Overview:

 The leftist grist mills grind out maudlin essays on many topics in order to be informative, highlight problems in our society and perhaps steer public opinion to the selected issue and provide solutions if not by external experts then from the non-poisonous pens of the staff writers. They have the best intentions and the betterment of society is their goal.

Today’s Essay in Socialism

Today, the topic of poverty [Poverty Is Poison[1] By Paul Krugman] is objectively perused by our favorite non-economist economist Paul Krugman. We wonder what kind of up-to-the-minute argument will be herein presented to raise taxes, the only plausible outcome of any Krugman article. The interest here is see what new tricks and maneuvers he can scrape up from the political scrapheap to make this new attack on society seem novel. The NYT is supposed to present novel stuff we might think. Let us look for uniqueness here.

““Poverty in early childhood poisons the brain.” That was the opening of an article in Saturday’s Financial Times, summarizing research presented last week at the American Association for the Advancement of Science.””[2]

And, it per permanent:

“As the article explained, neuroscientists have found that “many children growing up in very poor families with low social status experience unhealthy levels of stress hormones, which impair their neural development.” The effect is to impair language development and memory — and hence the ability to escape poverty — for the rest of the child’s life.”[3]

Then, the numbers game begin, a specialty of Krugman.

“L. B. J. declared his “War on Poverty” 44 years ago. Contrary to cynical legend, there actually was a large reduction in poverty over the next few years, especially among children, who saw their poverty rate fall from 23 percent in 1963 to 14 percent in 1969. “[4]

The numbers on this topic may be found at the Census Bureau,[5] but are complicated and encrypted by bureaucratic bungling and procedures. Here, the income thresholds for families headed by men, single women and farm workers are given. Also, the definition of what is counted is given:

Money income[6]

“Includes earnings, unemployment compensation, workers’ compensation, Social Security, Supplemental Security Income, public assistance, veterans’ payments, survivor benefits, pension or retirement income, interest, dividends, rents, royalties, income from estates, trusts, educational assistance, alimony, child support, assistance from outside the household, and other miscellaneous sources.

 Noncash benefits (such as food stamps and housing subsidies) do not count.

 Before taxes.

 Excludes capital gains or losses.

 If a person lives with a family, add up the income of all family members. (Non-relatives, such as housemates, do not count.)”

 Now, we must wonder about how the thresholds are calculated and wonder if they are reasonable. After all, we can just raise the threshold as the economy grows and show that the number of poor people have, perhaps, increased in spite of our prosperity.

 “Just months after its debut — in May 1965 — the War on Poverty’s new Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) designated the measure as its unofficial “working definition” of poverty. By August 1969, the Bureau of the Budget had stipulated that the poverty thresholds used in calculating American poverty rates would constitute the federal government’s official statistical definition for poverty. It has remained so ever since.”[7]

So, how well does this work or reflect reality?

“In short, America’s most relied-upon metric for charting a course in our national effort to reduce and eliminate poverty appears to offer unreliable, and indeed increasingly misleading, soundings on where we are today, where we have come, and where we seem to be headed.”[8]

“…the original Orshansky[9] approach of computing poverty rates on the basis of poverty thresholds and annual household income levels remains entirely intact.” and “In her seminal 1965 study, Orshansky acknowledged more than once that her measure of poverty was “admittedly arbitrary” — although she also vigorously defended it as “not unreasonable.”[10]

We might wonder if the krugmaniacal clarion calls for higher taxes are also “admittedly arbitrary,” but “not unreasonable.” [11] The reference below seems to indicate that Orshansky needed to create some definition of poverty that although many ‘creature comforts’ have been satisfied there is “..[an] underlying disquietude reflected in our current social literature, an uncomfortable realization that an expanding economy has not brought gains to all in equal measure.”

Here, we are again confronted with the equal outcomes echoes of Fabianism and other strictly anti-capitalist systems, a fever I call Shavianism.[12] This means that if the literati think that the people who have enough food and housing are lacking something (according to their definition) then they may be defined as ‘poor’ and rate government assistance. Did we expect otherwise from the Walter Duranty Papers? Whatever happens we must find a way to defeat capitalism! Any metric or facet of society in which the leftist observers merely think are out of line with their ‘poverty’ estimates can now be used to demonstrate a poverty of a particular kind. Whatever that is becomes poison. A tax hike is thus necessary.

The net effect of using outmoded metrics for determining poverty levels is to be able to show that poverty levels have remained essentially constant from 1973 to 2004. All this despite massive growth!! This is amazing. Also, quite untrue.

From the Hoover:

“This statistical portrait of an apparent long-term rise in absolute poverty in the contemporary United States evokes the specter of profound economic, social, and political dysfunction in a highly affluent capitalist democracy. (It is a picture that conforms disturbingly well with some of the Marxian and neo-Marxist critiques of industrial and global capitalism, which accused such systems of inherently generating “immiserating growth.”) All the more troubling is the near-total failure of social policy implied by such numbers, for despite the War on Poverty and all subsequent governmental antipoverty initiatives, official poverty rates for the nation have mainly moved in the wrong direction over the past three decades.”[13]

What we need here is to redefine the Orshansky calculation as the Orshansky Glubberance. A glubberance is any maudlin plea for tax money or other assistance based on emotion and preferable Marxian based. Liberalism is based on the political grounds of the tenet of anti-morality where they cannot tolerate any condemnation of human conduct such as sloth, sodomy, drug addiction, thievery, murder. This is moral relativism. Whatever feels good is good. They cannot seem to comment negatively on any associations with massage parlors, abortion mills, or child pornography films. Liberals continually search for new ways to legalize drugs, disseminate porn, exercise sloth and excuse such societal diseases as AIDS with an urgent need for more ‘education.’ They would willingly let all the felons out of jail if they could. Arnold will do something like this as California goes broke.[14]

“Poverty rates are much lower in most European countries than in the United States, mainly because of government programs that help the poor and unlucky.”

Europe can thank two world wars, a series of pogroms, numerous gulags and concentration camps, and Soviet Ethnic cleansing in several places for the loss of 150,000,000 million citizens.  This lower population level thus seems to lessen the chances of being poor. When North Korea starves their northern peasants they are not really poor if they are dead. Socialist Europe, of course, is the solution to poverty. Just issue more money and the poor will no longer be poor!! We saw how wonderful the USSR became with the praise and allegiance of the liberals and their associates. They had free medical aid and no poverty. Cuba has no known poverty. North Korea has no poverty. Socialism works well it seems.

We must then ask the New York Times if they consider drug addiction, the eternal screams of crack babies, prostitution in the home by the parents or other behavior items as poison. When noisy drunken johns are entertained by mama so she can earn some more drug money, can these actions be viewed as some measure of poison in the homes and halls of where children live? Does sodomizing children affect their future outlook? What about the second-hand smoke from smoking dope? How about second-hand dust from snorting coke? We wonder if children who watch their mothers shoot up with heroin or snort crack might suffer from such effects and thus elevate their hormones and stress levels. Notice that if kids live in the same household where a ‘non relative’ earns $50,000 a week in drug sales and who  pays for the sodas, sneakers, chips, 103 inch screen TVs and more that this cannot be counted in the poverty calculation.  That is convenient. Remember the fondness for drugs by the left as it feels good.

“But ultimately, let’s hope that the nation turns back to the task it abandoned — that of ending the poverty that still poisons so many American lives.”

Why, just raise taxes!--The old socialist way. Free love carnivals, dope consumption and sexual abuse of minors are no problem here. We might also wonder why food stamps and subsidized housing are not included in these calculations. Is it possible that housing and food benefits might essentially increase the aggregate income and thus push these ‘poor’ over the arbitrary poverty levels? That would show that poverty is decreasing as new social programs actually supplant direct income and raise the living standards of the ‘poor.’ All new programs must be non monetary to avoid this trap. Like socialized medicine? That will be free to the poor and its imputed income will not be part of the poverty calculation.  This is a deliberate way to show that we still have millions of suffering poor. No amount of new benefits other than direct money entitlements will change poverty.  Education provides no more money to the household. Now, be reminded that the suffering is permanent if initiated in the poisonous atmosphere of poverty. Are the old folks still eating dog food?

If we changed the calculation and suddenly added in subsisted housing and other noncash assistance to the poverty calculation would the mental problems of the poor children and the impending immiserating growth suddenly diminish?? Such an outcome defeats socialism at it very core and is not allowed.

Getting back to reality:

We can use the Orshansky Glubberance as the basis for the old chant so inspiring to the ignoratti[15]: “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer!” How progressive.  A customary liberal political tenet is to keep the poor eternally poor so that they will not cross over and vote for reasonable outcomes. A corollary of this notion is that  making the poor accept as true the notion that they are still underprivileged so as to maintain the same voting patterns keeps the political balance. Votes are votes, and the liberals buy those votes with your tax money.

Raise taxes and solve the problems of society. California will show us the way.

rycK

Comments: ryckki@gmail.com