Why does poverty exist in America?

Question

17% of the population in the USA live in poverty. In some countries, as much as 97% of their population live in poverty. For over a century, we have been eliminating the roadblocks that have been keeping people in poverty in the USA. So why does it still exist?
What keeps people living in poverty in the land of opportunity, bad judgement, shortcomings in character, addictions?
The front running Democratic presidential candidates are claiming they will help the poor. Just what will these candidates do that hasn't already been done to help those people who can lift themselves out of poverty? Will they create federal handouts rather than a hand up? Do we want to travel the road of socialism in order to elinimate the 17% poverty rate in the USA? Or, is the USA already the ideal place where the common person can get ahead in life.

Answer 1

Welfare is necessary in a nation that intentionally keeps a 5-6 percent unemployment rate. (When unemployment dips below this, inflation starts to grow, and the Federal Reserve contracts the money supply to bring both inflation and unemployment back in line). To tell welfare recipients therefore to just "get a job" is terrible economics, because it is literally impossible to reduce the unemployment rate to zero.

In March 1987, the General Accounting Office released a report that summarized more than one hundred studies of welfare since 1975. It found that "research does not support the view that welfare encourages two-parent family breakup" or that welfare significantly reduces the incentive to work. Conservatives also accuse welfare of giving mothers an economic incentive to have more children. Ten major studies have been conducted on this issue in the last six years alone, and not one has found any connection between the level of payments offered and a woman's decision to bear children. The size of average welfare families is virtually the same as non-welfare families.

Because the poor cannot afford well-funded lobbyists in Washington, they make easy targets for budget cuts. Between 1970 and 1991, individual AFDC payments have declined 42 percent in real terms. Today, AFDC takes up less than 1 percent of the combined government budgets. Meanwhile, corporate welfare is running $150 billion a year, three times the federal spending on AFDC and food stamps.

Answer 2

This is what I believe
To be less of a burden on society(Hospitals)People with no health insurance are not treated.The addicted and mentally ill.Some people that didn't work,get no social Security.Those
that don't save enough ,same problem no housing.After WW2
they had this problem.Not enough jobs,they had to create a bill that would help people with no work or enough money.
Enter Food stamps,people where taking advantage of this being lazy or using some other source of income.A lot of families lived on " the Dole".Its about time they get to work get of the Food stamps.Well that is happening.But the Government hasn't addressed the homeless or the ill.SAD
We seem to be helpping other countries now,though job
out sourceing,no pensions,no long term jobs.Pretty Grim.

Answer 3

All of those reasons you cited are good. I have come to believe that if you are poor in America most likely you are poor by choice. Don't kid yourself, socialism / communism doesn't cure poverty, it just sweeps it under the rug. I have a hard time buying the injustice nonsense that the usual suspects dish up with annoying regularity. How then to explain the immigrants who have come here with nothing and succeeded in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds?

Answer 4

I heard that the love of poverty is the root of all evil.

Communism is not a solution to poverty. In a communism, everyone is poor, with no hope of becoming succesfull financially.

Answer 5

if things keep up America wont be the land of the dream. the dems only say what they say to get money in their pockets, and to live better then the poor do. it's a shame that any government worker would put their greet and hunger for money before it's citizens. i guess there will be no more presidents like we had in Washington and Lincoln. they was for America and her citizens. i wonder what Washington would say about all the clowns we have in office? i know he would be appalled with bush who thinks our Constitution is just a piece of GD paper.

Answer 6

Its that some chose to live a certain way of life, that others
may judge as poverty. To see real poverty, travel to Mexico.
In the United States, a lot of our Poor, live a lot better than, the
poor in other Countries.

Answer 7

I'm sure this won't be a popular answer, but a majority of that 17% are poor because of choices they have made - not to finish high school, drug and alcohol addictions, having children before they are financially sound.

I believe in second chances, but I don't believe in limitless hand outs.

Edit: How are people like mizbehavior so naive as to STILL think that Socialism eliminates poverty?

Answer 8

We live in a capitalist society. In order for capitalism to function properly, there has to be an upper class and an underclass at all times. Poor people can try to overcome, and some will, but not all. For poverty to be totally obliterated, we would have to become a socialist or communist country.

Answer 9

Poverty will always exist

How are you gonna have EAST without WEST?


Poor people are usually NUT BREEDERS.....they PUMP OUT more idiots...have no money...then claim they are POOR

Who cares..give em money to sterilize themselves

Answer 10

There will always be poverty.

And what is sad, is under the guise of compassion, many people have been kept under bondage due to entitlements. Entitlements such as welfare for many of those in this country, are nothing more then enables of behavior that keeps people in bondage and slavery to the government.