From the Weekly Standard. (With a rant from me below)
Excerpt:
New data compiled by the Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee shows that, last year, the United States spent over $60,000 to support welfare programs per each household that is in poverty. The calculations are based on data from the Census, the Office of Management and Budget, and the Congressional Research Services.
“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.”
This dollar figure is almost three times the amount the average household on poverty lives on per year. “If the spending on these programs were converted into cash, and distributed exclusively to the nation’s households below the poverty line, this cash amount would be over 2.5 times the federal poverty threshold for a family of four, which in 2011 was $22,350 (see table in this link),” the Republicans on the Senate Budget Committee note.
To be clear, not all households living below the poverty line receive $61,194 worth of assistance per year. After all, many above the poverty line also receive benefits from social welfare programs (e.g. pell grants).
How do people become poor anyway, in a rich country like America? Is it someone else’s fault, or is it a result of their own poor decision-making? Let famous black economist Walter Williams – chair of the Department of Economics at the prestigious George Mason University -explain it for us:
Avoiding long-term poverty is not rocket science. First, graduate from high school. Second, get married before you have children, and stay married. Third, work at any kind of job, even one that starts out paying the minimum wage. And, finally, avoid engaging in criminal behavior.
If you graduate from high school today with a B or C average, in most places in our country there’s a low-cost or financially assisted post-high-school education program available to increase your skills.
Most jobs start with wages higher than the minimum wage, which is currently $5.15. A man and his wife, even earning the minimum wage, would earn $21,000 annually. According to the Bureau of Census, in 2003, the poverty threshold for one person was $9,393, for a two-person household it was $12,015, and for a family of four it was $18,810. Taking a minimum-wage job is no great shakes, but it produces an income higher than the Bureau of Census’ poverty threshold. Plus, having a job in the first place increases one’s prospects for a better job.
To augment what Dr. Williams said with a study:
Nearly three out of four poor families with children in America are headed by single parents. When a child’s father is married to his mother, however, the probability of the child’s living in poverty drops by 82 percent.
The collapse of marriage, along with a dramatic rise in births to single women, is the most important cause of childhood poverty but government policy doesn’t reflect that reality, according to a special report released today by The Heritage Foundation.
I had to spend all day Saturday and all day Sunday this weekend working to fix a defect so that I could get back on track on my next project. I am still 4 days behind schedule on that new project. If I can’t catch up, I’ll probably have to cancel my November vacation, and maybe even my December vacation. The massive expenditures on welfare for “the poor” is the reason why I have to come in on Saturday and Sunday to work. I have to to work to pay for these people, and their enablers in the Democrat party.
Don’t I have a right to pursue my dreams and my marriage plans and my plans to be a public, effective Christian, with the money that I earn through my work? For example, on Saturday, I sent $125 to a young Christian scholar so that he could attend a conference and present a paper on a moral issue that we both care about. The government would never give him money, but they will tax me to pay for contraceptives for everyone else. I am a virgin – I don’t even buy contraceptives for myself! I really have better things to do with my earned income than buying “Obamaphones” for people who spend their entire lives collecting welfare. Don’t I have a right to spend what I earn on my own goals and priorities?
UPDATE: The Manhattan Institute explains how welfare waivers water down the work incentives for welfare.
Related posts
- Conservative MP Iain Duncan Smith proposes reforms to the UK welfare state
- New report: welfare spending hits record $1 trillion, up 32% in Obama’s first term
- Who pays the bill for handing out $2.2 trillion of entitlements per year?
- Graduate students with non-STEM degrees increasingly dependent on welfare programs
- Arizona governor Jan Brewer blocks welfare payments for illegal immigrants
- Redistribution of wealth: 2362 millionaires collecting unemployment
- Christians and social justice: is redistribution of wealth good for the poor?
- Democrat Steny Hoyer: unemployment checks and food stamps stimulate the economy
- Obama ends welfare reform and calls for $12.7 trillion of new welfare spending
- Why do women have abortions? Are women responsible or are men to blame?
- Half of all Americans live in households that get government handouts
- Why is it so hard for a working man to provide for a family these days?
- What causes women to become single mothers by choice? Are men to blame?
- Why are people on food assistance programs allowed to buy luxuries?
- “Problem families” cost British taxpayers £9 billion per year
- Melanie Phillips: the UK should reform the Child Benefit to favor marriage
- For women under 30, most births occur outside of marriage
- Dependency on government surges 23% under Barack Obama
- Assessing Obama’s claims about income inequality in America
- How the Labor Party killed marriage in the UK
- UK Liberal Democrats oppose tax breaks for getting married and staying married
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11/08/2012 • 6:00 PM 15
67% of single / unmarried / divorced women vote for pro-abortion, pro-gay-marriage Obama
Did you know that most single / unmarried / divorced women are pro-abortion and pro-gay-marriage?
Excerpt:
In the rest of this post, when I say “women”, I mean “67% of single / unmarried / divorced women who voted for abortion and gay marriage”. Please keep that in mind.
So what is it that these single / unmarried / divorced women really want these days?
Here’s what they want:
In the UK, you can also get taxpayer-funded breast enlargements. And in some parts of Canada, you can get taxpayer-funded in-vitro fertilization. Both countries have single-payer health care, which is very popular with single women because women typically need more health care and men need less – but you pay into these systems based on income, so it is a redistributive system that punishes work and rewards those people who require more health care – sometimes as a result of their own poor choices.
So women basically want to be unchaste, to depend on government handouts, to dismiss the traditional roles of men in marriage (protector, provider, moral/spiritual leader) and to dismiss the needs of children for their mother and father (either through day care, single motherhood or divorce). If their plan to have a ton of recreational sex results in a baby, then they want to kill that baby, so they won’t be burdened by the consequences of their own choices. Women don’t want to stay home with very young children. They don’t want to care for their husbands’ needs. In fact, most of them would prefer to have money extracted from working men through taxation, and then distributed back to to women through government programs and handouts. What they really mean is that they want to marry the government, and escape from the authority of husbands and fathers, and the obligation to respect them, too.
Now, speaking as a chaste Christian man, marriage is my goal and so I read a lot of research about how marriage succeeds or fails, as well as research on what children need in order to succeed. The evidence that I’ve written about before shows that marriages are more stable and better quality if both the man and the woman have no previous sexual experience. The evidence also shows that children need a mother for at least the first two years of life, and preferably the first five years of life. The evidence shows that fatherlessness is tantamount to child abuse. And the evidence shows that divorce scars children for life. And the evidence shows that men feel better about themselves when they are recognized and respected by their family as the protector, provider and moral/spiritual leader of the home.
Therefore, we should be encouraging men and women to be chaste prior to marriage. Not only is this good for marital stability and quality, but fewer unborn children will be murdered by women. We should encourage women to stay home at least two years with new children, and five would be better. We should be encouraging people to be more careful about choosing the right man for the roles of husband and father, and not telling them to choose a man based on superficialities like appearance, emotions and cultural approval. We should be making it harder for women to divorce men by removing the financial incentives to divorce and requiring a demonstration of fault.
That’s what we would do if we wanted a marriage that is good for God, good for society, good for men and good for children. But let me be clear: that is not what women want. They say they want “marriage”, but they don’t want what marriage actually is: husbands caring for wives, wives submitting to husbands, and protecting and nurturing children. Marriage, to a woman, means that government will make sure that no one can obligate her to do anything that doesn’t make her feel happy. Not husbands. Not children. No one.
I think that Christian men like me need to be very careful about knitting our souls to a single woman today. Lots of women label themselves as “Christian” and even attend church. But if they haven’t taken the time to get informed about men and marriage, you shouldn’t be fooled by them. They are opposed to God, men, morality, marriage and children. They are pro-abortion. They will kill to make recreational sex consequence free. They are pro-gay-marriage. They don’t believe that children have a right to a mother and a father to whom they belong, and who are obligated to care for them.
Single men: be careful about marrying single women today – the odds are that you are going to get hurt. You can see the danger they pose to you and your children by looking at what they vote for. You might as well go to the zoo and marry an alligator and hope for love for you and your children from that. Don’t be stupid. Look how they vote and think about what it tells you about their priorities and sense of obligation. Marriage made sense when women were self-controlled and cared about the needs of men and children and their obligations to men and children. Now they don’t. If you want a traditional marriage, and the happiness of being a real man to a woman, and the joy of seeing your children cared for by someone you love and trust, then think carefully before you get married. Because that old definition of marriage is dead. The word remains, but the meaning is lost.
Please also check out my previous post on why single women vote for higher taxes and bigger government, and my previous post about how single women view traditional marriage with traditional roles as a threat to their personal autonomy.
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Filed under: Commentary, Abortion, Barack Obama, Big Government, Blame Men, Boy, Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Child-Man, Divorced Women, Education, Exit Polls, Family, Feminism, Gay Marriage, Good Men, Immature, Immaturity, Man-Blaming, Man-Child, Manoshere, Marriage, Marriage Strike, Marry, Marrying, Men, Misandry, Recreational Sex, Single Women, Unmarried Women, Workplace