Heritage Foundation Says the 'Poor' Are Not Really in Hardship

COMMENTARY | So-called poor people in these United States of America actually own refrigerators and stoves. Many of them even possess microwave ovens in their kitchens and television sets in their living rooms, often hooked to cable service. Some have air conditioning, although almost always with a portable unit in the window of one room. God forbid that they would have central air.

Once a year, the Heritage Foundation releases an annual report entitled, "Understanding Poverty in America."

The apparent intent is to help us understand, as though we didn't already understand, that even most poor folks possess basic modern amenities. The purpose of these "Understanding Poverty" reports is to reinforce Heritage's relentless push for welfare cuts and welfare reform.

"Most of the persons whom the government defines as 'in poverty' are not poor in any ordinary sense of the term," the Heritage report declares. They are well housed, have an adequate and reasonably steady supply of food, and have met their other basic needs, including medical care. As scholar James Q. Wilson has stated, 'The poorest Americans today live a better life than all but the richest persons a hundred years ago.' "

Indeed, what Wilson says is true. Indeed, most poor folks nowadays wash and dry their clothes in machines (although sometimes at the neighborhood Laundromat) rather than using buckets and clothes lines. Virtually nobody think of American poverty as involving utter starvation.

In fact, the Census Bureau defines "poverty" as an income of less than $18,530 for a family of three or $22,350 for a family of four. This merely means that the family must struggle to make ends meet, even if the kids might receive an X-box for Christmas (shame, shame), not that they are homeless.

Therefore, the analysts at the Heritage Foundation seem to have a snit each time the media report that the official poverty rate is rising.
Currently, one in seven Americans lives below the official poverty rate, and the Heritage Foundation analysts want to make sure we realize that, for instance, they sometimes might irresponsibly purchase ice cream sandwiches with their food stamps.

No, they aren't all starving and a few abuse the system (some folks at ALL income levels lack ethics) by purchasing big-screen plasma TVs and so forth, often sadly at super-high interest rates from rent-to-own stores.

But what is the Heritage Foundation trying to suggest? Force less fortunate folks to live in utter Third World-type squalor before they receive basic aid? Punish all the poor for the welfare abuses of a few?

TV faux news pundit Stephen Colbert sarcastically sums up the Heritage Foundation's philosophy when he asks, "So we don't need to give the poor assistance, because they're not poor thanks to the assistance we give them?"