THE ADMININSTRATION has redefined "poverty" to make it a measure of inequality rather than a measure of need. This has been in the works since the Obamistas arrived in Washington, but has only now been put into effect. For the moment, it is used only to provide "supplemental" data. But the "supplemental data" are what the the bureaucrats are pushing and the somnambulant media are reporting, which explains the recent headlines about how more Americans are living in poverty than previously estimated.
Mickey Kaus explains:
The old regular, still-official pover line is simple and understandable. It is the level that bought a minimal market basket of food in 1963-4, adjusted for subsequent inflation and multiplied by three. As such it measures what people think a poverty line measures -- how many people fall below certain absolute living standards . . . . We've been using it for decades, so while it may be too high or too low people have a rough feel for what it is and what it isn't.
The new "supplemental" poverty line is a complicated measure produced by formulas that are barely understood by poverty experts. It takes into account in-kind government benefits, which is fine, and regional costs-of-living. But at its core is a deception: it measures not absolute poverty but relative poverty -- i.e. inequality.
It's pegged to the expenditures of the 33rd percentile rather than a fixed amount of purchasing power. Under the old poverty line, "poverty" could be eliminated as society got richer -- an achievable and widely shared goal. But the new poverty line will rise as society gets richer . . . . The newly measured poor will always be with us in substantial numbers. . . .
[The new] "poverty line" is now a measure of inequality, not absolute want -- when its moral and political force derives largely because it's thought of as a measure of absolute want, not inequality. If I were inclined to be paranoid -- and I am -- I'd say it's an audacious, slimy bait-and-switch by liberal activists inside the government anti-poverty bureaucracy.
Of course, the activists and bueaucrats can only get away with it if the MSM cluelessly or deceptively reports the new "supplemental" numbers as if they were simply a more precise version of the regular poverty numbers.
(Mickey Kaus, "MSM falls for 'New Coke' poverty con," dailycaller.com, November 16, 2012)
This new definition is part of the left's long game. Old-fashioned poverty was once front and center in the left's claim of moral superiority and demand for power: give us your money and do as we say, so we can war against poverty.
In time poverty declined and it became increasingly clear that many, many folks under the poverty line had an impressive inventory of automobiles, flat-screen televisions, high-end telephones, and other consumer goods.
This helps explain by hot weather -- later global warming, later still global climate change -- claimed the lead role in the left's vision of its own moral superiority and claim to power. But that one is cooling off to, so to speak. So what to do?
Well, one solution is to invent poor people by adopting a new measuring stick.
The poverty bureaucrats are downplaying the change and its significance, and their technical explanations of how new numbers are calculated are, to be charitable, less than candid. Poverty experts out in the world, even those sympathetic to anti-poverty programs, are grousing.
The best way to falsify the new numbers, as more than one critic has pointed out, is to observe that Bangladesh comes out better than America because Bangladesh has less income inequality. And that's because almost everyone there is poor.
The Houston Chronicle joined the hallelujah chorus for the new poverty figures with a rah-rah AP story a few days ago. It reported that different numbers are being used, but took them at face value and cheered the change without explaining the issues it raises. (Hope Yen, Associated Press, "Census: New gauge shows high of 49.7M poor in US," houstonchronicle.com, November 14).
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