Guest Post by Walter E. Williams
Imagine that you are an unborn spirit in heaven. God condemns you to a life of poverty but will permit you to choose the country in which you will spend your life. Which country would you choose? I would choose the United States of America.
A recent study by Just Facts, an excellent source of factual information, shows that after accounting for income, charity and noncash welfare benefits such as subsidized health care, housing, food stamps and other assistance programs, “the poorest 20% of Americans consume more goods and services than the national averages for all people in the world’s most affluent countries.” This includes the majority of countries that are members of Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, including its European members. The Just Facts study concludes that if the U.S. “poor” were a nation, then it would be one of the world’s richest.
As early as 2010, 43% of all poor households owned 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. Eighty percent of poor households have air conditioning. The typical poor American has more living space than the average non-poor individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens and other cities throughout Europe. Ninety-seven percent of poor households have one or more color televisions — half of which are connected to cable, satellite or a streaming service. Some 82% of poor families have one or more smartphones. Eighty-nine percent own microwave ovens and more than a third have an automatic dishwasher. Most poor families have a car or truck and 43% own two or more vehicles.
Most surveys on U.S. poverty are deeply flawed because poor households greatly underreport both their income and noncash benefits such as health care benefits provided by Medicaid, free clinics and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, nourishment provided by food stamps, school lunches, school breakfasts, soup kitchens, food pantries, the Women, Infants & Children Program and homeless shelters.
We hear and read stories such as “Real Wage Growth Is Actually Falling” and “Since 2000 Wage Growth Has Barely Grown.” But we should not believe it. Ask yourself, “What is the total compensation that I receive from my employer?” If you included only your money wages, you would be off the mark anywhere between 30% and 38%. Total employee compensation includes mandated employer expenses such as Social Security and Medicare.
Other employee benefits include retirement and health care benefits as well as life insurance, short-term and long-term disability insurance, vacation leave, tuition reimbursement and bonuses. There is incentive for people to want more of their compensation in a noncash form simply because of the different tax treatment. The bottom line is that prior to the government shutdown of our economy in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, Americans were becoming richer and richer. The question before us now is how to get back on that path.
Speaking of the COVID-19 pandemic, Just Facts has a couple of interesting takes in an article by its co-founder James D. Agresti and Dr. Andrew Glen titled “Anxiety From Reactions to Covid-19 Will Destroy At Least Seven Times More Years of Life Than Can Be Saved by Lockdowns.”
Scientific surveys of U.S. residents have found that the mental health of about one-third to one-half of all adults has been substantially compromised by government reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic. There are deaths from non-psychological causes, such as government-mandated and personal decisions to delay medical care, which has postponed tumor removals, cancer screenings, heart surgeries and treatments for other ailments that could lead to early death if not addressed in a timely manner. Interesting and sadly enough, New York state enacted one of the strictest lockdowns in the U.S. but has 22 times the death rate of Florida, which had one of the mildest lockdowns.
As I pointed out in a recent column, intelligent decision-making requires one to not only pay attention to the benefits of an action but to its costs as well.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.
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One fact worth knowing.
George Floyd is/was a porn-star who is over PornHub and XVideos?
Is being a porn star illegal? What’s does that have to do with anything?
Content of character?
That only matters with businessmen and politicians.
Does it not matter for civil servants? Military? Teachers? Clergy?…
I do not give a good God damn what Floyd did for his income because he was hung like a donkey, liked White pussy and put it on video.
It’s seems we are all communists now. Nobody can say a damn thing without some Karen looking into their background to see if they ever said the word Nigger or performed in a porno. The entire purpose is to shut down any inconvenient comment.
disclaimer – I have never been a porn star or said the word nigger. Therefore, you can totally take my comments as truth.
In other words, a third of the country is nuts (we know who they are) and now more can be added to that list after being locked up over the Kung Flu. So is Bedlam in our future? What an attraction.
George Soros checking out what he paid for?
George is dead, not Floyd.
When I was young, my father delivered potato chips for a living. He worked for a small, regional chip-maker (long gone, I believe bought out by a larger company). When he took the job, he did so with one thought in mind: expand his route by his own initiative in order to make more money on commissions for new routes.
He did exactly that. We were not poor nor rich, but we lived in a modest 2-unit house bought for $21,000 via a Yankee Mac loan, the precursor to today’s VA loan. Interest rates at that time were high, and I believe my parents were thrilled they were paying something like 12% on that loan.
My dad drove an old, used Chevy Vega. I don’t remember my mother having a car, she worked close to home and walked to work, but didn’t even work when my brother and I were little.
We at good meals three times a day cooked by my mother, and eating out was a rarity.
We went to the drive-in, camping, swimming. Friends came over to our house and we rode bikes and played outside. Parents played cards.
Our first “real” vacation was when I was 12. My father at that point had taken a job with the State of CT Department of Corrections, given preference due to his veteran’s status. He was making more money than ever but still not a huge amount. I would say probably 25,000 a year, maybe a little more. But the benefits were good, vacation, sick time, over time, pension.
My mother drove bus and so had the summers off. We went to Disney World. In July. We drove. In a tiny hatchback car, no AC, standard. We stayed in a cheap hotel not in the park. I remember it very well and it was wonderful.
My mother’s uncle gave her some land in another part of town and my parents built a very plain, simple cape. We got an above ground pool. We had a dog.
Some of my parent’s friends had more money than they did, but it was never an issue. We weren’t taught to be jealous, or think that somehow we were wronged. We were just happy and content and that was that.
I knew some black families. Most of them were just regular people, the father was around, and had a job, and provided. The mom sometimes worked too. It was never a case of anyone being “oppressed”. I never remember any racism, they were just another family.
My mother did have a friend. A single mom with 4 kids, her husband took of to California one night and that was that. She had to go on welfare because she had 4 young children at home. She hated welfare. It sucked. You got just barely what you needed to survive and not much more. She didn’t have more kids. Or a live in boyfriend. She took the postal exam instead and got out of poverty and off welfare. She didn’t want to be on welfare. No one did.
What is the point of this story? The point is that wealth now is an obsession. It’s an accumulation of things. It’s not about building anything real, or actually helping anyone. Charity is just another status symbol, to be bragged about and flaunted all over social media.
Success is not valued, not real success. We can see this obviously by the way small business owners are and have been treated. From “you didn’t build that” to onerous taxation and regulation, anyone with the gumption and drive to sacrifice and make something from possibly nothing is vilified. Called Deplorable. Or racist.
Now crony capitalism, nepotism, lobbying, and cheating are the way to go. That’s rewarded. Child slave labor overseas? Check. Replacing US citizens with cheaper imported visa holders? Check. Wide open borders of more cheap labor? Check.
In the meantime, welfare has become a way of life for generations of Americans. Public housing grows and grows. SNAP, free phones, free health care. They are given enough to keep them distracted but not enough so they can go get all that shiny stuff. They make no plans to change because they cannot imagine a world where they have to give up their free phone, their free apartment, their SNAP cards, and actually take a risk and save, scrimp, and not have children at 15 years old that they cannot ever hope to support on their own. They believe they are owed this and $15 an hour to flip burgers. But it will never be enough because they do not know how to invest in themselves. They do not understand how to have a goal and reach it. It is all in the day, the moment. It’s not what have you done for me lately, but what are you going to do right now and then right after that?
Sure, inner city schools suck. But if you can read, and you actually want to learn, there is not a bad teacher out there that can take that away from you.
That is the beauty of America. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Debt is slavery, but so is getting “free” stuff. Because it’s never free and it robs you of your humanity.
Was this “no racism” before the civil right era?
Everything is a scam. Everything is overpriced. Although things could be made to last for decades, it’s not (planned obsolescence) everything has to be replaced typically within a 10 year frame. Medical care costs as much as they think they can squeeze out of you. You can’t trust anybody because everyone is out to get ahead at your expense.
That scrimp and save shit doesn’t work anymore for a vast amount of people.
Now, imagine if God allowed you a choice.
I think He did, and I messed up by being a tee-totaller the last time around.