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SummerSnow

(12,608 posts)
Sat Jul 21, 2018, 07:33 AM Jul 2018

More evil right here....

Trump declares victory in war on poverty in order to punish the poor

By Renée Loth JULY 20, 2018

To the long list of lies President Trump thinks he can make true just by repeating them (“The largest audience ever,” “North Korea has agreed to denuclearization,” “I didn’t criticize the prime minister”), we can now add this: “Our war on poverty is largely over, and a success.”

That’s the verbatim conclusion of a new study produced by Trump’s Council of Economic Advisors in order to justify new work requirements on Medicaid, public housing, and food stamp recipients. Never mind that 32 percent of all Medicaid dollars go to nursing home patients, and nearly half of food stamp recipients are children — neither population likely to punch a time clock anytime soon. And never mind that able-bodied adults without children already must work for their food stamps. The Trump administration is gunning for federal safety net programs, and if it takes denying the existence of 45 million Americans in poverty to rationalize their disintegration, so be it.

The report makes two dubious claims. First, traditional measures of poverty are all wrong, and under a novel “consumption-based measure’’ the nation’s poverty level can be redefined down to three percent of the population, instead of the 14 percent in the most recent US census. Rather than measuring a family’s well-being based on its income, the consumption measure looks at how much a family spends: on rent, utilities, food, cars and other durable goods. But this overstates wealth by not counting a family’s debt, or whether housing costs are eating up most of their income. As many as 19 million households spend more than half their income on the roof over their heads. Paying a king’s ransom in rent does not make someone a king.

The other claim is that 60 percent of those receiving aid are not working more than 20 hours a week. But this figure was arrived at by looking at just a single month in 2013. The truth is that most low-income people go on and off food stamps or other assistance programs based on whether they have a job at the time. Naturally it’s more likely that people receiving benefits would be out of work at that moment. A more accurate accounting would look at whether aid recipients work over the course of a year or years, in which case the numbers would be much higher.....more at the link

https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2018/07/19/trump-declares-victory-war-poverty-order-punish-poor/wQtPhmXSRdCafM2pt2X6XJ/story.html

All concerns of men go wrong when they wish to cure evil with evil. - Sophocles

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More evil right here.... (Original Post) SummerSnow Jul 2018 OP
There is no depth to his depravity dalton99a Jul 2018 #1
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