Conservatives Viewpoint on Poverty

I found this interesting

I thought I would give conservatives the opportunity to explain/defend this quote above by a Libertarian. I am not denying or agreeing with it, BUT I am wanting to give conservatives here the opportunity to explain it, because I don't see what he is saying and perhaps need to be enlightened.

The Conservative View points:

1.When it comes to poverty. They do not ignore the problem.

2.They believe in empowering people. That is far from ignoring.

3.Keeping people dependent is not addressing poverty, it's ignoring it.

4.Denying assistance to those in poverty, is somehow a solution to not ignoring it.


So what have conservatives done to address poverty in America in the last 25 years? That is the theme question I would like conservatives to address for us, in the context of the four statements above on those in poverty, how you have not ignored the problem of poverty. The proof seems to be, we have people in poverty, so why have these conservative policies that didn't ignore poverty, still have people existing in poverty?


Refrain from blaming anybody else, and address what you think conservatives have done.

 

I would fight poverty by starting back up the Job Corps, which gives a kid who quit school a chance to earn a diploma, or a GED and also train him/her for a trade. They spend a half day in school and the other half learning a trade.

I'd also work with business, to start a training program for adults. Partly funded by the government.

I would have a work program for those on welfare and able to work, similar to what President Roosevelt had. There are plenty of things cities and states need done that they don't have the money to do that welfare people could do to pay for their welfare. Things like picking up trash and weeds from alleys, roadways and parks. Painting over graffiti on buildings and walls. Helping the old and disabled clean up their yards. Help rehabilitate abandon homes and buildings that are an eye sore. I think some that are using welfare and not wanting to work, would try finding jobs rather having to work for what welfare pays. I would even bus them out to farms to pick crops which would take care of our illegal problem of needing migrant farm workers. Farmers could pay the government.

We need to give people a chance to learn new skills and help get the dead beats off of welfare.

 

The first jump out of the box, the quick-thinking conservative's (neoconservative's) answer was to place blame, rather than state the right wing’s methods for dealing with the impoverished.

The libertarians have no blueprint for their imagined utopia, I have asked them many time for their solutions to what ails this nation, and like the conservatives and neoconservatives their only response is “smaller government and no regulations.”

As all Americans have seen, regulations have prevented the greedy from completely ruining the environment, stopped them from forcing employees to work under unsafe working conditions, and generally screwing over consumers.

Libertarians and conservatives/neoconservatives cannot understand the flaws in human nature that require laws that force ethical and civilized behavior. Even then the criminals find ways to circumvent these laws, Bank of America is a shining example of this, not to mention the crooks on Wall Street.

 

What you would do does not answer the OP's question. What the conservatives and neoconservatives have done in the past was the question, your response is irrelevant.

 

Here are two quick examples of the way Republicans have addressed poverty, they set the vultures on them by passing laws permitting ultra high interest rates on payday loans:

In Pennsylvania, which is one of 15 states that currently ban payday loan companies by capping interest rates at 24 percent, Republican legislators Chris Ross and Pat Browne have introduced a bill to lift that cap.

In Missouri, rates are now capped at 75 percent of the total loan — an effective annual interest rate of 1,950 percent for a two-week loan. Republican State Senator Mike Cunningham has introduced a bill to lift that limit — in a state where 2.34 million payday loans were issued in 2012.

 

Liberal policies don't seem to have helped much either.

 

Earned income tax credit that reduces poverty for workers more then the war on poverty had for a fraction of the cost. Kids from poor families that get to go to success academy charter schools have a bright future ahead of them. Speaking of bright futures in the south college is free because of bright future programs and paid for by lotto not taxes. Also we slashed their tax burden and fight job killing regulations and minimum wage hikes which adversely affect employment among the poor.

What have you done lately and any data it has worked?

 

Boasting about the completely ineffective conservative policies and what little, if any, success they have had in eliminating poverty should both embarrass and shame the braggarts. The miniscule efforts put forth by the right to help the unemployed, the underemployed, and all others living at or below the poverty level pale badly when compared to the conservative policies that have helped cause the massive increase in inequality of income. The Republicans have done more to force working Americans below the poverty line than any other political party.

Unfortunately, right-wingers are so blind to this, they gladly accept lower wages, loss of life savings, loss of their homes, and redistributing their own limited wealth into the pockets of the fat cats.

 

As asked in the very last sentence of the OP.

Refrain from blaming anybody else, and address what you think conservatives have done.

 

Not blaming anybody, just pointing out that there are no policies by either party that have reduced poverty. So there's no reason to point fingers at the right when the left has done no better. But since you insist, the GOP has in general tried to improve economic growth and job creation through their policies of lower tax rates, less regulation, and better schools through competition. I know many on the left totally reject these ideas, but nonetheless this is what conservatives believe these policies will reduce poverty. A rising tide lifts all boats.

 

How does "Earned income tax credit that reduces poverty for workers"?? Does it do anything for people in poverty who are jobless?

"bright futures in the south college" is a positive step. Are you sure that is a conservative program in Florida state?

How did "slashed their tax burden and fight job killing regulations and minimum wage hikes which adversely affect employment among the poor." help people in poverty? The following chart indicates the conservative policies failed.



http://flaglerlive.com/28148/florida-poverty-2010/

 

Yes it is a conservative program and a copy of the Georgia model, also republican.

They have more of their labor as after tax money then ever before. When you look at that chat you are looking at gross income, not net after taxes. If you look at net pay, after the EITC is counted 6.5 million lifted from poverty, a reduction of about 20%.

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=2505

Yes this program unlike others does not adversely affect the incentives of work. Democrat dependency initiatives pay people to make bad decisions. You can't get the EITC that way. In effect it removes a lot of the bad effects payroll taxes have on these people. Dems won't budge on that and demand the workers pay into their Ponzi scheme. This is the most regressive tax in history of course and the EITC has the affect of alleviating some of it by creating a negative income tax effect for some people on income tax since they are still getting nailed on their Ponzi scheme taxes like Medicare and social security.

Conservatives also stand as the only opposition to the culture of do what you do and screw who you screw. Marriage and stable family life is the fastest way to leave poverty. Poverty levels of black Americans in wedlock is in the single digits, comparable to whites and most of those are elderly couples forced to live on the meager returns social security provides. A fraction of what they would have received from the private market. With kids, 2 parent homes or engaged even if separated parents are the surest way to success later in life, especially if coupled with a college education not borne on the backs of workers. (Like bright futures programs)

 

Last year 17 republican governors expanded access to pre-school (https://www.ed.gov/news/speeches/top-ten-list-why-expansion-high-quality-early-learning-inevitable)

 

They've fought against never ending government dependency programs that keep people living in generational poverty DUH.

 

Yet, the article I attached states, "The national poverty rate is 15.1 percent, with 46.2 million people living in poverty."

The bottom line is Florida and the rest of the nation still have poverty, so the conservative policies didn't end poverty. But the policies didn't ignore poverty either. So in the last 25 years something was done on a small scale in Florida for college students and working poor.

 

No it doesn't answer the question, but it's a good part of the answer to poverty. Just throwing money at it as the Liberals have done for decades hasn't helped. It's only kept people in poverty with no answer of helping them out. It's only made the poor more dependent.

 

There is still poverty. DUH, those policies failed. Have you anything substantial you can show? I was hoping to see things accomplished at the National level as well, spotty things really do not hold much water in a 300 million population.

Please cut your generalities, DUH, they tell us nothing and add nothing to the thread.

 

Well, you can't make the poor more dependent, they live in poverty & they are poor. I could say that about anything, adds nothing here to the OP. The idea here is to go read the OP and answer it as best you can. And please notice that last sentence, this thread is not about liberals, please restrain yourself.

 

This has been the Liberal answer to helping the poor.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5tqH7UrzOw

 

Nobody has alleged that poverty has ended in this country and poverty will never end in this or any other country. You asked what have conservatives done to address poverty. There isn't even a clear consensus on the best way to measure poverty. I believe it was the Census that recently fundamentally changed its poverty measures going forward to account for non-income benefits with economic value like Adding the rental market value of a Section 8 into its occupant's income.

 

Food stamp spending "doubled under President Bush, doubled again under President Obama."

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/subjects/families/

 

Small scale? Every single kid that has the grades gets free college education. The thresholds aren't too high.

Vouchers and charters could be done on a grand scale but your party blocks it.

Retirement reform could be done on a grand scale but you will filibuster that too.

Your welfare disincentives make it hard to get people back to work. Wasnt it Obama dn Pelosi that said only 2 years on unemployment benefits was harsh?

For the full time working poor, the EITC has ended poverty.

Housing vouchers vs project homes give the poor a chance to raise their kids in safer an maintained homes when Dems don't corrupt those systems. Better security provided to slums when we can get there (Giuliani in NY) saves lives and lets kids live normal childhoods etc..

Everything positive and hopeful for poor Americans has always been pushed by republicans. The left pushes hopelessness, division, dependency, and dictates only.

 

As is seen in this thread like many others, the right wing's old refrain is that "throwing money at the poverty issue does not help." But, it has been the only method put forth by either party to keep masses of Americans from starving to death.

The idea of tax incentives for those with zero income is ridiculous. The expectations for those with zero income is zero improvement in their situations, and, despite the denial by conservatives and neoconservatives, it is nearly impossible to find work once an individual hits rock bottom and has lost everything. Right-wingers vehemently oppose spending for any program that would house, train, and find employment for these millions of Americans, or any other true solution as these programs would be too expensive.

The problem the long term unemployed face is the reluctance of human resource interviewers to hire those that have run out the unemployment benefits. It is not lack of skill or unwillingness to work on the part of the unemployed, as believed by right-wingers. This is especially true for the unemployed over fifty-years-old, they have basically aged out of the labor market. Many of these older workers are forced to take minimum wage jobs to survive, and with their decades of experience, these workers are hardly the lazy, ignorant fools as believed by conservatives and neoconservatives that deserve no more than minimum.

The Tea-publicans, even more than the rank-and-file Republican voters, are wholeheartedly behind abandoning all Americans without jobs or with jobs that pay below poverty wages.

The cost for military families that depend on food stamps has risen from $26.2 million in 2006 to $103.6 million in 2013. Now, are you right-wingers going to call our brave troops, fighting for your freedom in Afghanistan, lazy moochers? Or, are they exempt from your usual ridicule?

No, the conservatives, neoconservatives, Republicans, and the Tea Party have absolutely no workable solutions to address the growing poverty in this country. The only redistribution of wealth they support is the exponential increase of income inequality. Even as they, themselves fall further and further behind, some slipping below the poverty line due to the policies they so strongly advocate.

 

So liberal programs, including the War on Poverty, have been in effect for decades, and, yet, the rate of poverty, after declining precipitously up until 1967 is now higher than when the major anti-poverty programs began. So how have your poverty programs helped the problem? Do you need more trillions to spend?

 

Why won't poverty end? Is it we cannot do enough to end poverty? Or we cannot set a standard for what poverty is?


How has "account for non-income benefits with economic value" changed poverty? What conservative policies created it.