We always hear about poverty, but just how does the government decide what poverty is? In the 1960’s, a formula was created to define poverty. It was assumed at the time that food comprised one-third of a family’s budget, so any family that earned less than three times the amount of money that it took to buy food for the household was assumed to be poor.
Every year, the government calculates what they think it should cost to feed a family, then multiplies that number by three to arrive at a figure for the poverty line. How do they calculate that? How do they know what it costs to feed a family? Easy. They look at what it cost a family in 1963 to sustain itself, then adjust that number for inflation. Nowadays, there are idiots claiming that this number isn’t accurate- and I will grant you it isn’t- but they are using that to claim the new poverty number is 16, that is, a family needs to make 16 times what it costs for food in order to not be poor: $140,000 per year for a family of four. If you are poor, you should get government assistance. By this math, 60% of our nation would be living in squalor.
That’s ridiculous.
Where is that number coming from? The leftists claim that this is because the cost of childcare, Internet, and cell phones. First off, if you can afford cell phones and Internet, you aren’t poor. There are people all over the world who manage to exist without those things. Social safety nets are there to make sure people don’t starve. They aren’t there to buy Pizza Hut, video games, and cell phone porn.
The left is invested in making this economy look bad. They want Americans unhappy with the economy. There is an election next year, and Americans vote with their wallets. The press needs to hammer this home every day: “The economy sucks, but Joe Biden’s 9% inflation was the best economy in the past 50 years. Vote for us.”
Instead, let’s use the World Bank’s definition: Making less than $3.00 per person, per day. Under that definition, a family of four would be living in poverty if they had a household income of less than $4,400 per year. I will even be generous- we live in the richest nation in the world, so make that $10 per person, per day. A family of four who makes less than $14,600 is below the poverty line.
Would it suck to make that little? Sure it would. Being poor sucks. However, $10 per person, per day would make you more wealthy than 61% of the planet. That’s why we can’t afford to keep importing more and more poor people- they aren’t enriching us, they are dragging us down into poverty with them.
