in 1983 & 1993 and a low of 8.7% in 2000). Individuals follow the same trend. Anecdotes aside, I don't see anything here that leads me to believe that most people move out of the poor group as they age.

[Roybert]

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How about we start holding these parents responsible for bringing more children into poverty when they obviously don't make enough money for the basic necessities of said children.

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I agree with you completely. I think that the challenge is coming up with a way of holding the parents accountable without punishing the children. The damnable conspiracy is that, by withholding aid from parents who have shown NO ability to support kids, the kids end up suffering more than the parents do.

I'm not real sure what the answer is, but I agree that way too many people on government assistance have been conditioned into laziness (or at least a lack of accountability), and I find it deplorable that they bring children into this world and just assume that we will pick up the tab. I'm just not sure how you dole out accountability without waging war on impoverished kids.

It does have to start somewhere, though, and I think a good place is to cap the public assistance benefit at 2 kids. If you have more kids than that, tough [censored]; we're not upping our assistance. If I lose any liberal street cred for saying so, then so be it.

[Roybert]

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Sorry , you apologists. Except for people with physical or mental disabilities, there is no excuse for individual poverty. There are plenty of job opportunities. Just educate
yourself,get a skill, and stop thinking as a victim. Millions of people of all backgrounds have risen from poverty.

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I agree that there are opportunities to rise from poverty, but that assumes that there are no bumps in the road along the way. Are you aware that a majority of personal bankruptcy cases are due to medical expenses incurred by the uninsured? With the number of people without health insurance on the rise coupled with the skyrocketing costs of healthcare, this number will most certainly rise.

I think that the onus to rise from poverty MUST be on the impoverished, but government MUST be there to act as a safety net.

Here are a couple of links on income mobility. Interesting information.

http://www.ncpa.org/~ncpa/pd/economy/ecob2.html

http://www.house.gov/jec/middle/mobility/mobility.htm