Does America take care of its poor?

Answer 1

It depends if you mean the American government or the American people.

The government has a rather flimsy safety net for our nation's poor. WIC, the EITC, Section 8 housing, etc. all seem to be underfunded and under-prioritized. Very important & effective programs, don't get me wrong: they just don't get the funding they need nor the amount of governmental attention and assistance they deserve.

The American people, however, have shown considerable generosity towards the poor. Food banks, privately-run homeless shelters, the Salvation Army, Goodwill, etc. have helped filled in gaps where our government has come up short. And while the private sector has much to do with keeping poor people poor, it also has demonstrated great ability to provide for the poor (when it suits them to do so.) Make no mistake: altruism is a powerful economic force in this country that, in our all-too-frequently cynical observations of the world, should not be ignored.

One might think that this means the private sector does these functions better than the government, but that's not the case. It's simply that many people tend to think about their own pocketbook when in the ballotbox & only think about others when they bump into them on the street. We only think about the safety net when we're falling, and we can't see the poor from the other side of the ballot box's curtain.

Answer 2

Assuming US Census definition of poor, thus defined as:
About half of today's official "poor" actually are elderly Americans with assets, working families who have suffered a temporary job loss or a divorce, or self-employed persons hiding income from the government. Few of these households are poor by any normal standard, especially when assets and non-cash benefits are counted.
The other half of the officially poor population consists of what might be called the traditional poor: welfare families and individuals and family heads with chronic underemployment. The material living conditions of this group are far better than the Census Bureau poverty reports suggest. Many have income and benefits putting them well above the poverty thresholds. However, it would be a mistake to conclude from this that the War on Poverty has been a success. On the contrary, these households, intended to be the primary beneficiaries of the welfare state, have turned out to be its victims.

The explosion of welfare spending in the last 25 years may, possibly, have raised the material living standards of some less affluent Americans, but it has done so at an enormous cost in terms of destroyed families, an eroded work ethic, and possibly irreparable damage to the social and moral fabric of low income communities.

The conclusion:
An accurate examination of the expenditures, food consumption, housing, and assets of so-called poor families shows that there are far fewer persons in poverty than the Census Bureau indicates.

So, I would say, Yes America does take care of it's poor.

Answer 3

Some people try to take care of them and others want it swept under the rug.
I see both sides working to further their causes.

Apparently if you "don't fit in with their ideal" then your a leper and deserve to be poor, seems to be the motto of the year.
Your only poor if you want to be, cause it's not about money, it's about living.

Answer 4

Sure

http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2005/Homeless-Contra-Costa-Co1nov05.htm

Answer 5

Homeless persons are generally left to their own, how ever where I live there is a few shelters they can go to but generally they are full. If they are in public they tend to get arrested by the police who gives them a bed a something to eat. Most of the homeless people I have encountered where I live are homeless because they are not capable of functioning in a normal productive capacity. They are addicted to drugs, alcoholics, mentally ill, etc, etc, etc. Catholic Charities and a few other organisations run programs to attempt to get them back on their feet but as I stated above they are generally over capacity as it is. But it the people are just poor there are many social programs such as welfare, food stamps, wic, that helps provide necessities of life

Answer 6

The 2ND funniest joke of the day!!

Yes it takes care of them! It steals from them! They are the buffer for big business as a supply and demand economy dictates that! They only give their lives so some fascist Republican can be rich!

And what is even funnier is that 80% of you are 2 paychecks from being them!

Answer 7

Not at all. We give them systems to "baby" them and expect them to just come out of their situations. What the poor need is training, education and guidance- not constant handouts, because they get too comfortable being taken care of and don't want to work for themselves.

Answer 8

Yes, the job of the government is to "take care" of people! You do that, and you get people who don't end up taking care of themselves. The average standard of living in the U.S. is better than any where in the world, and better than any time in the history of the world. This happens because of freedom and free markets, not because the people in the U.S. are any different than anyone anywhere else. Now, there ARE welfare programs as safety nets all around.

Answer 9

No, we take care of other countries' poor.

Answer 10

*laughs*

When a UN poll showed that 1 in 8 was living below the poverty line? Yeah, and im the queen of England