All Of The Government's Important Economic Data Are Fraudulent -- Part II (Poverty Rate)

Of the big three government economic statistics under discussion here (GDP, poverty rate, pension and health liabilities), one of them does not have even a hint of honesty about it: the poverty rate.  It is a scam from left to right and from top to bottom.  The basic idea is that the government publishes poverty statistics stating that millions of people are living in poverty as a device to sell the voters on spending more government money to fix the problem.  Massive amounts of government money are then voted and spent.  However, poverty is defined in such a way that little or none of the additional government spending is counted in determining who is living in poverty, and therefore billions and billions of additional spending do not decrease "poverty" in the slightest.  Next time around, despite billions of additional government spending, the "poverty" rate is the same or higher, and is used yet again to sell the voters on yet more spending to cure the poverty. 

Please take note that "poverty" as defined by the government has nothing whatsoever to do with what most people think of as real poverty, namely physical deprivation.  It has nothing to do with hunger, nothing to do with poor quality housing, nothing to do with inadequate clothing.  A family living in government-defined "poverty" may well have inadequate housing or poor clothing, or could also be receiving $100,000 or more in in kind government benefits, or could even be asset millionaires taking a year's sabbatical from lucrative jobs.  The government "poverty" rate statistic simply gives no meaningful information as to how many people are living in actual poverty as the term is generally understood.  Rather, the number is just a scam designed to play on the voters' emotions to sell more ineffectual government spending, none of which will or can reduce the measured rate.

Here is all you need to know about the "poverty" rate scam.  According to a compilation by Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation, the total amount of means-tested government (Federal, state, local) anti-poverty spending as of the latest statistics (2011) is $927 billion per year.  According to the Census Bureau, the income thresholds for living in poverty, which vary by household size, were $11,170 for a single person and $23,050 for a family of four.  Also according to the Census Bureau, there were 48.5 million people in the United States in 2011 living in "poverty."

Do you sense that there is something wrong there?  Let's do a little very simple math:  $927 billion divided by 48.5 million people is $19,113 of government anti-poverty spending for each of them.  That is nearly double the "poverty" threshold even if the "poverty" population divides itself up entirely into one person households.  If we have four person households, the anti-poverty government spending is $76,452 per household, well more than triple the $23,050 threshold set by the government itself.

By its own definitions, the government could completely eliminate poverty, with plenty to spare, by simply passing out the $927 billion in cash pro rata to the 48.5 million people.  Instead, the government is spending more than triple the amount that it would take to completely eliminate poverty, and is not making a dent.  How could this be possible?

Very simple.  The government defines "poverty" totally in terms of "cash income."  And then it passes out the benefits not as cash, but rather in kind.  Think Medicaid, food stamps, public housing, school lunches, transportation vouchers, Obamaphones -- you name it.  None of it counts.  Any actual cash grant is carefully set to come out safely below the poverty line. 

What's incredible to me is that discussion of the poverty rate data in the media continues to treat the information as if it is something meaningful, even as if it represents some actual measure of material deprivation of the people.  But today, with an average of over $76,000 per year doled out for every family of four in "poverty," it is not possible for any intelligent person to take the data seriously.  The continued publication of this data is just a scam plain and simple, specifically designed to deceive the public into supporting more spending.

And if possible, the scam is getting even worse.   The existing "poverty" rate data has been under criticism for a long time for exactly the reasons stated above.  (Rector of Heritage has been one of the leading critics.)  This has caused a certain amount of concern in the poverty profiteer community.   After all, it would only take the public about ten minutes of focus to realize that just counting the in kind benefits at say one-half the amount the government spends would instantaneously eliminate almost all measured poverty.   How to ward that off? 

The Obama administration has come up with a solution.  In November 2012 they came out with a new "supplemental" measure of poverty.  The basic idea is to make "poverty" no longer an absolute measure of well-being, but rather a relative measure, defined with respect to 33% of the median level of income.  And beyond that, the new definition is completely incomprehensible.  The obvious idea here is again to maintain a measure that can't be reduced no matter how much spending on the poor there is, and no matter how much the well-being of the low income population improves in absolute terms.  Or to put it another way, the idea is to deceive the public into believing that poverty is not decreasing in order is to protect the poverty bureaucracy from any attempts to shrink its level of spending.

Here is an article from the Daily Caller on November 16, 2012 by Mickey Kaus, titled MSM falls for "New coke" poverty con.  At least Kaus realizes that it is a con.  Of the many who wrote about it, almost all the rest completely fell for the scam.  Pitiful.

The Handout Society As Electoral Strategy

During the recent 2012 election campaign, Mitt Romney was rightly criticized for saying that the 47% of the population then receiving some form of government handout or other would "vote for the president no matter what . . .[and] believe that they are victims."  That statement was clearly confused; far from every one of the 47% who were getting some form of government benefit voted for Obama,, and some of the 47% were among Romney's core constituents.

But on the other hand, the ongoing increase in the number of benefit recipients has to be good for the party promising to continue and increase the benefits.  Since only about 5 million votes separated the candidates by the time all were counted, could the increase in numbers receiving benefits have had something to do with the outcome?

It turns out that the number of benefit recipients in many categories exploded during Obama's first term.  This is particularly notable since the recession officially ended in June 2009, shortly after Obama took office.  Shouldn't the number of benefit recipients have started to go down after that?  But consider what happened in various benefit categories:

Food Stamps.  Now officially known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program ("SNAP"), this program completely exploded during Obama's first term.  Here is a chart going back to 1975.

The number of recipients had actually gone down during Clinton's second term from around 27 million to 17 million, and then crept back up to about 28 million at the end of the GW Bush administration in 2008.  And then the numbers took off, reaching about 47.7 million by the end of 2012, an increase of almost 20 million in four years to a level far above any precedents.

Why did this happen during a recovery?  Well, one key reason (via CNN) is that the government undertook an advertising program to get people to sign up!  By the way, don't just blame Obama -- it started under W.  But it's hard not to conclude from the chart above that Obama and his team fully realized the electoral benefits of maximizing this giveaway.  It only took about a quarter of those 20 million incremental food stamp recipients in Obama's first 4 years to provide his entire margin of victory.

Are you wondering how so many people are even eligible for food stamps?  It doesn't hurt that lots of things don't count against eligibility, no matter how great their amount.  Exhibit A is equity in a home, and Exhibit B is retirement accounts such as 401(k)s.  You can easily have many millions of dollars in assets and still qualify for food stamps.  As USDA under secretary Kevin Concannon says in the CNN article linked above, "Research has shown that many people -- particularly underserved seniors, working poor, and legal immigrants -- do not understand the requirements of the program."  Or in other words, lots of relatively affluent retired people foolishly thought that if you had half a million dollars of equity in your house and another half a million in retirement accounts, you couldn't possibly be eligible for food stamps; but now that they have been educated by the ads, they feel like dupes for not having signed up earlier.  And how about that other downtrodden category, graduate students?  Yes, another rapidly growing segment of the program; Concannon refers to them as the "working poor."

Disability.  According to figures from the Social Security Administration reported by Investors Business Daily, the number of people added to the Federal disability rolls during Obama's first term (through April 2012) was 5.4 million.  Although the number of disability recipients also increased under both Bushes and under Clinton, IBD reports that the number of applications in 2011 was up 24% compared with 2008.  With food stamps, at least a lot of people eventually get off.  But as IBD reports,

The problem is that few people who get on disability will ever participate in the labor force again. In fact, the vast bulk of those who exit Social Security Disability Insurance do so either because they hit retirement age or died.

Obamaphones.   A viral youtube video late in the campaign had a screaming Obama supporter bragging about her free "Obamaphone" available to all welfare recipients.  Snopes took apart the underlying facts, finding the worst allegations partly true and partly false.  Turns out that the program started as something called "Lifeline" back in the Reagan administration, well before cell phones, to give poor people some access to phone service for emergencies.  Who could be against that?  Best part about it was that it was funded by so-called "universal access fees" paid by incumbent service providers -- a nice off-budget slush fund available when needed for vote buying.  Otherwise known as an irresistible temptation to electoral corruption.  Like the other programs above, it crept up little by little under succeeding presidents, barely noticed, and then exploded under Obama.  According to Snopes, the number of people with "Lifeline" phones grew from 7.1 million in 2008 to 12.5 million in 2012.   There you have yet another incremental 5 million potential votes!  These people weren't taking any chances.

The basic problem here is that all of these things are one form or another of Ponzi schemes.  Will it take an another 30 million or so incremental handout recipients to secure the next election?  How about the one after that?  This can't go on for very long, but it sure can do a lot of damage. 

The Level Of Economic Ignorance Is Just Not Possible

It takes a relatively small amount of looking around and following economic statistics to figure out what works and what doesn't.  Sadly, almost no one is willing to do it, and our politicians display a level of willful ignorance that just doesn't seem possible.

A few examples.  The United States is deep into the most aggressive program of "stimulus" ever undertaken, with fiscal deficits in the range of $1 trillion per year for four years running.  So the economy must be taking off?  Well, actually, after many months of the most sluggish "recovery" anyone can remember, the economy just declined by 0.1% in the 4th quarter of 2012.  And the government shows every intention of continuing and even accelerating its war on productive economic activity:  Obamacare implementation, massive subsidies to uneconomic ("green") energy, intentional efforts by EPA and others to raise energy prices, increase in minimum wage, endless shakedowns of financial institutions, etc., etc. 

How is it going in the heartland of the high tax high spend economic model, the eurozone?  Even worse, of course!  GDP just shrank by 0.6% in the fourth quarter of 2012.   So that huge spending for bailouts of Greece and Spain didn't "stimulate" anything?  Guess not.

Then of course there's Japan:  20 years of "stimulus" and economic stagnation.  Debt now exceed 200% of GDP.   And what do they have to show for it?  Fourth quarter 2012 results:  down 0.4%.  It's not working there either.  Well, Japan has just brought back it's former Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, with a fresh, new program for getting out of the economic morass:

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who took office in late December, is championing aggressive spending and monetary stimulus to help get growth back on track.

As I say, it's just not possible to have this level of economic ignorance.

Here in the U.S., there is now a glimmer of hope that we might get some very modest decreases in government spending by the mechanism of the "sequester," already baked into existing law.  Here is the near-hysterical reaction to that from the New York Times:

The sequester will not stop to contemplate whether these are the right programs to cut; it is entirely indiscriminate, slashing programs whether they are bloated or essential. . . .   These cuts, which will cost the economy more than one million jobs over the next two years, are the direct result of the Republican demand in 2011 to shrink the government at any cost, under threat of a default on the nation’s debt. . . . But the government spending they disdain is not an abstract concept. In a few days, the cuts will begin affecting American life and security in significant ways. . . .  Congressional budget experts say they have little doubt that the size and pervasive nature of the sequester will inflict widespread pain.

I've got news for them.  The way that the United States can start adding large numbers of real, productive, private sector jobs is to cut government spending.  You just need to compare the places that are languishing (Eurozone, Japan) to those that are doing well (e.g., Canada, and within the U.S. Texas and Florida) to learn the right prescription.  And you definitely have to learn not to listen to the editors of the New York Times.

The SOTU: More Of The Same For The Next Four Years

I don't know about you, but I'm not willing to waste my valuable time listening to the president blather on in the State of the Union address.  However, I did get a print-out of the text today in order to compile a list of some of the most uninformed and destructive things to come out of his mouth.  Starting from the beginning:

[Referring to the upcoming "sequester"]: "These sudden, harsh, arbitrary cuts . . . would certainly slow our recovery, and cost us hundreds of thousands of jobs. . . .  Most Americans -- Democrats, Republicans, and Independents -- understand that we can't just cut our way to prosperity."

Well, I think that anyone who knows anything about this subject understands that cutting the government is precisely the way to get to prosperity.  Where does this ignorance come from?  If you follow economic statistics at all, the first thing you have to know is that there is a hugely tight relationship between smaller government and economic success, and that massive cuts in government spending lead promptly to improved economic performance, with the very biggest cuts setting off booms.  Examples:  United States after World War II (60%+ cut in government spending in less than two years set off the post-war boom); Canada (how could Obama not know about our next-door neighbor?) cut Federal spending from 25% of GDP in 1985 to 16% in 2012, leading to greatly improved economic performance, debt declining as a percent of GDP, and recurring budget surpluses; Sweden (!) turned around badly declining economic performance by cutting government spending from 68% of GDP in 1993 to 49% in 2011 -- still too high, but enough of a decline to get the economy growing at least some; Latvia cut its government spending by 16% of GDP after the financial crisis hit in 2009, and promptly saw strong economic growth resume.  I could go on, but you get the point.

"But for the sake of our children and our future, we must do more to combat climate change. . . .  Last year, wind energy added nearly half of all new power capacity in America.  So let's generate even more.  Solar energy gets cheaper by the year -- so let's drive costs down even further."

Whatever you may think about whether fossil fuel usage is heating up the world, there's no getting around the fact that the U.S. can't fix this by putting up some windmills and solar panels while China builds a new coal plant every week.  All that can be accomplished by these initiatives are (1) waste huge amounts of taxpayer money, (2) drive up the cost of energy for U.S. citizens, and (3) make green energy crony capitalists rich.  I guess (3) must be the real point.  What I just can't understand is how Obama doesn't realize that making energy more expensive and wasting taxpayer money are forms of making the people poorer.  How can that be a good thing?

"Through tax credits, grants, and better loans, we have made college more affordable for millions of students and families over the last few years."

Obama still has not figured out that the wide availability of Federally-backed student loans has driven up the cost of college and saddled an entire generation of young people with hopeless amounts of debt that will seriously destroy their lives.  Embarrassing.

Tonight, let's declare that in the wealthiest nation on Earth, no one who works full-time should have to live in poverty, and raise the federal minimum wage to $9.00 an hour."

Well, if that makes sense, why shouldn't "we" just declare that everyone should be rich and raise the minimum wage to $1000 per hour? 

The overall conclusion is that the chief executive of our government doesn't know the basic information that he needs to do his job.  Well, it's just four more years.

The Next Four Years -- Looks Like The War On The Economy Will Continue

Four years into a pitiful economic recovery, what are the prospects for the next four?  In the last four years, the government footprint in the economy has gone up by 4 - 5% of gdp -- no sign that that is going to go down any time soon.  Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid continue to increase at rates far in excess of overall economic growth, with no good prospect of reform.  Taxes on the top producers have just gone up.  But the U.S. economy is a huge and remarkably resilient engine.  Can't it get going and outrace these things?  

If you were thinking of getting your hopes up, consider this from Obama's second inaugural address:

We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms. The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult. But America cannot resist this transition; we must lead it. We cannot cede to other nations the technology that will power new jobs and new industries — we must claim its promise. That is how we will maintain our economic vitality and our national treasure — our forests and waterways; our croplands and snowcapped peaks. That is how we will preserve our planet, commanded to our care by God. That's what will lend meaning to the creed our fathers once declared.

And this wasn't just buried somewhere.  From all indications, it appears that he intends to make it the signature initiative of his second term.

There were no policy specifics mentioned.  However, every policy idea that has ever been on the table as to "climate change" has two essential features:  (1) it attempts to decrease the use of carbon-based energy either by direct prohibition or by raising the price, and (2) its effect on total world use of carbon energy, given rapid increases in third world use, cannot have any but completely negligible effect on world temperature, even if you believe that more atmospheric CO2 will increase temperatures.

Over at the Washington Post's wonkblog, Steve Plumer has a list of policies that Obama might try:  have EPA force the closing of coal-fired power plants (sure to raise the price of electricity); force the use of more "renewable" energy (costing a multiple of carbon-based energy); back to cap and trade (specifically intended to raise the price of energy to force the people to use less, aka intentional impoverishment of the people).  Or how about a really high, really regressive "carbon tax"?  Maybe that will "save the planet" by forcing the low income people to stay home and keep their homes heated to only 50 degrees.  Or how about a few more billions -- make it trillions! -- for renewable energy subsidies?  Of course, the renewables can't possibly compete with fossil fuels on equal terms, so when the subsidies end, all of the wind and solar producers go out of business the next day.

Meanwhile, it's been fifteen years since world temperatures have increased -- fifteen years in which carbon emissions from the third world and former third world (China, India) have soared.  One would think that the climate campaigners by this time would be looking for a way to climb down inconspicuously and slink away before they make themselves look even more ridiculous.  Nope, they're doubling down.

In the old days the government thought it was its business to make electricity available and inexpensive.  From the 1930s to 1990s we had the Rural Electrification Administration, that handed out big grants to bring carbon-based electricity to every farm in America.  What happened to that?  Well, no Federal bureaucracy ever goes away.  In 1994 they turned it into the Rural Utilities Service.  According to allgov.com, that agency dispensed some $9 billion from 2002 - 2012.  And one of the key missions?  Making electricity less expensive in rural areas!  Here's a press release from December 19, 2012: 

USDA ANNOUNCES FUNDING TO HELP REDUCE ENERGY COSTS IN REMOTE, RURAL AREAS

Well, nobody ever said the government had to be consistent.  The point is to pass out money and to make yourself look like the sugar daddy.

Anyway, everything about "climate change" policy is a war on the efforts of entrepreneurs to make the economy more productive and efficient, and the people wealthier.  So what is the chance of the economy improving any time soon?