<div dir="ltr">Thanks Donovan for your thoughts.<div><br></div><div>Just in from the NY Times:</div><div><br></div><div>Here is the answer to my question in my first post.</div><div><br></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">A Columbia University study suggests that without government benefits, the poverty rate would have soared to 31 percent in 2012. Indeed, an average of 27 million people were lifted annually out of poverty by social programs between 1968 and 2012, <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/50th_anniversary_cea_report_-_final_post_embargo.pdf" title="A pdf"><span style="color:blue">according to the White House Council of Economic Advisers</span></a>.</span></p>
</div><div><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif"><br></span></div><div><br></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:24pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">Progress in
the War on Poverty</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">JAN. 8, 2014 Nicholas Kristoff, <i>The New York Times</i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">America’s war on poverty <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/05/business/50-years-later-war-on-poverty-is-a-mixed-bag.html" title="A Times article"><span style="color:blue">turned 50 years old this week</span></a>,
and plenty of people have concluded that, as President Reagan put it: “We
fought a war on poverty, and poverty won.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">That perception shapes the right’s suspicion of food stamps,
minimum-wage raises and extensions of unemployment benefits. A reader named
Frank <a href="https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10151974136467891&id=9351577890&p=10"><span style="color:blue">posted on my Facebook page</span></a>: “All the government
aid/handouts in the world will not make people better parents. This is why the
ideas from the left, although always made with the best of intentions, never
work. ... All of this aid is wasted.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">Yet a careful look at the evidence suggests that such a view
is flat wrong. In fact, the first lesson of the war on poverty is that we can
make progress against poverty, but that it’s an uphill slog. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">The most accurate measures, using Census Bureau figures that
take account of benefits, suggest that poverty rates have fallen by more than
one-third since 1968. There’s a consensus that without the war on poverty,
other forces (such as mass incarceration, a rise in single mothers and the
decline in trade unions) would have lifted poverty much higher.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">A Columbia University study suggests that without government
benefits, the poverty rate would have soared to 31 percent in 2012. Indeed, an
average of 27 million people were lifted annually out of poverty by social
programs between 1968 and 2012, <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/50th_anniversary_cea_report_-_final_post_embargo.pdf" title="A pdf"><span style="color:blue">according to the White House Council of
Economic Advisers</span></a>.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">The best example of how government antipoverty programs can
succeed involves the elderly. In 1960, <a href="http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/p60-245.pdf" title="A pdf"><span style="color:blue">about 35 percent of older Americans were poor</span></a>. In
2012, 9 percent were. That’s because senior citizens vote, so politicians
listened to them and buttressed programs like Social Security and Medicare.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">In contrast, children are voiceless, so they are the age
group most likely to be poor today. That’s a practical and moral failure.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">I don’t want anybody to be poor, but, if I have to choose,
I’d say it’s more of a priority to help kids than seniors. In part, that’s
because when kids are deprived of opportunities, the consequences can include a
lifetime of educational failure, crime and underemployment.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">Research from neuroscience underscores why early
interventions are so important. Early brain development turns out to have
lifelong consequences, and research from human and animal studies alike
suggests that a high-stress early childhood in poverty changes the physical
brain in subtle ways that impair educational performance and life outcomes.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">A careful review of antipoverty programs in a new book, “<a href="https://www.russellsage.org/publications/legacies-war-poverty"><span style="color:blue">Legacies of the War on Poverty</span></a>,” shows that many
of them have a clear impact — albeit sometimes not as great an impact as
advocates hoped.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">For starters, one of the most basic social programs that
works — indeed pays for itself many times over — is family-planning assistance
for at-risk teenage girls. This has actually been one of America’s most
successful social programs in recent years. The <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/health/teen-birth-rate-hits-historic-low-officials-say-8C11086339"><span style="color:blue">teenage birthrate has fallen</span></a> by half over roughly
the last 20 years. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">Another hugely successful array of programs involved parent
coaching to get pregnant women to drink and smoke less and to encourage at-risk
moms to talk to their children more. Programs like Nurse-Family Partnership,
Healthy Families America, Child First, Save the Children and Thirty Million
Words Project all have had great success in helping parents do a better job
with their kids.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:18pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif"><br></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:18pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">Vald</span></b><br>
</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">36 minutes ago </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">"As that example suggests, we increasingly have
first-rate research — randomized controlled trials, testing antipoverty
programs as...</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">Early education likewise has strong evidence of impact.
Critics note that in Head Start, for example, gains in I.Q. seem to fade within
a few years. That’s true and disappointing. But in the last five years, robust
studies from <a href="http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/%7Edeming/papers/Deming_HeadStart.pdf"><span style="color:blue">scholars like David Deming</span></a> have shown that
graduates of Head Start also have improved life outcomes: higher high school
graduation and college attendance rates, and less likely to be out of school
and out of a job.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><span style="font-size:2.5pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(204,204,204)">Advertising</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">Another area of success: Programs that encourage jobs,
especially for the most at-risk groups. The earned-income tax credit is a huge
benefit to the working poor and to society.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">Likewise, a program called Career Academies has had
excellent results training at-risk teenagers in specialized careers and giving
them practical work experience. Even eight years later, those young people
randomly assigned to Career Academies are earning significantly more than those
in control groups.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">As that example suggests, we increasingly have first-rate
research — randomized controlled trials, testing antipoverty programs as
rigorously as if they were pharmaceuticals — that give us solid evidence of
what works or doesn’t. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">So let’s drop the bombast and look at the evidence.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">Critics are right that antipoverty work is difficult and
that dependency can be a problem. But the premise of so much of today’s
opposition to food stamps and other benefits — that government assistance
inevitably fails — is just wrong. And child poverty is as unconscionable in a
rich nation today as it was half a century ago. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Jan 9, 2014 at 7:49 AM, Donovan Arnold <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:donovanjarnold2005@yahoo.com" target="_blank">donovanjarnold2005@yahoo.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0"><tbody><tr><td valign="top"><p dir="ltr">The welfare state is bloated. It is bloated because wages are so low that a family of two working adults cannot pay their basic living expenses. If we raised wages less people would be on goverment assistance and more would be paying taxes instead. The idea that raising wages only causes inflation is an outdated one. This was when labor was 50 to 90 percent of a business's expenses. Today, because of automation and moving of jobs overseas, labor is only 10 to 25 percent of a business's expense. Further, the bottom 90 percent of wage earners make up an even smaller percentage of a business's expenses. Therefore, raising wages even as much as 50 percent would only cause a 5 percent increase in prices cover loses by employers. A 50 percent pay raise for 5 percent inflation would be a good increase in quality of life. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Sent from Yahoo! Mail on Android</p>
</td></tr></tbody></table> <div>
<div>
<br>
<div>
<div style="font-size:0.9em">
<hr size="1">
<b>
<span style="font-weight:bold">From:</span>
</b>
Nicholas Gier <<a href="mailto:ngier006@gmail.com" target="_blank">ngier006@gmail.com</a>>; <br>
<b>
<span style="font-weight:bold">To:</span>
</b>
Kai Eiselein <<a href="mailto:fotopro63@hotmail.com" target="_blank">fotopro63@hotmail.com</a>>; <br>
<b>
<span style="font-weight:bold">Cc:</span>
</b>
<a href="mailto:vision2020@moscow.com" target="_blank">vision2020@moscow.com</a> <<a href="mailto:vision2020@moscow.com" target="_blank">vision2020@moscow.com</a>>; <br>
<div class="im">
<b>
<span style="font-weight:bold">Subject:</span>
</b>
Re: [Vision2020] Fifty years ago today (January 8, 1964) <br>
</div><b>
<span style="font-weight:bold">Sent:</span>
</b>
Thu, Jan 9, 2014 7:44:59 AM <br>
</div><div><div class="h5">
<br>
<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td valign="top"><div dir="ltr">The question to ask about American poverty is where would we be today without Medicare, Medicaid, and Food Stamps? We are now at the bottom of most industrialized nations in general health (worst in preventable deaths), poverty, child health, STDs, infant mortality, adult life spans, etc., etc. Without these programs we would have dropped to into Third World conditions.<div>
<br clear="none"></div><div>Kai: if it is the bloated welfare state's fault, why is it that the Nordic countries (see attached) with the most generous benefits and highest taxes are at the top of of all these quality of life indicators? As I have been saying for years, economic facts defeat the GOP on every issue.</div>
<div><br clear="none"></div><div>Brazil has raised its minimum wage twice in huge increments, and its poverty rate has dropped dramatically and its economy keeps humming along. If the U.S. federal minimum wage had kept pace with inflation, we would have won the war on poverty with that effort alone. Adjusted for inflation wages have been flat since Ronnie Reagan, while the fruits of our labor has gone to the rich and the corporations.</div>
<div><br clear="none"></div><div>The minimum wage in Australia is $16/hour and it was one of the only countries that flew through the Great Recession with flying colors. They were government by the lefty Labor Party the whole time.</div>
<div><br clear="none"></div><div>The facts support the Middle Way between Communism and Libertarianism,</div><div><br clear="none"></div><div>Nick</div></div><div><div class="gmail_extra"><br clear="none"><br clear="none">
<div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 7:05 PM, Kai Eiselein <span dir="ltr"><<a rel="nofollow" shape="rect">fotopro63@hotmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br clear="none">
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">That's pretty much what the graph in USA Today showed this morning. They had an article about it in yesterday and today's edition. Saw it while eating breakfast at a La Quinta the past two mornings.<br clear="none">
If I had to venture a guess for why it has failed, it would be that too much money goes to bloated bureaucracies and not enough gets to the actual programs.<br clear="none">
Our government can be counted on for a few things:<br clear="none">
Lies<br clear="none">
Spying on citizens<br clear="none">
F---king up just about everything it tries to manage.<br clear="none">
<br clear="none">
________________________________<br clear="none">
> From: <a rel="nofollow" shape="rect">scooterd408@hotmail.com</a><br clear="none">
> To: <a rel="nofollow" shape="rect">thansen@moscow.com</a>; <a rel="nofollow" shape="rect">vision2020@moscow.com</a><br clear="none">
> Date: Wed, 8 Jan 2014 13:51:55 -0700<br clear="none">
> Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Fifty years ago today (January 8, 1964)<br clear="none">
<div><div>><br clear="none">
> War on Poverty at 50 -- despite trillions spent, poverty won<br clear="none">
> 'Over, the last 50 years, the government spent more than $16 trillion<br clear="none">
> to fight poverty.<br clear="none">
> Yet today, 15 percent of Americans still live in poverty. That’s<br clear="none">
> scarcely better than the 19 percent living in poverty at the time of<br clear="none">
> Johnson’s speech. Nearly 22 percent of children live in poverty<br clear="none">
> today. In 1964, it was 23 percent.'<br clear="none">
><br clear="none">
> <a rel="nofollow" shape="rect" href="http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/01/08/war-on-poverty-at-50-despite-trillions-spent-poverty-won/" target="_blank">http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/01/08/war-on-poverty-at-50-despite-trillions-spent-poverty-won/</a><br clear="none">
><br clear="none">
> I don't have the time to fact check, but the story is from Fox News<br clear="none">
> which is the only source of news trusted by conservatives.<br clear="none">
><br clear="none">
><br clear="none">
> ________________________________<br clear="none">
> From: <a rel="nofollow" shape="rect">thansen@moscow.com</a><br clear="none">
> Date: Wed, 8 Jan 2014 04:48:26 -0800<br clear="none">
> To: <a rel="nofollow" shape="rect">vision2020@moscow.com</a><br clear="none">
> Subject: [Vision2020] Fifty years ago today (January 8, 1964)<br clear="none">
><br clear="none">
><br clear="none">
> "This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on<br clear="none">
> poverty in America. I urge this Congress and all Americans to join with<br clear="none">
> me in that effort.<br clear="none">
><br clear="none">
> It will not be a short or easy struggle, no single weapon or strategy<br clear="none">
> will suffice, but we shall not rest until that war is won. The richest<br clear="none">
> Nation on earth can afford to win it. We cannot afford to lose it. One<br clear="none">
> thousand dollars invested in salvaging an unemployable youth today can<br clear="none">
> return $40,000 or more in his lifetime.<br clear="none">
><br clear="none">
> Poverty is a national problem, requiring improved national organization<br clear="none">
> and support. But this attack, to be effective, must also be organized<br clear="none">
> at the State and the local level and must be supported and directed by<br clear="none">
> State and local efforts.<br clear="none">
><br clear="none">
> For the war against poverty will not be won here in Washington. It must<br clear="none">
> be won in the field, in every private home, in every public office,<br clear="none">
> from the courthouse to the White House.<br clear="none">
><br clear="none">
> The program I shall propose will emphasize this cooperative approach to<br clear="none">
> help that one-fifth of all American families with incomes too small to<br clear="none">
> even meet their basic needs.<br clear="none">
><br clear="none">
> Our chief weapons in a more pinpointed attack will be better schools,<br clear="none">
> and better health, and better homes, and better training, and better<br clear="none">
> job opportunities to help more Americans, especially young Americans,<br clear="none">
> escape from squalor and misery and unemployment rolls where other<br clear="none">
> citizens help to carry them.<br clear="none">
><br clear="none">
> Very often a lack of jobs and money is not the cause of poverty, but<br clear="none">
> the symptom. The cause may lie deeper in our failure to give our fellow<br clear="none">
> citizens a fair chance to develop their own capacities, in a lack of<br clear="none">
> education and training, in a lack of medical care and housing, in a<br clear="none">
> lack of decent communities in which to live and bring up their<br clear="none">
> children.<br clear="none">
><br clear="none">
> But whatever the cause, our joint Federal-local effort must pursue<br clear="none">
> poverty, pursue it wherever it exists--in city slums and small towns,<br clear="none">
> in sharecropper shacks or in migrant worker camps, on Indian<br clear="none">
> Reservations, among whites as well as Negroes, among the young as well<br clear="none">
> as the aged, in the boom towns and in the depressed areas.<br clear="none">
><br clear="none">
> Our aim is not only to relieve the symptom of poverty, but to cure it<br clear="none">
> and, above all, to prevent it. No single piece of legislation, however,<br clear="none">
> is going to suffice.<br clear="none">
><br clear="none">
> We will launch a special effort in the chronically distressed areas of<br clear="none">
> Appalachia.<br clear="none">
><br clear="none">
> We must expand our small but our successful area redevelopment program.<br clear="none">
><br clear="none">
> We must enact youth employment legislation to put jobless, aimless,<br clear="none">
> hopeless youngsters to work on useful projects.<br clear="none">
><br clear="none">
> We must distribute more food to the needy through a broader food stamp<br clear="none">
> program.<br clear="none">
><br clear="none">
> We must create a National Service Corps to help the economically<br clear="none">
> handicapped of our own country as the Peace Corps now helps those<br clear="none">
> abroad.<br clear="none">
><br clear="none">
> We must modernize our unemployment insurance and establish a high-level<br clear="none">
> commission on automation. If we have the brain power to invent these<br clear="none">
> machines, we have the brain power to make certain that they are a boon<br clear="none">
> and not a bane to humanity.<br clear="none">
><br clear="none">
> We must extend the coverage of our minimum wage laws to more than 2<br clear="none">
> million workers now lacking this basic protection of purchasing power.<br clear="none">
><br clear="none">
> We must, by including special school aid funds as part of our education<br clear="none">
> program, improve the quality of teaching, training, and counseling in<br clear="none">
> our hardest hit areas."<br clear="none">
><br clear="none">
> - President Lyndon Johnson in his State of the Union Address (January<br clear="none">
> 8, 1964)<br clear="none">
><br clear="none">
> <a rel="nofollow" shape="rect" href="http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/speeches.hom/640108.asp" target="_blank">http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/speeches.hom/640108.asp</a><br clear="none">
><br clear="none">
> -----------------------------------<br clear="none">
><br clear="none">
> Seeya 'round town, Moscow, because . . .<br clear="none">
><br clear="none">
> "Moscow Cares" (the most fun you can have with your pants on)<br clear="none">
</div></div>> <a rel="nofollow" shape="rect" href="http://www.MoscowCares.com" target="_blank">http://www.MoscowCares.com</a><<a rel="nofollow" shape="rect" href="http://www.moscowcares.com/" target="_blank">http://www.moscowcares.com/</a>><br clear="none">
<div><div>><br clear="none">
> Tom Hansen<br clear="none">
> Moscow, Idaho<br clear="none">
><br clear="none">
> "There's room at the top they are telling you still.<br clear="none">
> But first you must learn to smile as you kill,<br clear="none">
> If you want to be like the folks on the hill."<br clear="none">
><br clear="none">
> - John Lennon<br clear="none">
><br clear="none">
> ======================================================= List services<br clear="none">
> made available by First Step Internet, serving the communities of the<br clear="none">
> Palouse since 1994. <a rel="nofollow" shape="rect" href="http://www.fsr.net" target="_blank">http://www.fsr.net</a> mailto:<a rel="nofollow" shape="rect">Vision2020@moscow.com</a><br clear="none">
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> =======================================================<br clear="none">
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List services made available by First Step Internet,<br clear="none">
serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994.<br clear="none">
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</div></div></blockquote></div><br clear="none"></div></div></td>
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</table>
</div></div></div>
</div>
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</blockquote></div><br></div>