{"id":16819,"date":"2015-11-30T06:00:12","date_gmt":"2015-11-30T12:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/?p=16819"},"modified":"2016-10-27T06:40:53","modified_gmt":"2016-10-27T11:40:53","slug":"truth-about-poverty-in-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/truth-about-poverty-in-america\/","title":{"rendered":"Truth About Poverty in America"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last week the internets informed me that the United States is terrible because we &#8220;allow children to go hungry.&#8221; This is not true by any stretch of the imagination. If parents are willing to take even a minimal amount of responsibility for their children, the children will be fed. Food stamps, free breakfast and lunch at school, food pantries, and cash benefits from government programs are more than enough to feed a family&#8217;s children.<\/p>\n<p>I wanted to bring the picture of &#8220;poverty&#8221; in America into focus with some cold hard facts. What you will see is that &#8220;poverty&#8221; in America is nothing close to the poverty we see around the world. To illustrate this, I am using a fictitious Milwaukee family of 4 as an example. (In this example, we are assuming there is a mother, a father, and two school age children. If you instead assume a single parent household, the numbers work out slightly better for the family.)<\/p>\n<p>Under guidelines issued by the U.S. Department of Health &amp; Human Services, Office of The Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, <a href=\"http:\/\/aspe.hhs.gov\/2015-poverty-guidelines#threshholds\">this family is &#8220;below the poverty line&#8221; if the income of the household is less than $24,250<\/a>.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Suppose one spouse works full time and makes $12.00 an hour. This is not a lot of money, but it puts the family just at the poverty line with $24,000 in wages per year. The family then receives an additional $5,100 per year via the Earned Income Credit and another $2,000 per year for the child credit. (Both of these credits are refundable, meaning if the taxpayer doesn&#8217;t owe any federal income taxes, the government writes them a check for this amount.)<\/p>\n<p>The family also receives:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>$7,700 per year in food stamps<\/li>\n<li>Free breakfast and lunch for both children at Milwaukee Public Schools<\/li>\n<li>BadgerCare, which gives the family full health insurance coverage only $0.50 to $3 as a copay for all services and prescriptions<\/li>\n<li>Rental assistance to cover a portion of their rent<\/li>\n<li>Energy assistance to cover a portion of their utilities<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The family also pays nothing in state or federal taxes.<\/p>\n<p>To summarize, the effective income of the family including assistance totals more than $40,000 per year: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/poverty-in-america.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"lazyload size-full wp-image-16830 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/poverty-in-america.png\" data-orig-src=\"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/poverty-in-america.png\" alt=\"poverty-in-america\" width=\"324\" height=\"134\" srcset=\"data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns%3D%27http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%27%20width%3D%27324%27%20height%3D%27134%27%20viewBox%3D%270%200%20324%20134%27%3E%3Crect%20width%3D%27324%27%20height%3D%27134%27%20fill-opacity%3D%220%22%2F%3E%3C%2Fsvg%3E\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/poverty-in-america-300x124.png 300w, https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/poverty-in-america.png 324w\" data-sizes=\"auto\" data-orig-sizes=\"(max-width: 324px) 100vw, 324px\" \/><\/a>On top of this, the family is receiving BadgerCare to cover all health needs, which is worth at least $6,000 per year in premiums (actually worth much more because the unsubsidized cost of health insurance on the exchange is much higher), with almost no out of pocket costs. They also receive rental assistance and energy assistance, which will total at least a few hundred dollars per month.<\/p>\n<p>This paints a very different picture of &#8220;poverty&#8221; than the one we see in the media. Yes, the parents will have to be proactive in applying for these benefits. However, if we assume one parent isn&#8217;t working and both children are in school, how difficult is it?<\/p>\n<p>To put this into perspective, I wanted to see how much a family of 4 would have to earn (wages only, no government assistance) to net $40,000 per year after taxes and after the cost of health insurance. Would it surprise you to know that the family not receiving assistance would have to earn at least $50,000 per year to be &#8220;even&#8221; with the &#8220;family living in poverty&#8221;?<\/p>\n<p>Here are the rough numbers:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/family-not-in-poverty.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"lazyload aligncenter size-full wp-image-16822\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns%3D%27http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%27%20width%3D%27340%27%20height%3D%27152%27%20viewBox%3D%270%200%20340%20152%27%3E%3Crect%20width%3D%27340%27%20height%3D%27152%27%20fill-opacity%3D%220%22%2F%3E%3C%2Fsvg%3E\" data-orig-src=\"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/family-not-in-poverty.png\" alt=\"family-not-in-poverty\" width=\"340\" height=\"152\" \/><\/a>You see that this family has $39,400 after paying taxes and health insurance costs, which include the $6,000 per year premiums and an estimated $2,500 out of pocket. That out of pocket estimate is probably on the low side, since the insurance\u00a0 the family gets on the exchange has a deductible of $2,500 per person (yes, $10,000 per year for the family).<\/p>\n<p>Does anyone think that a family of 4 earning $50,000 per year is &#8220;living in poverty&#8221;? Of course not. Yet this is how the &#8220;living in poverty&#8221; family who earns $24,000 in wages each year lives. Remember, too, that there are other resources available to the first family, including almost free daycare, substantially reduced cost of college or technical school, and more.<\/p>\n<p>This is not &#8220;allowing children to go hungry.&#8221; This is not poverty.<\/p>\n<p><span data-ft=\"{&quot;tn&quot;:&quot;K&quot;}\"><span class=\"UFICommentBody _1n4g\">Let me also point out that our current &#8220;welfare&#8221; system is terrible because it is encourages dependence. Getting a second part time job to better support the family is the worst thing the first family can do. As they earn more, the benefits start to go away. With the second job, even if they end up &#8220;even&#8221; when comparing income and benefits with one job versus two&#8230; who would get the second job? They are no further ahead, so they have no incentive to work more. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Our system is broken, and the media is not helping. Instead of focusing on a false image of &#8220;poverty,&#8221; lets figure out how we encourage families to be self-sufficient. That likely should include time limits on benefits. The welfare system was created to help families in temporary need of assistance. It should not be a\u00a0 <span data-ft=\"{&quot;tn&quot;:&quot;K&quot;}\"><span class=\"UFICommentBody _1n4g\">not a long term plan for the government to support families into infinity.<br \/>\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week the internets informed me that the United States is terrible because we &#8220;allow children to go hungry.&#8221; This is not true by any stretch of the imagination. If parents are willing to take even a minimal amount of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[872],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-fraud"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Z0e-4nh","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16819\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}