Poverty  and  Dependency  in  America

These pages are here to illustrate several things, but primarily these three:  First, people who live in (what we call) poverty in America are fairly well off, compared to the poor in other countries.  Second, decades of government intervention has only made the problem worse.  Trillions of tax dollars have been spent fighting poverty, but instead of encouraging people to get jobs and get themselves out of a financial rut, the welfare system creates conditions favorable to pregnancy, childbirth and illegitimacy.  The "safety net" has become a hammock for the laziest people in our society.  The third and most urgent point is that we cannot afford to stay on this ruinous path, where one half of our society depends on the other half for handouts.  Unfortunately, other countries have shown that when the gravy train crashes, a lot of angry people take to the streets.

This material came from akdart.com Please notice, if you will, that the cities which have the greatest difficulty with homeless bums and panhandlers are the cities where liberal politicians are in control.

As mentioned above, trillions of dollars have been spent on Lyndon Johnson's "War on Poverty," but estimates vary.  On another nearby page, there is a table of estimates by various authors, excluding anonymous bloggers and one-time-only "letters to the editor" and the like.  The most widely accepted estimates are now up around 22 trillion dollars.

Federal, state and local governments spent a total of $630 billion on welfare programs in 2009.*

Subtopics:

Overview of the welfare state

The enormous cost of anti-poverty programs

Politicians use handouts to buy votes

Lies about welfare programs

Barack Obama reverses the welfare reform law of 1996

Politicians perpetuate poverty and dependence

Food stamps have been de-stigmatized

Welfare-to-work programs

Why work when you can ride the gravy train?

Welfare recipients are in the habit of making unwise choices

Waste

Fraud

The total cost of the War on Poverty -- in trillions of dollars

Many homeless people are violent and/or insane and should be locked up

Many allegedly poor people are not poor at all

Welfare encourages illegitimacy rather than work

Handouts promote an entitlement mentality

Constant expansion and mission creep

Free cell phones!

What happens when the game is over?

Welfare programs attract illegal aliens

The Cloward-Piven strategy

Negative income taxes:  People who pay less than zero income tax.

SCHIP

Miscellaneous news and commentary about homeless people

Other countries' experiences


Related topics on other pages:

The Great Debit Card Giveaway after Hurricane Katrina

The demise of stigma

Head Start

School lunches

Medicare and Medicaid

Social Security

The Collapse of the Family Unit as the Building Block of Society

The Wealthy Liberal Elite Pretend to Watch Out for the Little Guy

John Edwards gets $50,000 to make a speech about poverty



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Document location http://akdart.com/poverty.html
Updated July 2, 2018

Entire contents Copyright 2018 by Andrew K. Dart