Marketwatch posted an article this week titled Why the American Dream is Unraveling, in 4 charts. As usual, the MSM journalist and the liberal Harvard academic can create charts that reveal a huge problem, but they completely misdiagnose the causes and offer the typical wrong solution of taking more money from producers and handing it to the poor, with no strings attached. This has been the standard operating procedure since LBJ began his War on Poverty 50 years ago. Do these control freaks ever step back and assess how that war is going?
The poverty rate had plunged from 34% in 1950 to below 20% before LBJ ever declared war. It continued down to 15% just as the welfare programs began to be implemented. The percentage of people living in poverty hasn’t budged from the 15% range since the war began. This war has been just as successful as the war on drugs and the war on terrorism. Any time a politician declares war on something, expect a huge price tag and more of the “problem” they are declaring war upon.
The Federal government runs over 80 means-tested welfare programs that provide cash, food, housing, medical care, and targeted social services to poor and low-income Americans. Over 100 million Americans received benefits from at least one of these programs. Federal and state governments spent $943 billion in 2013 on these programs at an average cost of $9,000 per recipient (not including Social Security & Medicare). That is 27% of the total Federal budget. Welfare spending as a percentage of the Federal budget was less than 2% prior to the launch of the War on Poverty.
In the 50 years since this war started, U.S. taxpayers have spent over $22 trillion on anti-poverty programs. Adjusted for inflation, this spending (which does not include Social Security or Medicare) is three times the cost of all U.S. military wars since the American Revolution. In terms of LBJ’s main goal of reducing the “causes” rather than the mere “consequences” of poverty, the War on Poverty has utterly failed. In fact, a large proportion of the population is now completely dependent upon government handouts, incapable of self-sufficiency, and enslaved in a welfare mentality that has destroyed their communities.
The primary cause of their poverty and dependency on government are the policies implemented by liberal politicians which have destroyed the family unit, promoted deviant behavior, encouraged the production of bastard children, eliminated the need for personal responsibility, provided no consequences for bad life choices, and bankrupted the nation. The rise of the welfare state has coincided with the decline of the American state. The proliferation of welfare programs has broken down the behaviors, social norms and cultural standards that lead to self-reliance, generating a pattern of growing inter-generational reliance upon government handouts. By undermining productive social norms, welfare creates a need for even greater succor in the future.
So let’s get to the four charts that supposedly reveal why the American dream is unraveling. The Marketwatch article makes the following claim:
The upper-middle-class families Putnam profiles separate themselves into affluent suburbs, with separate public schools and social spheres from those of their poorer counterparts. As a result, the poorer children not only face greater hardships, but they also lack good models of what is possible. They are effectively cut off from opportunity.
The faux journalist makes the laughable argument the reason poor children don’t succeed in life is because people who have studied hard, graduated college, succeeded in life, and moved out of poor neighborhoods have left the poor children to face hardship and lack of opportunity. This is a classic liberal storyline. Blame those who have succeeded through their own blood, sweat and tears for the failure of those who languish in poverty due to their own life choices, lack of respect for education, and lack of work ethic. Chart number one reveals one thing to the Harvard academic Robert Putnam and another to me. He believes kids of people who have a college education have some sort of unfair advantage over kids of lesser educated parents:
“The most important thing about the experience of being young and poor in America is that these kids are really isolated, and really don’t have close ties with anybody. They are completely clueless about the kinds of skills and savvy and connections needed to get ahead.”
Why are poor kids isolated, with no ties with anybody? Isolated from whom? They don’t have ties to their family? That is a ludicrous contention, supported with no facts. All kids are completely clueless. You don’t get ahead in life through savvy and connections. You have the best chance to get ahead in life through opening a book, studying hard, and getting good grades, all with the support of concerned involved parents. There are no guarantees in life, but education, involved parents, and working hard dramatically increase your odds of success. It’s not a secret formula. Putnam believes the chart below reveals that kids in households with college educated parents have an unfair advantage over kids in households without college educated parents. To me it reveals the complete and utter failure of LBJ’s Great Society programs and the feminist mantra that men aren’t necessary to raise children.
The percentage of children living in single parent households with a college educated parent is virtually the same today as it was in the early 1960’s, just under 10%. The percentage of children living in single parent households with a high school educated parent in the early 1960’s was 20%. Today that number has risen to 65%. Liberals purposely misdiagnose the problem because admitting the true cause of this disastrous trend would destroy their credibility and reveal the failure of their beloved welfare programs. The key point is that prior to LBJ’s War on Poverty less than 10% of ALL children grew up in a single parent households. Today, that number is 33%. The lesson is you get more of what you encourage and incentivize. The liberal academic solution is for college educated households to give more of their money to the high school or less educated households. Academics with an agenda never ask why their solutions haven’t worked in 50 years.
The number of households in the U.S. in 1960 totaled 53 million and there were 24 million traditional married couple with children households, or 45%. There were 3 million single parent households with children, or 6%. Today the total number of households in the U.S. is approximately 122 million and there are only 25 million with traditional married couple with children households, or 20%. Meanwhile single parent families with children households have skyrocketed to 13 million, or 11%. The war on traditional two parent families by the government, liberal mainstream media, Hollywood, feminists, and academics has been far more successful than the War on Poverty.
The drastic increase in households with fatherless children, especially in the black community, is the primary reason the poverty rate hasn’t dropped over the last 50 years. It is the primary reason poor children remain poor. It is the primary reason why every urban enclave in America continues to degenerate into dangerous, filthy, lawless ghettos. The statistics tell the story of decline, depravity, failure, and an endless loop of poverty.
- An estimated 24.7 million children (33%) live absent their biological father.
- Of students in grades 1 through 12, 39% (17.7 million) live in homes absent their biological fathers.
- 57.6% of black children, 31.2% of Hispanic children, and 20.7% of white children are living absent their biological fathers.
- Among children who were part of the “post-war generation,” 87.7% grew up with two biological parents who were married to each other. Today only 68.1% will spend their entire childhood in an intact family.
Annual divorce rates are only marginally higher today than they were in the early 1960’s. So that does not account for the drastic increase in fatherless households. But, the differences among races is dramatic. Blacks divorce at a rate twice as high as whites and three times as high as Asians.
Marriage rates of Asians are almost three times higher than marriage rates of blacks. Marriage rates of whites are two times higher than marriage rates of blacks. Is it really surprising that Asian children score the highest on all educational achievement tests?
The facts prove that people (no matter what race) who marry and stay married offer their children a tremendously better opportunity to succeed academically, thereby giving them a much higher chance of moving up the socioeconomic ladder. This doesn’t mean that children from a single parent household can’t succeed. It just means they have a better chance with two parents. It’s just simple math. Two adults working together can provide higher income, more help with school work, and offer a more stable environment for the child. The liberal media and those with a social agenda scorn the traditional family as if it precludes people from living however they choose. The results of the war on families can be seen in the chart below.
The unwed birth rate stayed below 5% from 1945 through the early 1960’s. As soon as the government began incentivizing people to not get married and to have children out of wedlock, the rates skyrocketed. Today, four out of ten children are born out of wedlock. Seven out of ten black children are born out of wedlock. Only two out of ten black children were born out of wedlock in 1964. These births out of wedlock are not the result of dumb teenagers making a mistake. Almost 80% of these births are to mothers over the age of 20, with 40% of the births to mothers over the age of 25. And these horrific results are after the 55 million abortions since 1973. This didn’t happen because of women’s rights or women feeling empowered to raise children on their own. Knowledge about and access to contraceptives is not a reason for unwed pregnancies. Poor women and the men who impregnate them receive more welfare benefits by remaining unmarried and receive additional benefits by having more children out of wedlock.
So all of the data confirms the fact children who grow up in two parent households do better in school, are far less likely to be enslaved in poverty, and have a chance to succeed in life, not matter what the educational level of their parents. In the early 1960s there were very few households with college educated parents. My Dad was a truck driver and my mother was a stay at home mom until we were in high school. We were lower middle class, but all three of their children attained college degrees by studying hard, working part-time jobs to help pay for their education, and having the support of concerned parents. Could we have gotten college degrees if we had been raised by only my mother? I doubt it.
Harvard Professor Putnam prefers to ignore the politically incorrect fact that a return to traditional families would begin to reverse the 50 years of damage caused by the War on Poverty. He believes it is in the moral interest of wealthier families to help improve the economic prospects of poorer children. Liberals also don’t think the $13,000 spent per student per year is enough to educate them properly. He actually believes taking more money from producers and handing it to non-producers will boost the U.S. economy.
“The U.S. economy would get a major boost if the opportunity gap were closed. We cannot continue to live in our own bubbles, or compartments on a plate, without consequences. What I hope people take away is that helping poor kids, giving them more skills and more support would economically benefit their kids.”
The country has spent $22 trillion on the war on poverty and spends approximately $1 trillion per year, but liberal academics think if we just spend more, the complete and utter failure of their solutions will be reversed. They ignore the fact a Democratic President (Clinton) and a Republican Congress instituted welfare reform in 1996 that temporarily stopped the increase in spending, halted the rise in unwed births, and put poor people back to work. Today only one welfare program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), effectively promotes self-reliance. Reforms that created TANF in 1996 moved 2.8 million families off the welfare rolls and into jobs. Those gains were reversed as the Obama administration and congressional leadership undid the employment and training requirements enacted 14 years ago. Liberals think it is cruel and inhumane to make poor people work.
Putnam’s final three charts just reinforce the fact traditional families, involved parents, and higher education lead to higher incomes and upward mobility for children in these settings. The reason children in households with college educated parents get more daily attention is because those households are far more likely to have two parents. The time was equal in the early 1970s when two parent families were more prevalent. Having strangers raise kids in government subsidized daycare centers as a substitute for fathers hasn’t worked out so well.
In another shocker, poor children, who are predominantly from single parent households, without a role model to replace their missing fathers, score far worse in tests that predict success in college. The key attribute to educational success is not the educational level of the parents, it’s the need for poor, middle class or wealthy households to have two parents invested in the future of their children.
Attributing obesity rates of children from non-college educated households to the parents’ eduction is quite a reach. In the early 1970’s the obesity rates were very close between high school educated households and college educated households. So why has it surged? The liberals claim the poor go hungry and don’t have enough food. Shouldn’t that lead to higher malnutrition rates and not higher obesity rates? Maybe the surging obesity rates are due to the government lunch programs, the fast food culture in urban ghettos, no fathers around to encourage outside activities, and using food stamps to buy junk food rather than healthier foods. Bad choices generally lead to bad outcomes. Obesity is a choice. Of course liberals now classify it as a disability which needs to be subsidized by the government.
The American dream has unraveled for many reasons. Not spending enough on welfare programs is not one of the reasons. The welfare/warfare state is bankrupt. We spend $1 trillion on welfare programs, $1.4 trillion on Social Security and Medicare, and over $1 trillion on the military/surveillance apparatus. It’s a bipartisan bankruptcy, as Republicans agree to increase the welfare state as long as the Democrats agree to increase the warfare state. The only thing sustaining this debt based house of cards is a Federal Reserve which provides zero interest financing and a never ending willingness to debase our currency to keep the status quo in power. The current rate of spending on the welfare/warfare state is unsustainable. We could voluntarily reduce the spending before the financial collapse or the spending will stop abruptly when our country undergoes a catastrophic financial implosion that will make 2008 look like a walk in the park.
Voluntarily putting the country back on a path of self reliance could be done if there was a will to do so. Reversing the culture of dependency would require a major dose of tough love that would upend the entire ideology of liberalism. Able-bodied, non-elderly adult recipients in all federal welfare programs would be required to work, prepare for work, or at least look for a job as a condition of receiving food stamps or housing assistance. This would promote personal responsibility and provide the recipients with some self respect. Obama is a big proponent of national service, why not national service for recipients of welfare?
Anti-marriage penalties should be removed from welfare programs, and long-term steps should be taken to rebuild the family in lower-income communities. Marriage penalties occur in many means-tested programs such as food stamps, public housing, Medicaid, day care, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. The welfare system needs to be revamped to reduce these counterproductive incentives. The appeal of welfare programs as an alternative to work and marriage could be reduced by requiring able-bodied parents to work or prepare for work as a condition of receiving aid. Today government advertises in an effort to get more people to sign up for food stamps and dozens of other welfare programs. Government should be promulgating the facts on how marriage prevents social ills – poverty, poor education, juvenile crime – associated with children born to unmarried women.
Lastly, we need to cutoff the illegal influx of low-skill immigrants from the South, whose children will receive far more in welfare benefits than they pay in taxes, if they pay any taxes. The country must reject blanket amnesty or “earned citizenship” for millions of illegal immigrants who then could access the welfare system. The welfare system is already unsustainable and adding millions of illegals into the system would be the tipping point.
Lyndon B. Johnson’ s goal was not to create an ever increasing welfare state, but to give the poor a helping hand towards self-sufficiency. His idealistic aim was to cure and prevent poverty. But, once a program is put into the hands of politicians looking to get re-elected every two years, the unintended negative consequences expand exponentially. $22 trillion later the American Dream is virtually non-existent for the 47 million Americans languishing in poverty and the once prosperous middle class who have seen their real wages stagnate due to Federal Reserve created inflation and taxes increase to pay for the ever expanding welfare/warfare state. One chart provides a major explanation of why the American Dream has unraveled, but you won’t see Obama, liberals or the mainstream media talking about it. Traditional married, two parent families are the antidote to poverty, not government welfare programs.
The debate on how to help the poor has raged for centuries. A wise Founding Father told us how the war on poverty would unfold.
“I am for doing good to the poor, but…I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. I observed…that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.” – Benjamin Franklin
No part of that supports “casual sex” (and you are wrong, anyone can change if the desire is great enough. Millions do it everyday. Some with god, and some without acknowledging his help).
I am teaching my daughter to value herself more than she values the opinion – and love – and some horny boy. While teaching her that she must support herself, and her family.
I’m hoping your “good luck with that” was not sarcastic, as I don’t understand what you think I should change.
Admin, why are you quoting Benjamin Franklin and not Tupac Shakur?
Don’t shoot me!!!!
Tupac Shakur
TE, I didn’t raise girls. I’m not being sarcastic other than in a sardonic way, given that females are clearly the more social of the sexes, and therefore are more pulled by the invisible tug of social mood (or pop culture, if you prefer.)
I think it’s difficult for young people to shrug off the not-so-subtle pressures of social control, and it’s more difficult for girls than boys, that’s all.
It can be done, so in that I wish you success. I don’t know what the essential ingredient is for daughters, but given I already have one granddaughter, I hope my son(s) and daughters-in-law discern it.
Perhaps I over-read your comment; I think it’s great that a girl sees a role as wife and mother as among the highest of callings. I am highly suspicious of the feminist notion that a young woman needs not a man to find a fulfilling life, just as I am suspicious of the converse. In your comment I see a heightened emphasis on a woman as self-supporting, and down that road I see the faces of the corporate career women I’ve known who, in behaving like badly-socialized men while putting career first, often ended up being lousy in their occupations and complete rolling catastrophes as mothers and wives. They left piles of screwed-up kids in their wake.
Perhaps my Happiness Path is not that of others. I just call ’em as I see ’em, and what I see is that a sweet-tempered young woman who has educated herself, developed a little talent (music?), enjoys reading and conversation and has spent enough time around small children to know she wants some of her own can choose the very best among all young men. What she doesn’t need is an inflated sense of her value (she cannot be both a man and a woman, contrary to current feminist dogma) and while she does bring something of incalculable value (herself) to the process, the damned sun doesn’t rise and set just to suit her fancy. Can you tell I’m sick to death of women whose self-image is too inflated to fit in the Superdome. The world is stuffed with them now.
Perhaps it’s just enough to get daughters to de-emphasize the opposite sex until after high school.
PS: What is reported about sexuality is largely BS. Almost all sex-based social science is junk. The only thing I encountered that is remotely credible was a study done at the Univ. of Manitoba over a number of years. Several take-aways: 1. Girls who were not virgins while taking a 100-level course in psych largely started having sex at a mean of 15 years of age, and nearly all initiated with a boyfriend. 2. Some of the girls (a third?) had not yet had sex. 3. Neither had about the same # of the boys. The bottom line: Not everyone is doing it prior to or even “at” college. The college will tell you the exact opposite. They will tell your kids the same thing.
Social control occurs everywhere. Only the strongest resist.
And no, I don’t buy “anyone can change.”
Extremely FEW people change (I’ve not met any, but I’ve heard unicorns, too, exist.) Most people spend their lives getting better at who they really are. Good people get better, while crappy people get crappier.
We are what we do. People who do stupid things long enough may be able to put on a mask and camouflage their stupid for a while, but my money is that they revert to their mean eventually.
A man or woman may be able to dabble in stupid (who among us didn’t?) and get back on track, but the longer one indulges in stupidity and self-destruction, the more embedded are those behaviors. Once a drunk, always a drunk. Until recently I did not understand this. Even old dogs learn new tricks.
@Jay
“Well Stephanie, white men started feeling that way about the time women began taking their jobs away under the guise of non-discrimination. ”
So lemme get this straight, you think women “took” away men’s jobs. I must have missed all the women being loggers, mechanics, construction workers, electricians, and plumbers. If your accusations were true manual labor jobs would be dominated by a female work force.
Yow Stephanie, we can just leave all those manual labor jobs to the male yard apes, that way women can do all the brainy inside air-conditioned jobs so they won’t mess up their hair. It’s almost as much of an indignity for women to have to do manual labor as it is for them to have to stay at home and raise children. And forbid the thought that a woman would ever play a support role to her husband in marriage.
So let’s see now, what’s left that women are good for? I know, we can make them all Secretary of State like Hillary because most women are pretty good at emails and hiding inconvenient truths that should send them to jail.
Jay
Are you flirting with Stephanie?
I think she is available.
I love how idiots like eugene declare fact based articles as hateful rants. That is a classic liberal response. I’m surprised he didn’t declare the hateful rant as racist. That always works for moronic liberals who can’t add or think critically about issues.
eugene is another one of those RE like one trick ponies. Personal responsibility doesn’t enter the equation in his warped mind.
The hate and wanting to control other people’s lives comes from liberals like eugene. I have nothing but utter contempt for his ilk.
dc sunsets
I agree with you about raising daughters who are confident, capable, and have a healthy sense of their own value. I would add to your analysis the critical role fathers play in the process. From my own experience, and my observation of many others like me, the absence of a loving father makes achieving a sense of self-worth much harder for a girl. A little girl who is adored by a healthy man in a healthy marriage will be far more likely to wait for the same kind of individual to be a life partner. How many millions of young girls are running around seeking the love they never got from dear old dad?
Throw in the values promulgated by pop culture and you have an even more destructive mix. All those cute starlets and musicians flaunting their babies with the uncommitted daddies send a powerful message. You too can be this cool.
Good article! Should go viral to all American citizens with balanced minds. They would be the only one to understand the implications of this and the force needed to kick out mindless politicians forever!
@Jay
The female dominated professions are still care giving, education, and administrative. That has not changed since the beginning of the 20th century. What has declined are male dominate professions in manufacturing and construction.
DC,
I find your ideas intriguing and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter. Seriously, good shit.
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DC-females are clearly the more social of the sexes, and therefore are more pulled by the invisible tug of social mood (or pop culture, if you prefer.)
Sure. Not only do the womynz get to vote their “feelings” , but get to repopulate the nation with the product of their “feelings” as well…a future so bright , you gotta’ wear braids.
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hardscrabble farmer–YOU’RE ABSOLUTELY CORRECT. It is exactly what was planned. When you posit a choice between the Incompetence theory or the Conspiracy theory, you’re giving these A**holes a pass.
These are self serving evil doing people and you need to hold them accountable, and that doesn’t mean voting for the other guy. Your voting is complicity in a social travesty. Voting ties you into a system that is filled with false hope and solidifies their hold over you. Why is it so important you vote? So important that Obama wants to make voting mandatory under penalty of fine. If it was a good thing, people would do it voluntarily and not be forced into it at a point of a gun. “If voting made a difference, they would never let you do it.”
We haven’t won a war since the War Department was changed to a PeaceNik name: called the Defense Department. Talk about Orwellian newspeak. LBJ’s War on Poverty is another lost war, like all the others. A successful attempt to snatch fantasy from the jaws of reality. But, what is the reality for the Republicrats? More government and more control over your lives. God gives you freedom and the government takes it away. Sometimes, I think that humanity is a pitiful lot.
@dc sunsets,
I have neither babies nor ambition. I HAVE IT ALL!!! I have always snickered at the idea that “having it all” for a woman meant having both a high-powered career and children and being the kind of superwoman who can have both by “leaning in.” I mean, you already have to be rich for that to work.
I don’t want a high-powered career OR kids, let alone both at the same time! There are SO MANY other things! Anyway I’m no superwoman – just a happy dork lying in the periwinkle with the sun on my nose.
Now in other news, some interesting comments have popped up about the future of automation and its impact on the labor market. That’s my latest pet brain project, in fact. Has anyone read this yet? It’s a couple of years old, but I didn’t stumble upon it until last week. It was a pleasant surprise to read the comments and find that most of them were quite thoughtful:
Poverty is a term that shouldn’t be used especially in a governmental context. It is very imprecise term which can mean anything. Progressives use imprecise terms all the time because they can be twisted to fit any agenda.
Compared to Bill Gates, I’m in poverty. Compared to me an African is in poverty. Compared to an African that has running water, an African in another country without running water is in poverty. It is all relative, therefore, meaningless as a criteria for government action. However, it can be twisted to serve an agenda, which is the point. What is the point you ask? Why, increase taxes and increase the size of government.
People need to judge government by their results and not the programs they espouse. These psychopaths have a Midas touch for s**t. When it all fails, they always excuse themselves and say, “If
only…———-” (fill in the blanks).
People give up your illusions about gov. In the last 200 years, they have killed more people and destroyed more infrastructure and capital. Today, govs are hell bent on starting WW4. As the ‘War on Poverty’ shows, it’s you or them and you don’t seem to be doing so well.
There is no fix for liberalism/progressivism. Liberals will never admit that their solutions are actually the problem. There are too many brain dead liberals and government check recipients to turn things around. If the data don’t support them, then they change the data. According to liberals, the economy is booming, unemployment is low, Iran is not a terrorist state, everything is Bush’s or Reagan’s fault, global warming is real, etc, etc. We are warned about rising sea levels as Obama buys beach-front property in Hawaii. We hear endless diatribes about “Hands up, don’t shoot” even though everyone knows that never happened. Blacks can kill or beat whites for no reason, and it never makes the headlines. If a policeman shoots a black in self defense, get ready for Al Sharpton and BHO to declare the criminal to have been saintly (just like the son that BHO never had).
Liberals and crony capitalists collaborate to regulate the free market to death, and kill our jobs with free trade agreements. Then the liberals declare that the free market doesn’t work. In summary, don’t expect our downhill slide to end without a catastrophic intervention. The universities are cranking out drones who think communism is cool.
I have friends that could be considered in poverty based on income. They have a car big screen tv, computers. and very nice living arrangements.
He said, “We better vote for Obama or my wife won’t get her free knee replacements” Well she got her free knee replacements, free back surgery, free carpel tunnel surgery. Almost a million dollars worth of surgery . All free.
Well, enlightened readers, we know that nothing is free. Someone always pays. These friends are hoping that someone else pays. Many Americans are hoping someone else is paying for their EBT and SNAP cards. Alas, nothing is free!
All these Americans, who are hoping they don’t have to pick up the tab for their expenses, are going to find out what the price is going to be and that they are going to pay, when the economy collapses, this year.
They are going to be really mad because they thought they weren’t going to have to pay.
rock that vote!
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dc.sunsets says, “How do you propose resources be allocated?”
Socialist think that “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.”–Karl Marx The problem is that the rulers, aka elites, are the neediest of all. Some pigs are more equal than others.
Capitalists think that “If you don’t work you don’t eat” Which is biblical, to scratch a living from the earth, you will labor all the day of your life.
How has scarce resources been allocated, historically???
War, to the victor goes the spoils.
Philosophically, socialism-you have two, I’ll take one and give it to another. (Government decree)
Now you know why government is held in such high regard by those on the receiving end.
Barter, an exchange of commodities. Surpluses create the opportunity for trade. I have 4 daughters, I’ll trade one of them for one of your oxen.
Money–No, not the stuff made out of green pieces of paper. The glittery stuff. The glittery stuff isn’t easy to get. You have to work hard for it. In other words, you have to contribute to the economic pie before you can take a bite out of the economic pie. The Philosophical group thinks this very unfair to those who want to eat the economic pie without contributing to it.
Real money rations scarce resources most effectively and fairly. I vote for the money rationing scheme.
Does this mean that many who relied on the Philosophical scheme will suffer? Yes, but I see no way to avoid it. The alternative, if any, is the destruction of civilization, which can only exist thru trade.
There was that graph showing different nation’s birth, growth and decline, I believe the normal cycle was around 200-300 years.
Like boomers, the country is attempting to stay young by cosmetic means such as botox, facelifts and running shoes.
A liposuction would help but then there’s the unsightly fat to get rid of, some clinics dump it out in the desert.
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El Coyote,
One could always make soap – ala Tyler Durden… The richest soap in the land, made from the fat of the wealthy…
flash says: rock that vote!
Those guys look perfect, is that a wax museum?
Stockman in 2018 !
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNUWrIehNZE#t=18
One Problem: AFRICA FOR THE AFRICANS, ASIA FOR THE ASIANS, WHITE COUNTRIES FOR EVERYBODY IS WHITE GENOCIDE
The anti-whites elites at the UN believe in magic. Their mantra is that the world will be fine when there is “free movement of capital, goods, services, AND LABOR” in international trade.
The problem is, of course, that this magic line is ALWAYS a racial thing.
t doesn’t matter what economic or political theory a brown country says it believes in, a brown country will be a tyranny and it will live in poverty the minute there are not enough white countries and white people to pull it out.
The Big Lie is that SKIN COLOR does not matter.
Everybody, even racists, want to emphasize that they are not obsessed with SKIN COLOR.
I want to emphasize that I AM obsessed with skin color. This is the ultimate undermining of everything they intimidate everybody, including scientific racists, with.
Meanwhile, back on earth, where do the non-whites go?
To white-SKINNED countries.
Not to IQ countries.
Not to Culturally Aware countries.
Not to religiously correct countries.
On the real planet earth, the illegals are ALWAYS swimming towards WHITE SKIN.
The real reason for poverty in the USA has nothing to do with 1-parent households. In the 1990’s, Bill Clinton joined forces with the Republicans and together they decided to impose economic globalization on the American people. First with NAFTA, then with thousands of other bipartisan initiatives, including carte blanche for China, regardless of who happens to be in the White House.
Wages tend to be sticky, meaning they rarely fall. So, wages in this country are meandering sideways while the 3rd world’s wages slowly catch up. You can see this lack of wage growth in some of your own charts from earlier articles.
Your beloved Republicans are doing everything under the sun, short of impeaching supreme court chief justice Roberts (a republican appointee) to prevent these unwed mothers from getting abortions, helping to ensure that these women have many fatherless children, not just one.
Jason Emery drops a big load of liberal shit on the site. Poverty has nothing to do with 1 parent households has got to be one of the dumbest fucking statements ever made by a sub-80 IQ moron on this site. You must be a pipefitter.
I despise Republicans you idiot. The unwed mothers have gotten 55 million abortions over the last 40 years. Dumbasses like yourself actually blather about the poor not being able to stop themselves from getting pregnant. The fucking government run public schools hand out condoms for free.
Too bad your mother didn’t use contraceptives. The gene pool wouldn’t have been polluted with your presence.
I am thinking that TPTB have conditioned the niggas and the TPT (trailer park trash) to believe that that EBT will always be there for them………..while back at the star chamber, they work on a Malthusian plan to rip their food out from under them. They love that sort of thing, they have popcorn stockpiled and ready for the BIG SHOW.
@ Gayle,
There’s an old adage you’ve undoubtedly heard:
“The best thing a man can do for his children is to love their mother.”
My sons watched me treat their mother with love, deference and respect. The watched both their mother and me re-earn each others respect each day, and witnessed how all successful human relationships are built on mutual respect. They watched as neither of us dominated the other and our household ran well in partnership.
They experienced a household where their mom and dad sought ways for the kids to earn OUR respect, and then experienced how great it feels to be in that place, being a respect-worthy person.
We raised sons, but I think we’d have done just as well raising daughters. You are right, if there’s a degree of wisdom in the home (from both mom and dad) and the “why” is communicated to the kids as much as the “what,” reasonably intelligent kids turn out well.
Girls should be no different.
Voluntary sterilization for girls 12 to 14. Paid for by taxpayer. That with a 10,000 cash bonus to the girl being sterilized. That would be the most efficient use of welfare dollars ,ever.
@ jason emery,
The USA has to be the only place where people in “poverty” own cars, big screen TVs and live in houses as nice (or nicer) than mine oftentimes.
There are two kinds of such “poor” people:
1. Those who are sick, injured or are congenitally deficient in some important way (e.g., born blind.)
2. Those whose BEHAVIOR leads to “poverty.”
Historically, charity was aimed at the first, and the second group was deemed undeserving.
When government (political systems) took over charity, it conflated the two because if you’re a bureaucrat whose profession is “handing out welfare,” more need = bigger budgets and more job security. Perverse incentives thus abound.
Now we have more people in the cart than are pulling the cart. In our “democratic” republic, this means promising more handouts is an election winner.
Add deficit spending and seemingly endless borrowing, the result is capital consumption (because freebies delivered today aren’t being paid for in the future with IOU’s, it is IMPOSSIBLE to consume that which has not yet been produced; all those bene’s are coming out of today’s SEED CORN.)
This means that the over-promising of freebies to the parasite class is resulting in OCCULT poverty, a condition that will some day soon be revealed (just as the same folly is being revealed in Greece.)
TANSTAAFL.
As for the poor? To quote Ayn Rand on the Phil Donahue Show: “Don’t be one of them.”
FACTS ABOUT THE IMPOVERISHED MASSES:
■Eighty percent of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, at the beginning of the War on Poverty, only about 12 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.
■Nearly three-quarters have a car or truck; 31 percent have two or more cars or trucks.[9]
■Nearly two-thirds have cable or satellite television.
■Two-thirds have at least one DVD player, and a quarter have two or more.
■Half have a personal computer; one in seven has two or more computers.
■More than half of poor families with children have a video game system such as an Xbox or PlayStation.
■Forty-three percent have Internet access.
■Forty percent have a wide-screen plasma or LCD TV.
■A quarter have a digital video recorder system such as a TIVO.
■Ninety-two percent of poor households have a microwave.
■Ninety-six percent of poor parents stated that their children were never hungry at any time during the year because they could not afford food.
■Some 83 percent of poor families reported that they had enough food to eat.
■Some 82 percent of poor adults reported that they were never hungry at any time in the prior year due to lack of money to buy food.
■As a group, America’s poor are far from being chronically undernourished. The average consumption of protein, vitamins, and minerals is virtually the same for poor and middle-class children and in most cases is well above recommended norms. Poor children actually consume more meat than do higher-income children and have average protein intakes 100 percent above recommended levels.[11]
■Most poor children today are, in fact, supernourished and grow up to be, on average, one inch taller and 10 pounds heavier than the GIs who stormed the beaches of Normandy in World War II.[12]
■Over the course of a year, only 4 percent of poor persons become temporarily homeless. At a single point in time, one in 70 poor persons is homeless.[14]
■Only 9.5 percent of the poor live in mobile homes or trailers; 49.5 percent live in separate single-family houses or townhouses, and 40 percent live in apartments.
■Forty-two percent of all poor households actually own their own homes. The average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau is a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage, and a porch or patio.
■Only 7 percent of poor households are overcrowded. More than two-thirds have more than two rooms per person.
■The average poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Sweden, France, Germany, or the United Kingdom. (These comparisons are to the average citizens in foreign countries, not to those classified as poor.)[15]
■The vast majority of the homes or apartments of the poor are in good repair and without significant defects.
You conveniently forgot to address the issue of globalization. There are millions of college educated Americans working at poverty level jobs.
Where did you go to school. You seem to be politically illiterate. The Dems and Repubs conspired to force globalization on us, meaning that we all compete with slave labor in China.
Jason
Story lines like yours are obliterated by facts on TBP. Your tens of millions crappola is bullshit. Did you even go to school?
People should just come out with it. It needs to be told. The whole debt based paradigm of the fiat system is a precursor for bullion based, debt-free currency where the currency (weight) has fully scalable liquidity. (USD/oz) This scalable liquidity for bullion could never be realized without a real-time floating measure of value. That floating value is USD/oz..
The end of Bretton Woods gave rise to the possibility of properly monetizing bullion on its ability to have a market driven basis of liquidity. Bullion’s liquidity is the product of (weight x trade value/unit weight) ——> (weight x USD/oz) . To increase liquidity, you can raise bullion’s trade value or the amount of weight available. The FIXED peg had to be abolished !
Follow “the script”. There are necessary evils written into the script.
therooster–Government should be given the privilege of hallmarking coinage, but not exclusively. It should be open to competition.
The hallmarking should not be denominational, but should be by weight and purity, only. No dollars, no quarters or half-dollars, etc. Just weight and purity. 1OZ at .9999 fine.
That would reduce government to honest governance. No coin clipping (inflation). The progressives would sure fight that.
“There are none so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe that they are free.”
Homer …. I quite agree. Weight should the unit of account now that weight value can fluctuate in real-time. Weight could be actual or virtual (while fully backed) as we saw with the now defunct e-gold model.
Have faith. The typical empire lasts about 200 years.
Are we there yet?
Jason, we could always compare degrees. I suggest we might also compare age/experience, too.
Globalization was part of the “trust everyone all the time” of the debt-boom of the last 40 years.
Without it, the bluejeans you wear would cost $120 a pair or more (probably much more, given the add-ons to the cost of labor in the USA now). That’s what nothing-special Levi’s cost, in inflation adjusted terms, when I was a kid.
Globalization is both a cause and an effect of the debt disease that manifested beginning in the 1960’s, and while you can decry it all you want, without it we’d be redefining the meaning of poverty in the USA. Wally World may sell mostly Chinese made crap, but it’s the only thing keeping the lower classes from Oliver-Twist-Style destitution.
The political system didn’t foist ONE DAMN THING on Americans. Americans BEGGED for it, pal. Pull your head out of the horse poop pile and read a 500 year old text by Etienne de la Boetie. “Discourses on Voluntary Servitude” highlight what is plain to see if you’re not blind: All political systems rest on popular consent, else they simply wouldn’t exist.
Today’s widespread folly is part and parcel of the ancient truism: “Be careful what you ask for, you just might get it.”
In 1971, the very desirable real-time genie was loosened from its bottle. Unfortunately, the evil debt genie was loosened from the same bottle at the same time. The irony is that the real-time genie holds the only key on how to get the debt genie back into the bottle and seal it up. Give thanks for the age of information.
You cannot pour new wine into old wineskins. So true.
What this baloney about “You must be a pipefitter.”. Pipefitters are a step above plumbers!
Try to be more objective in your prejudgements.
Bud Wood
The dumbass had pipefitter in his email address. I was busting his tiny balls. That’s how it rolls around here. Gotta problem with that? I’m not objective about anything. Assholes get their asses handed to them.
GAFY shirts company….Please everyone…Go And F+() Yourself!!!! lol not kidding
Hey Jason Dumbass –
Let’s compare degrees! You go first! Bet I win!
I love that tired old chestnut that everything is the fault of globalization!
Like the ghetto dwellers are able to compete with the Chinese! Bwahahahahaha! That is funny.
The ghetto dwellers need to work, for sure and certain. No more free shit. But they are not going to be very successful in high-tech jobs, now are they?
So I guess that leaves their little Mexican friend – Manuel Labor – as their alternative.
Life is not fair. Compete or perish. I am fine with that system.
But liberal fuckwits think that is not fair, that the lazy, the stupid, the inept should be able to parasite off the backs of the productive, because, well, it is not fair they do not get the good stuff just because they cannot earn it.
Damn, fuckwits really need to wake the fuck up.
cecilhenry says: On the real planet earth, the illegals are ALWAYS swimming towards WHITE SKIN.
We’re not illegal until we cross the border into Gringolandia (formerly filled with illegal Native Americans that invited white people in because they wanted to be close to WHITE SKIN).
Cease, you sound like a class A moran, do you know Billy?
overthecliff says, “Voluntary sterilization for girls 12 to 14. Paid for by taxpayer:..” HEY! overthecliff, ever think of the alternative???
Voluntary sterilization for boys 12 to 14. Paid for by taxpayer. I smell a sexist rat here.
An imperialist country will bleed its colonies dry to fatten up its own citizens. When the rich have sold them everything they could buy and no more, then the rich will leave them high and dry like beached whales basking in the glory of their whiteness.
@Admin – That chart shows a massive plunge near the end, its pretty painful.
I’m lucky enough to be an “older” millenial, but things are still pretty much bullshit.
TPC,
I though t you might like to know number one son will graduate this spring with his degree in Chem E. and minors in math and chemistry. I just want to thank you for your early encouragement a few years ago.
Bob.
@Bostonbob – Congratulations to you both! Your son for completing a bitch of a degree, and yourself for raising an atypical millenial.
Just one thing though….
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TPC,
Thanks, he’s a great kid, much smarter than his dad fortunately. My daughters studying Biology and Chinese. I don’t know where they get it from, but I am very thankful.
Bob.
@Bostonbob – Joking aside, I’m kind of envious of him. I went to a school that didn’t offer a full ChemE degree, so that option wasn’t open to me.
It sounds like you got good kids.
PS: This is literally the first TBP thread I’ve read/commented on in months. I need to make more of a point to stop by, I hate going without the news for so long.