More on poverty

To hear the left tell it, America is a horrible place to live because some people live in "poverty."
Liberals must not own a dictionary. If they did, they would know that poverty cannot be eliminated.
Poverty is a relative term. It means those lowest in the economic strata. Unless everyone from Bill Gates to some unemployed street sweeper earns the same, poverty will exist.
What the left doesn't like for people to know is that poverty declined in the United States until the liberals began their War on Poverty in the 1960s. Then it remained stable until welfare was eliminated in the 1990s, after spending more than $5 trillion.
They also hate it when people point out that the poorest Americans are better off than the vast majority of the people on the planet.
Each year, the Heritage Foundation does a report timed to coincide with the release of the poverty figures, which the left always seizes upon to rail at America again and try to pump up the poverty industry -- those who make a good living off of "relieving" poverty.
This from the most recent Heritage report:
"According to the government's own surveys, the typical "poor" American has cable or satellite TV, two color TVs, and a DVD player or VCR. He has air conditioning, a car, a microwave, a refrig­erator, a stove, and a clothes washer and dryer. He is able to obtain medical care when needed. His home is in good repair and is not overcrowded. By his own report, his family is not hungry, and he had sufficient funds in the past year to meet his family's essential needs."
It is also extremely important to realize that the government does not take into account all the government aid when it tabulates the income of the poor.
Governments spent more than $714 billion in 2008 on aid to the poor. Heritage says, "If converted into cash, this aid would be nearly four times the amount needed to eliminate poverty in the U.S...."
Nearly two-thirds of poor people live in single parent homes, a condition exacerbated by policies championed by the left. When the War on Poverty began, 7 percent of American children were born outside marriage and today the number is 39 percent, Heritage said.
It is difficult not to conclude that the left is merely using the poor as another interest group and that it is to their advantage for the poor to remain poor.