"Feds: ‘Poor’ Consume Like The Rich"

[WhiskeyGirl]

[q

As President Obama crafts a reelection income equality message aimed at punishing the rich and rewarding the poor, his own government finds that the 46 million living below the so-called “poverty line” live and spend pretty much like everyone else.

Forget the image of Appalachia or rundown ghettos: A collection of federal household consumption surveys collected by pollster Scott Rasmussen finds that 74 percent of the poor own a car or truck, 70 percent have a VCR, 64 percent have a DVD, 63 percent have cable or satellite, 53 percent have a video game system, 50 percent have a computer, 30 percent have two or more cars and 23 percent use TiVo.

Says Rasmussen, “About 40 million Americans are officially defined as living below the poverty line. Yet most of those have adequate levels of food, shelter, clothing and medical care. Sixty-three percent of American adults believe such a family is not living in poverty,” he writes. “Only 16 percent believe that a family is living in poverty if it has two color televisions, cable or satellite TV, a DVD player, and a VCR, but that’s what the average family living in poverty has as defined by the U.S. government,” he adds.

http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/feds-%E2%80%98poor%E2%80%99-consume-rich/348206

The article and I imagine the book also show some amazing statistics about poverty.  Where is it?  I wonder if the book looks into why .25 percent of children a day miss a meal?  'I didn't like the meal provided at school...'?

[WhiskeyGirl]

The folks over at The Fiscal Times have also talked to Sykes — here’s how they set up the conversation:

   

You’ve played by the rules. Worked hard to put yourself through school. You’ve gotten a decent job and you pay your taxes.

    You’re faithfully paying down your mortgage and saving money in a 401(k) – all to secure your finances and your future. But now there are a lot more “takers” than “makers” in this country – and the impact is systemic and long-lasting.

    A prevalent new “moocher culture” is changing the character of this nation – that’s the core message of A Nation of Moochers: America’s Addiction to Getting Something for Nothing, a new book by Charles J. Sykes, senior fellow at the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute and the author of six previous books.

    “This has been the flash point in American politics for the last several years,” Sykes toldThe Fiscal Times in an interview this week. “In the wake of the Great Recession, we’ve shifted from a culture of celebrating and encouraging those who are productive and hardworking, to a culture where handouts, bailouts, freebies and entitlements dominate.

    You start to wonder, Why am I paying the freight for those who have been reckless and irresponsible, whether it’s on Wall Street or in Washington or anywhere else in the community? I think we’re becoming a very different nation.”

The takers include those that inflate the money supply, cause massive inflation, and give it away to foreigners, big banks, and other anonymous people...

read more here and watch video - http://www.theblaze.com/stories/a-nation-of-moochers-is-the-take-care-of-me-society-wrecking-the-usa/


"'Take Care Of Me' Society Is Wrecking The USA"

Charles Sykes (CS): That’s obviously the most difficult part, the gray area in the middle. There’s a distinction between needing temporary aid versus using a vast network of dependency as a way of life. Unemployment compensation, for example, is necessary for an amount of time. But when you start getting into 90-plus weeks of unemployment, hasn’t a temporary stopgap now become an excuse for people to avoid taking jobs? A number of economic studies have shown that the longer these benefits are extended, the higher the unemployment rate is. People make a rational calculation that it’s easier to stay on the couch than to get a job that maybe isn’t as great as what they had before.

Read more: http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2012/01/28/The-Take-Care-of-Me-Society-is-Wrecking-the-USA.aspx#page1#ixzz1l33dBx8Y

Read more: http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2012/01/28/The-Take-Care-of-Me-Society-is-Wrecking-the-USA.aspx#page1#ixzz1l33PjiPI


"A Nation of Moochers: America's Addiction to Getting Something for Nothing"
book review here - http://www.amazon.com/Nation-Moochers-Americas-Addiction-Something/dp/0312547706