The awesomeness of poverty

Despite the caricature of strawman liberals, everyone knows there needs to be limits and regulation to entitlements - there are indeed undeserving freeloaders. The question is how to minimize the benefits going to the undeserving while maximizing the help going to the deserving.

Freepers, of course, never have to worry about tricky line-drawing issues, since they refuse to acknowledge any benefits to things they don't like, much less costs to things they approve of.

Thus, Freepers rage at those on entitlements as being universally fat and happy and all voting Democrat so they can get infinite benefits. Naturally, Freepers on disability or unemployment either stay away or just assume they are the exception.

TigerClaws explains why being poor is much easier than having actual money:

Free rent via Section 8. Free Obama phones. Free groceries. Free healthcare. Free schools. Free breakfast and lunch for their kids. Free pre-school.

Yep. Sounds pretty easy to me...

TigerClaws then lays some statistics on the luxuries poor people have:

The following are facts about persons defined as “poor” by the Census Bureau, taken from various government reports:

Forty-three percent of all poor households actually own their own homes. The average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau is a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage, and a porch or patio. Eighty percent of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, in 1970, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.

Only 6 percent of poor households are overcrowded. More than two-thirds have more than two rooms per person.

The average poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens, and other cities throughout Europe. (These comparisons are to the average citizens in foreign countries, not to those classified as poor.)

Nearly three-quarters of poor households own a car; 31 percent own two or more cars.

Ninety-seven percent of poor households have a color television; over half own two or more color televisions.

Seventy-eight percent have a VCR or DVD player; 62 percent have cable or satellite TV reception.

Eighty-nine percent own microwave ovens, more than half have a stereo, and more than a third have an automatic dishwasher.

Yeah, if you have a TV, your life cannot be a miserable, hand-to-mouth existence. Because If you're truly poor, you don't get entertainment. And who needs a car these days except for everyone outside of a few cities?

Dilbert San Diego doesn't care about statistics, and goes straight for the anecdotal evidence!

It seems ironic, that Michelle Obama and others talk about childhood obesity, and food deserts in our inner cities.

Yet anecdotal evidence is that a good number of “poor” people in this country are getting plenty to eat.

DManA has an amazingly wrong fun fact he clearly pulled out of his ass.

If all the money spent on Federal, State, and Local poverty programs was pooled and divided it up evenly among the people below the poverty level, they’s all be 1 percenters.

a fool in paradise with the inevitable "Democratic policies are bad on purpose to keep people poor."

Democrats keep the poor dependent by design.

They need them to stay locked in the lower segments of society, so that they “need” the handouts to “get by” and the Democrats can count of their vote (plus some “walking around money”) to get them to the polls in November every cycle.

judicial meanz - only country folk can be poor.

We see some “hard poverty” out here in the rural area I live in, where some people still have outhouses, no air conditioners, and hunt for food. You don’t hear a lot of them with the same complaints as the inner city poor.

The inner city grab bag of entitlements passes for poverty in the city would probably be as foreign to them as Martians landing in their front yard.

The government has never done anything for Chode, ever!

what do i know, the only thing the government ever gave me is a property tax bill to pay or an income tax form to fill out AND pay

Dude must never use the roads or the post office, or care about civic order. LostInBayport knows if you're not as bad as Ethiopia, you're rich. Also, the middle class are the ones who really have it rough!

EBT, WIC, Section 8, Medicaid/Obamacare, Obamaphones, fuel assistance, Earned Income Tax Credit...those considered “poor” in this country would be considered “filthy rich” in much of the rest of the world.

And soon the Gibsmedats will be “the rich” in this country while the rest of us in the middle class struggle while working for a living, losing much of it to taxes and trying to feed, clothe and house ourselves with the scraps.

Mears doesn't want to say black, but...

And don’t forget the gold chains,manicures, and $200.00 per pair sneakers.

E. Pluribus Unum totally heard this totally true thing on the Internet, guys!

Plus, it is illegal to turn them down for a car loan that they are never going to pay back.

That's why you see so many of them driving around in A BRAND NEW CAR! (A little Price-is-Right lingo there.)

Dick Vomer on the constant drug use of all the poors:

All I have to say is that I've been in several 3rd world countries and we have the only poor people that are FAT, have air-conditioners, cable TV's, cell phones/iphones, cars and the ability to score weed or forms of cocaine at any time.

hecht - all poor Americans are parasites.

we don’t have “poor”, we have parasites.
our “poor” are wealthier than 95% of the world.

cherry tells a suspiciously on-the-nose story about some freeloaders, who are just like all poor people in America everywhere.

I come across youngish people on "disability" and I see them as being 20-30yrs younger than I, with no visable "disability", with their Iphones and their Ipads and their fancy clothes, doing whatever they want whenever they want, and then I think....here I'm 60 and still reporting to work.....

the poor have it easy...I think most of them like it the way it is...

the REAL poor that I wish could get a break?...the young working families....they deserve a break...

Gay State Conservative - if you're not literally about to starve to death, you have it easy.

I've seen poverty.I've seen it up close and personal.I've seen it from a distance of about 6 feet.That is the distance that prevented me from actually touching a young Tanzanian girl I saw with orange hair,a big bloated belly and little stick legs...all classic signs of chronic,profound malnutrition.I've seen genuine poverty elsewhere.In India...other parts of Asia...in South America.

I've also traveled in the least affluent sections of Boston,NYC,Detroit,Chicago and LA.

I know from personal experience that a huge percentage of Africans and South Americans and a substantial percentage of Asians would sell their souls to live like our "poor".