The Poor - Kel Kelly - Mises Daily

The Poor - Kel Kelly - Mises Daily: "If you were to compare these American poor to the poor in Bolivia, Honduras, Cambodia, or India (or even to many of the poor in Mexico, Romania, Thailand, and Russia), you would see a stark difference. The poor in these countries often literally live in open-air huts with large leaves for roofs and stacked bricks that serve as a shared stove for multiple families. For the poor of the third-world countries, there is, for the most part, no money, no exchange of goods — just basic survival by subsistence farming or by hunting or fishing for food. To these people, American street sweepers and factory workers live a life of luxury."

How hypocritical do we look to the real poor of the world when we complain about the condition of the U.S. poor and ignore them?!?

"In noncapitalist countries today (and in the days before capitalism first appeared) poverty really means that no work is available; there is no means by which to improve one's state of being, or even to maintain it."

"Though the poor in this country have continuously seen their standard of living rise by capitalism, anticapitalists continually point to the poor as evidence of a need for wealth redistribution (i.e., less capitalism), just because the poor earn less than do the rich. But there will always be a bottom 10 percent or 20 percent of the population in income in any society no matter how wealthy we all become."

"few people remain at subsistence level. There are ways out of poverty for most."

"the ratio of "incomes" — the primary measurement used by government — of the top fifth to the bottom fifth of income earners is 15 to 1, but the ratio of their consumption is 4 to 1"

"ACORN sued the state of California in 1995 for exemption from state labor laws, in order to avoid having to pay the minimum wage to its own employees. The organization argued before the court that "the more that ACORN must pay each individual outreach worker — either because of minimum wage or overtime requirements — the fewer outreach workers it will be able to hire." "

"The average poor family with children is supported by only 800 hours of work each year. This is equivalent to 16 hours of work per week. If the average poor family was able to increase the hours worked to 2,000 hours each year (i.e., one adult family member working a full 40 hour week), nearly 75 percent of poor children would be lifted out of poverty."