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From: hollombe@ttidcc.UUCP (Jerry Hollombe)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: re: A statistic on poverty
Message-ID: <161@ttidcc.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 13-Dec-84 13:49:15 EST
Article-I.D.: ttidcc.161
Posted: Thu Dec 13 13:49:15 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 19-Dec-84 02:52:16 EST
Organization: TTI, Santa Monica, CA.
Lines: 36

>When entitlement programs (predominately food stamps) are factored into the
>calculation, the % of people under the PL dropped to a low of about 7.5%
>just before the last recession.  Since the % is strongly linked to the
>unemployment rate (make sense), it rose to a high of about 10% in the
>recession.  It is projected to be about 8.5% for this year based on data in
>so far (the recent drop in unemployment might lower this), presumably lowering
>next year.

8.5% of 230 million people = 19,550,000 people living below the poverty line.
Hardly a trivial problem.

>However, other people with the same or more money had serious problems, even
>serious malnutrition.  Why?  Usually the main reason was vice.  Cigarettes,
>alcohol, junk food.  In general, poor money management.  I've had some rather
>enlightening talks with social workers.  One family that spent their entire
>allowance of Food Stamps on soda and potato chips.  That's all they ate.  The
>rest of their money went to support their fathers 4 pack a day habit and
>alcoholism.  I could go on, but I won't.

This is known as "welfare mentality" and is a  very  real  problem.  Social
workers  get  very  crazy  (and very burnt out) trying to teach people like
this to manage their money.  Not surprising when you consider the number of
supposedly  intelligent,  relatively  affluent  people who are incapable of
living within their means.  Probably a lot of Doctoral  dissertations  have
been written about attempts to cure the problem, with no visible success.


-- 
The Polymath
(Jerry Hollombe)                  Opinions expressed here are my own
Transaction Technology, Inc.      and unrelated to anyone else's.
3100 Ocean Park Blvd.
Santa Monica, CA  90405
United States
(213) 450-9111, ext. 2483
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