We spend $1142 billion on welfare programs. Okay, next step. How many Americans are in serious poverty? Now I'm not talking about someone who doesn't have a TV, I'm talking about people who are having trouble feeding their kids. Since the national poverty rate is somewhere around 12 percent, I'm guessing bad poverty (I'm being generous here) is around eight percent. That's about twenty four million people. Divide 1.142 trillion by twenty four million and you get approximately $47, 583 per person per year.
Okay, so what's happening to all that cash? It seems to me that if you give a struggling family in the Bronx almost 50k/year, they'll leave the Bronx pretty fast. It also seems to me that they won't need that kind of welfare for long, and it could be used to get the remaining four to six percent out of poverty. Shortly thereafter, poverty would be eliminated and the tax could be discarded. This is never going to happen and we're going to have more of a wasteful welfare state, not less. (I have the cynicism of youth)
Given that there is a minimum of 20k per year per person in poverty (if you remove Social Security from the equation) and that I hold 20k is enough to get you out of poverty in a few years (assuming these families already make maybe 15 thousand a year), where is all that money going?
3 comments:
Notice that spending on Social Security exceeds spending on Defense. Outrageous, both.
Tim, are you suggesting more money needs to be spent on defense, or that we just need to cut way back on welfare spending, or that the government needs to roll back on spending in general?
I'm suggesting that the government radically rethink welfare spending. I would like to see welfare abolished and War spending cut, but this isn't going to happen, especially under the next administration.
I think it's outrageous that a War on Poverty exists and how inefficient it is. You and I would have stamped out poverty by now.
Did I imply more money needs to be spent on War? I certainly didn't mean to.
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