Our liberal socialists make me sick; they really do.

All the findings since then have been based on that 10%, and lo and behold, we have 10% poverty. For 44 years, we have been within a point or two.

Good analysis on the $$$ needed to win the war on poverty. Rush did something today comparing Obama and Clinton’s words on the war in Iraq with our success in the war on Poverty. Time to declare failure and withdraw the funds.

a) Most kids that attend IPS get free or discount lunch at school. Like 80% + at Arlington.

b) Look at the households in IPS, and look at the ones that have a kid that gets a free lunch, and I bet half those households have cable TV.

But it’s politically incorrect to ask why people’s kids need a free lunch when their homes are wired for cable. It’s “unfeeling”.

So basically people who pay taxes thru the nose like me that don’t have cable, are forced to subsidize Brighthouse.

And don’t EVEN tell me cable TV is educational. Puh-lease.

$1,600 – month
—————
$500 – rent
$250 – health insurance
$150 – utilities
$100 – car
$100 – gas
$50 – car insurance
$??? – child care (only if you need 2 incomes)

Heck, presuming you don’t get sick and need to pay a deductible or your car doesn’t break down or need an oil change or something or no other unexpected expenses come up (and I haven’t left out or underestimated any necessities), each person has upwards of $4 per day to clothe and feed themselves.

I don’t think the poverty level is a terribly realistic measure of anything. As I recall, a woman in the federal government made up the index on her own initiative as sort of a hobby, and the method of determining the poverty level hasn’t changed much since.

Ah, here it is; (gotta love Wikipedia):
“The poverty thresholds were originally developed in 1963-1964 by Mollie Orshansky of the Social Security Administration. Orshansky took the dollar costs of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s economy food plan for families of three or more persons and multiplied the costs by a factor of three. Orshansky used a factor of three because the Agriculture Department’s 1955 Household Food Consumption Survey found that for families of three or more persons, the average dollar value of all food used during a week (both at home and away from home) accounted for about one third of their total money income after taxes. The “three-times-the-cost-of-the-food-plan” calculation was done only once, for the 1963 base year poverty thresholds, using the Agriculture Department’s economy food plan. Poverty thresholds for years since 1963 have been updated for price changes only using the Consumer Price Index.”

Incidentally, from that Wikipedia article, the poverty line for a family of 4 is $21,200. At any given time, apparently, about 12% of the population falls below the poverty line. One of the problems is that it’s not the *same* 12% from year-to-year. Apparently a larger percentage of the population goes through cycles above and below the line.