Myths of American Poverty Rates

There a lot of people out there who say that the economy is in peril or that poverty is high, especially during election time. Common complaints are that most Americans make only thirty thousand dollars a year and should be paid much more, that big businesses harass small businesses and rip people off, and that minimum wage needs to be increased.

But just how true are these assertions? Not in the least. There are questions to be considered and analysis's to be confirmed. How many of the thirty thousand dollar wage earners are young adults who are just beginning their careers? Most of the world is made up of young people, after all. Also, women outnumber men, and female workers are allegedly underpaid, so that might also account for the majority.

Poverty is a frequent object of the political field and anti-poverty rallies are not uncommon, but none of these people seem to take into consideration what reasons an individual may be in poverty for. Millions of our poor are illegal aliens who come into this country with only the clothes on their backs, in which case it is their fault that they have to construct their lives from the ground up. Anybody who puts himself in that situation is not liable to soar through the ranks at Microsoft any time soon. While we're at it, how many companies have been shutdown or have become bankrupt due to convictions of employing illegal aliens?

Speaking of business bankruptcy, how many businesses are incompetent in producing quality goods? Wal-Mart is often scrutinized for supposedly cheating consumers and in fact manufacturing 90% of its products from cheap Chinese slave labor. But Wal-Mart churns out quality products for affordable prices while some mom and pop stores, sympathetically, deliberately try to sell brown lettuce or spotted bananas, particularly in down town New York according to Geraldo Revera, the host of "Geraldo at Large," went visited about twenty-two mom and pop stores to inspect the food quality in front of the camera. He found several store owners to be disappointed with, one of whom when Geraldo held up a browned lettuce up to his face said, "I don't see any brown!" Some of the store owners were honest at the least. They can't all afford to produce quality products, but under some circumstances health hazards are liable to occur. Such situations would justify the shutting down of any business, even if the owners go broke.

Another question that needs to be taken into consideration is how many of our poor are former drug dealers who made all their money off of drug trafficking, or how many people don't work because they are too heavily afflicted by drug abuse to be in their right state of mind? According to the U.S. Department of Justice, arrests for drug trafficking are low, but arrests for drug possession have climbed dramatically over the past twenty six years.

A lot of anti-Capitalist activists, and the more mainstream Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed, a book skeptical of the state of our economy, claim that the middle class and upper class tend to step over, or on, the poor. For example, Ehrenreich says in her book that the less fortunate labor and go hungry so that the middle and upper classes can have nice houses, yet, amusingly, she fails to realize that the middle and upper classes labor sot that the poor can have welfare or any houses at all. That's what taxes are for. Admittedly, our tax-collecting system is rather flawed in that the tax money is poured into a bowel and tossed here and there.

Socialists, fanatics, and most college professors complain have developed a habit of complaining that minimum wage should be raised to a living wage. Allow me to explain why this is economically unsound, so much in fact that it's pathetic. A McDonalds Big n' Tasty meal costs about $4.65 plus tax, and the minimum wage is $7.50. The McDonalds price system is set according to how much the company can pay its employees while still retaining good profits. The price of a Big n' Tasty meal is reasonable enough for the average college student to pick up once or twice a week. But if the minimum wage shoots up to $22.50, it wouldn't do the price justice, for while the McDonalds employees receive free meals, consumers would have to pony up eight to ten dollars for a meal. All unless, of course, the government creates a price ceiling, which even then may not be such a good benefactor because the ceiling may force producers to spend less on production, thus decreasing the quality of their goods, so one has to carefully examine the consequences.

Needless to say, it is too late for America to switch to a noncompetitive economic system, but such is the likes of socialism and communism, in which families and individuals are denied the right to regulate the businesses outside government restrictions, not to mention that noncompetitive economies, as history shows, tend to collapse. There is a solution to end all economic troubles, however (all except the absence of nuclear fusion, of course). If every country would adopt an international capitalistic economy, there would be exuberant competition, thus launching the whole world into an economic utopia.

www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/dcf/enforce.htm