Washington Post: President Obama's Poverty Rate Measure Fails, Could Kick Poverty Up 30 Percent

Washington Post: President Obama's poverty rate measure is misleading and fails to the test of "political neutrality.

Who is poor in America? That's the question Washington Post columnist Robert J. Samuelson is asking in his Op-Ed piece, "Why Obama's Poverty Rate Measure Misleads." It fails the test of "political neutrality" miserably and is based on "misleading statistics that not one American in 100,000 could possibly understand." Why? Because the new calculation being use would measure poverty on a sliding scale. Therefore, if the average income of families in the U.S.A. increases, the poverty threshold increases as well. The reality is that this measure will provide the perfect excuse for left-leaning politicians to promote equalization of wealth through redistribution. At least that's how I see it. The measure would kick poverty up 30 percent.

Who is poor in America? This is not an easy question to answer, and the Obama administration would make it harder. It's hard because there's no conclusive definition of poverty. Low income matters, though how low is unclear. Poverty is also a mind-set that fosters self-defeating behavior -- bad work habits, family breakdown, out-of-wedlock births and addictions. Finally, poverty results from lousy luck: accidents, job losses, disability.

Despite poverty's messiness, we've tended to measure progress against it by a single statistic, the federal poverty line. It was originally designed in the early 1960s by Mollie Orshansky, an analyst at the Social Security Administration, and became part of Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty. She took the Agriculture Department's estimated cost for a bare-bones -- but adequate -- diet and multiplied it by three. That figure is adjusted annually for inflation. In 2008, the poverty threshold was $21,834 for a four-member family with two children under 18. Source

I guess the real issue for me, as a taxpayer, is how much will the government aid those who aren't really poor. It seems that the Obama administration is defining poverty up. The economic climate is a tough one, that has literally tore through the middle class like a Cat 5 tornado, but still, one has to ask how much aid should be given to the poor, many of which are illegal immigrants? Wouldn't it be better for the administration to help with job creation?