“According to the Census’s American Community Survey, the number of households with incomes below the poverty line in 2011 was 16,807,795,” the Senate Budget Committee notes. “If you divide total federal and state spending by the number of households with incomes below the poverty line, the average spending per household in poverty was $61,194 in 2011.”
via The Weekly Standard.
Yes, I know… it’s The Weekly Standard. It’s biased. But facts are facts. It’s just math. Someone crunch the numbers and prove this wrong. One should note that the article points out that welfare spending includes money such as Pell Grants which are given to people in households above the poverty line. So it’s honest that way.
But it’s just plain staggering to think about. Where does all this money go? Certainly a lot of bureaucrats pushing paper is part of the number. But direct payments to the “poor” much be significant. Now, I’m not suggesting that it’s fun to be poor… far from. But we need to acknowledge that America has the richest poor people in the world.
The following are facts about persons defined as “poor” by the Census Bureau as taken from various government reports:
- 80 percent of poor households have air conditioning. In 1970, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.
- 92 percent of poor households have a microwave.
- Nearly three-fourths have a car or truck, and 31 percent have two or more cars or trucks.
- Nearly two-thirds have cable or satellite TV.
- Two-thirds have at least one DVD player, and 70 percent have a VCR.
- Half have a personal computer, and one in seven have two or more computers.
- More than half of poor families with children have a video game system, such as an Xbox or PlayStation.
- 43 percent have Internet access.
- One-third have a wide-screen plasma or LCD TV.
- One-fourth have a digital video recorder system, such as a TiVo.
via Heritage Foundation.
In America the poor receive food, shelter, medical care, even a cell phone. The reality is a far cry from the perception many on the left would like you to believe whereby tens-of-thousands of starving children are dying in dirty streets because no one would give them a morsel of bread. That’s just simply not the case.