Poverty today is more a social condition than a material condition. People from my parents generation would say "We were poor, but we didn't know it. Everyone we knew lived like us.". Paradoxically it is the anti-poverty crusaders who are most at fault for creating this condition, by tellling people who are well off by all historical standards, but who fall in the lower tier of the income scale that they are poor and they should resent it. By inculcating resentment, they are creating a poverty of character, which is the real poverty that should be fought.

Robert,

That is EXACTLY the line that my grandmother uses.

I probably better not tell my wife that by the article cited here we are about equally to just a little less well off than the median person in poverty! I hauled two pickup loads of manure for our garden yesterday, so we'll at least eat well.

Not only are many of the "poor" really not all that bad off, most of them will not even be poor for long, and many will be rich. Thomas Sowell (an economist) writes:

"An absolute majority of those Americans who were in the bottom 20 percent in income in 1975 were also in the top 20 percent at some point over the next 16 years."

When I first read that quote, I thought it was a typo, but I tracked down the data and it seems to be legit. For the links, go to http://greatguys.blogspot.com/2004_03_01_greatguys_archive.html#107887300748741056.

The problem comes in with defining poor. It tends to be defined as annual income that year. This is a completely useless definition when it comes to crafting a welfare policy.

Jason, I was shocked at how many had cable TV. I don't even have cable. Am I poor?

What are also laughable are these programs to ensure that the "poor" get government provided access to the Internet. If they can afford a color TV, cable and cell-phones, they can afford a cheap Wintel box and a discount provider.

One of the early "Great Society" social workers in VT proudly proclaimed that the natives were so ignorant they didn't even realize they were poor. Maybe. We also had incrediby low rates of crime, drug use, VD, illegitimacy, etc.

I guess you can find poor people if you look hard enough.

Yesterday I interviewed a woman who runs something called Feed My Sheep (a recipient of a faith-based initiative Compassion Capital grant) who says she's got 433 homeless families -- most with at least one member employed -- on her list. That's 1,500 people or about 1% of all the people here.

She didn't start looking till last September.

I'll agree with David that annual income statistics are not so useful.

One percent sounds about right.

Harry/David:

1% is right according to HHS:

http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/homelessness/strategies03/execsum.htm

I meant a 1% rate of poverty, meaning total destitution.

No one with a roof over their head is totally destitute, are they? Heck, given the mental illness component to homelessness it's hard to say they're actually destitute.

Exactly

This is an atypical county. But with minimum rents even for a termite-ridden hovel starting at $900/mo and average pay in the job category (retail clerk) with the most members around $7/hr, you can easily be poor here, even by Orrin's generous standards.

Sounds like Appalachia, and the answer's the same.

Move.

I have little sympathy for those who choose to be poor.
I understand the lure of nearby family, of, perhaps, tropical paradise, but if one chooses those factors over material wealth, then one cannot also claim poverty. They're just choosing non-material rewards.

You can't stop someone from being poor if they want to be.

You're quite right, up to a point, Michael. And on Molokai the community has explicitly chosen that path.

Unfortunately, once a community chooses such a path, it is not so easy for individuals to break out.

For one thing, they are denied education and are no better off in a new place than in the old, as far as labor value is concerned.

Which is why I contend that the profoundest line of English poetry is Gray's line about "mute, inglorious Miltons."

On a personal note, I used to give a ride to work to a guy from Molokai who left his wife and children to work on Maui. He was a stocker and a striver. Not overequipped for modern life, but a nice guy anyhow.

But mismanagement of the chain drugstore he worked for drove it into bankruptcy and he lost his job -- just as mismanagement of the national government brought the economy to a halt.

I have contacts probably as good as anybody in the county, and though I tried I couldn't help him find another job.

The discussion of the workman and his tools in Mayhew is relevant here, too.

Henry Mayhew's Letter XXXVII shows quite explicitly why modern society in North America and Europe has chosen to have a robust safety net.

It's not so much that people could earn more on the mainland than in Hawai'i, it's that in many places, expenses are lower.

In northern Florida, including the panhandle, in Dallas/Ft. Worth, and in Phoenix, full-time minimum wage jobs provide a decent, if frugal, lifestyle.