[Cin]

My words are in Blue, the article excerpts are in Black

You may wonder (or not) how Congress can vote to cut food stamps in a time when so many people are food insecure (interesting terminology that). When so few have so much and so many must make do with so little, how can logic dictate that even more be taken from the segment of society that has the least.

Well as it turns out there is a kind of convoluted thought process that makes what has just been done to those people who need help getting enough to eat understandable, acceptable, even just.

I read a few articles that mention there is little if any cheating going on with food programs. Nobody is getting food assistance who doesn’t need it, as if that might be the impetus for the wealthy literally taking the food right out of the mouths of the poor. I understand their confusion. They are grasping at straws trying to understand the logic of Congress cutting food assistance. Well corruption isn’t the story they are using at the moment. What they are selling about the poor is much more sinister.

Apparently there is no position that is indefensible. The reasoning the oligarchy is using and spreading amongst us now is that there are no poor here and the poverty rate in the US is actually ZERO.

Here is a particularly misleading excerpt from one article. Not so much misleading as out right lying actually:


“Way back when, poverty alleviation was almost entirely done by simply giving poor people cash money. This obviously made them less poor so it was a very effective strategy. However, it was felt that this wasn’t quite the right thing to do and therefore the system has changed over the years to one of sometimes giving money, but not very often, plus giving benefits in kind (Section 8, Medicaid, SNAP) and aid through the tax system (EITC). The US is now spending a great deal more on poverty alleviation (after inflation of course) than it used to but by the official measurement of poverty pretty much nothing seems to have changed.

The reason for this is that we don’t actually count benefits in kind or aid through the tax system in our definition of poverty: although we do count just giving poor people cash money. The upshot of this is that in the old days what the poverty line was really measuring is the number of people who were poor after the things we did to reduce poverty. Today that same poverty line is measuring the number of people who are poor before all the things we do to reduce poverty.

It’s worth noting that the four major poverty reduction programs are Medicaid, SNAP, EITC and Section 8 vouchers. And we include none of them, not one single groat of that money spent, in our current estimates of poverty”


This is such a crock of shit. To the best of my knowledge we never did include them in estimates of poverty, except in that one must be a certain degree of poor to qualify for the particular programs. The article says “way back when poverty alleviation was almost entirely done by giving poor people cash”. When parsed and examined this statement is a blatant falsehood, it’s just not true. There has never been a time like that. There has been some kind of food assistance since 1932 when statistics on poverty were not even recorded. Food assistance went from food surplus distribution, food stamps that you had to pay for, free food stamps and then the debit card system . There has been Medicaid, fuel assistance and Section 8 for many, many years. Not to mention EIC, but the thing with Earned Income Credit, is you actually have to have an income to get it. Since statistics were not kept during the Great Depression let alone the 1800’s I don’t understand how this article gets printed filled with such bullshit. Before 1932 there were poorhouses and local governments provided food, fuel and sometimes cash to poor residents. Cash relief to the poor depended on local property taxes. But relief outside of poorhouses was discriminatory at best. And no poverty rates were recorded. Since poverty rates have been recorded there have always been other programs that help the poor with assistance apart from handing them cash money. So that blows that out of the water.

However according to an article in Forbes, to help its non-existent poor the US is “now spending a great deal more on poverty alleviation (after inflation of course) than it used to.” So it does makes sense to cut a bit off now doesn’t it?

Again blatant lies. And it's such a ridiculous lie it doesn't even need to be debunked. It disproves itself.

The belief is that the country’s real concern should be consumption poverty and that is about zero. So no worries. Unfortunately it is the top percentile, the over rich, the beyond wealthy, who are doing all the consuming. But that seems to be beside the point. Here is an excerpt from an article in Forbes:

“The second chart takes us into another one of my pet little ideas. We don’t actually care whether people have jobs or not, we don’t even care whether people have incomes or not: we really only care that people have the opportunity to consume. Therefore it’s not income poverty that is the real concern, it’s consumption poverty that ought to be. And as chart 2 shows us this is around and about zero now in the US.

So, I think it perfectly justifiable to insist that the correct US poverty rate is around and about zero.”

The Forbes article goes on to explain that the reason the US fairs so badly when compared to the poverty rates of other advanced nations is because
“almost everyone other than the US measures poverty as a relative thing, not against some hard and fast standard…this measurement of relative poverty is not in fact a measurement of poverty at all. It’s a measure of inequality.”

So now we are at the crux of it. It is not poverty that people suffer from in the US. They are not hungry or without heat in the winter. They are jealous of inequity, the unfair distribution of wealth. They are trying to get the 1% to loosen their purse strings. People in India, China and Brazil know what it means to be poor. Even the so called poorest of the poor in the US are infinitely better off than the real poor. As explained here:

“What this tells us is that the very poorest of the poor in the US, the bottom 5% (and thus very definitely below that poverty line) are in fact richer than 95% of all Indians. And 85% of all Chinese and 55% of all Brazilians.
Sure, the US is a more unequal country than most others in the OECD, the rich countries’ club. But the real poverty rate, the number of people living in absolute poverty, is around and about zero in the US all the same.”

So I guess if you are hungry, jobless, without shelter and medical care and happen to be standing on US soil you’re not really poor. It’s all beginning to make sense now. A kind of scary freaking me out type of sense. I think this is a kind of softening approach meant to help guide us into our new future. The one where the rich 2% have everything and the rest of us become rather superfluous. Well, more than just nonessential. Unnecessary annoyances that keep whining about being hungry or cold or sick. These bizarre lies are the lube to help the coming austerity measures initially slide through without too much fuss. It has certainly worked so far. The underlying message, the song beneath the song is clear. They are saying since there are no poor what do we need social programs for? Oh those losers? Just ignore those homeless derelicts you see wandering around the streets. We are trying to figure out how best to remove them from sight. It’s not like they are actual normal people like you and I. Normal people don't become homeless. Nor are they unable to feed their children. Oh, you want safe affordable housing? Get rid of the immigrants. Not to mention its all the fault of PoC, that’s why it’s unsafe. You don’t like living with vermin, roaches and bed bugs? What a bunch of wimps. Everybody in India has bed bugs.

So now the party line is there are no really poor people in the US. It’s not like being invisible. You just don’t exist. So it stands to reason the ruling elite can continue to cut social spending. Not only that, but they can take more and more away from you. They can squeeze you long time. Austerity genocide is coming to a town near you. It will take awhile until you reach the degree of poverty the oligarchy will recognize (if that even exists). Until then Congress will continue cutting social spending perhaps until you bleed out.

Here are a couple of articles that explain how there are no poor people in the US.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworst...nd-about-zero/

http://conversableeconomist.blogspot...nsumption.html