What I Bet You Don’t Know about Poverty, Inequality and the Role of Government

Here are five surprising facts:

* The U.S. welfare state has almost eliminated poverty in this country.

* Over the last 75 years, income inequality has actually gone down, not up.

* Since the end of World War II, income has steadily risen for every income group—with the greatest increase among the bottom fifth of the income ladder.

* Over half of the population gains very little from working under the U.S. fiscal system—as taxable income replaces untaxed transfer benefits.

* The U.S. has the most progressive fiscal system among all developed countries.

For an impeccably researched book that backs up these findings with overwhelming evidence, consult The Myth of American Inequality by Phil Gramm (the former U.S. senator), Robert Ekelund, and John Early (hereinafter, GEE).

Let’s take a closer look.

Poverty. Ronald Reagan notably said, “We fought a war on poverty and poverty won.” If you follow Census Bureau statistics—at least the ones prominently reported in newspapers—you would be inclined to agree with him.

Here’s the problem. In its standard measure of income, the Census Bureau includes only 8 of more than 100 federal transfer programs. Among the benefits it excludes are refundable tax credits, food stamps, Medicare and Medicaid.

Over the past 50 years, the value of taxpayer-funded transfer payments to the poorest 20 percent of American households has risen from an average of $9,677 to $45,389 in real terms. Counting these transfer payments dollar-for-dollar as income, GEE estimate the true poverty rate in the United States is 2.5 percent.

This 2.5 percent, by the way, includes people with mental illness, drug addictions and other problems that are unlikely to be solved by more food stamps or other entitlement spending.

How did GEE discover these facts? They didn’t go out and conduct an alternative census. Instead, they rely on data the Census Bureau has been collecting for many years. They simply present them in a more reasonable way.

Inequality. Are the rich getting richer while the well-being of everyone else is stagnating? You might be inclined to think so if you only read Census Bureau press releases. But in measuring inequality, the Bureau leaves out two-thirds of all government transfer payments enjoyed by those at the bottom of the income ladder and also ignores taxes collected from those at the top.

This means the Census Bureau ignores 40 percent of all income that is gained in transfer payments and lost in taxes.

Whereas the Census Bureau tells us the income difference between the top 20 percent of households and the bottom 20 percent is 16.7 to 1, if you throw in transfers and taxes, the difference is only 4 to 1. Whereas the Census Bureau tells us that inequality (as technically measured by a Gini coefficient) has been rising over time, GEE find that it has actually fallen by 3 percent since 1947.

Income growth. The U.S. government uses five different price indexes for various purposes. Unfortunately, the ones used to measure such items as hourly earnings and household income are the least accurate and as much as a decade out of date.

GEE show that using the best measure of inflation (and taking account of transfers and taxes), all five income groups have experienced substantial real income growth over the past 75 years—roughly quadrupling, on average. The greatest growth in real income is among the bottom fifth of households (681 percent)—much more than for those in the top fifth (456 percent).

Welfare vs. work. While it may be comforting to know that the actual poverty rate is so low, it has come at a significant cost: Welfare has been substituting for work.

Since the War on Poverty started in 1965, the labor force participation of the bottom one-fifth of households—who now receive more than 90 percent of their income from government—has dropped from 70 percent to 36 percent.

It’s not hard to understand why. GEE adjust for taxes, transfers and the number of people living in each household. Then they divide household into quintiles, based on earned income. The finding: the bottom fifth of households, based on earned income, had an average income of $33,653 per capita. The second and middle fifths, based on earned income, had $29,497 and $32,574, respectively.

Those with the least earned income had more actual income than those in the next two higher quintiles! That is, the average household in the bottom fifth (based on earned income) received 14 percent more income than the average second-fifth household and 3.3 percent more than the average middle-income household.

International comparisons. A common assumption on the left is that the welfare states of Europe are more progressive than the U.S. system. While it is true that a typical European country has more social insurance than we have, those programs are not mainly paid for by taxing the rich. They are paid for by taxing the beneficiaries.

Compared to our country, Europeans (especially northern Europeans) have fewer private goods and more social insurance.

GEE note that the top 10 percent of American households earn about 33 percent of all earned income but pay 45.1 percent of all income and payroll taxes. That progressivity ratio of 1.35 is far higher than in any other country. The ratio is 1.10 in France, 1.07 in Germany, and 1.0 in Sweden.

So, in 2015 the top 10 percent of earners in the U.S. paid 45 percent of all income taxes. That contrasts with 28 percent in France, 31 percent in Germany and 27 percent in Sweden. Conversely, the bottom 90 percent of earners in the U.S. paid just 55 percent of all taxes, compared with 72 percent in France, 69 percent in Germany and 73 percent in Sweden.

Moreover, after the GEE research was completed, a newer study found that the U.S. welfare state is actually larger than the European welfare states. The study concludes that “the U.S. redistributes a greater share of national income to low-income groups than any European country."

In reflecting on the importance of their study, GEE draw our attention to an observation attributed to Mark Twain: “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know that ain’t so.”

https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14322&omhide=true&trk=rm

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The antidemocratic Left

Voting has long been one of the privileges of American citizenship, but perhaps not for much longer. Left-wing activists are going all-in with their demands to let noncitizens vote, and Washington, D.C., just took up the charge.

The D.C. City Council advanced a bill to let anyone vote in local elections, regardless of citizenship and immigration status, as long as they live in the city for just 30 days.

The measure is so extreme, even the reliably liberal Washington Post editorial board called it “radical.”

If Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser signs the Local Resident Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2022, an estimated 50,000 noncitizen residents—including those here illegally—would be free to cast ballots in local elections.

But that’s not all. As the Post pointed out, there is nothing in the measure “to prevent employees at embassies of governments that are openly hostile to the United States from casting ballots. Or foreign students who are studying abroad in Washington for a semester.” There you have it: Our nation’s capital is ready to hand ballots to people working against our nation’s interests.

Why is the district taking this reckless step? Pure politics.

The Left is looking for ways to shift the country’s politics by fundamentally changing who can vote. Even the Post concedes that “progressives hope that reshaping the electorate will allow them to reshape local politics, prodding [D.C.] further to the left on issues such as rent control and spending on social programs.”

D.C. is hardly the only place where the Left has realized the power that can be gained by changing the electorate. Under the euphemistic tag line of “expanding democracy,” left-wing activists across the country are working to hand the vote to imprisoned felons, children, and noncitizens—all groups they calculate are more likely to be liberal. After all, why let the people choose their government when you can have the government choose its people?

And there are plenty to choose from. Consider that over 5 million illegal immigrants have entered the United States in just the two years since President Joe Biden was elected. Enfranchising them in local races creates a powerful perverse incentivize for politicians to excuse, or even demand, an ongoing humanitarian crisis on the border so long as it feeds a steady stream of transient voters willing to back a far-left agenda.

When the Left is accused of backing open borders for the prospect of new voters, they of course retort that it is illegal for any noncitizen to vote in federal elections. True enough, but races for Congress or the White House are hardly the only ones that matter.

Americans have seen firsthand the great damage that can be done when the woke Left captures school boards and town councils. As the old saying goes, all politics is local.

At least 15 municipalities nationally have enfranchised noncitizens to vote in local races, including major cities like San Francisco and New York. The Big Apple’s law is virtually identical to Washington’s pending measure: Anyone in the city for 30 days can vote, including illegal aliens.

That measure was challenged in court, and earlier this year a New York Supreme Court judge struck it down for violating the state constitution. Had it gone into effect, 800,000 noncitizens would have been handed the vote in New York City.

Unlike those other cities, however, Washington is a federal district answerable directly to Congress. Under the Constitution and the D.C. Home Rule Act, Congress can block bills passed and cleared by the City Council and mayor.

The question is, will it?

Conservative lawmakers in the House have denounced the measure, while Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., has already pledged a resolution to overturn it. “Allowing illegal immigrants to vote is an insult to every voter in America,” he said. “Every single Democrat should be on the record about whether they support this insane policy.”

Absolutely. The American people deserve to know where their leaders stand on an issue this important. For two years, Democrats in Congress preached about the need to “save democracy.”

Now, with the nation’s capital city preparing to hand the vote to illegal aliens and foreign operatives, will they stand up for fair and honest elections? Or will they look the other way while progressives erode the foundations of our republic?

As long as Democrats control Congress, expect the latter, even though polling shows that only 9% of Americans think noncitizens should be able to vote.

Perhaps there is a silver lining, though. Washington, D.C., is showing the modern Left’s true colors. The Left believes that democracy belongs to them. The rest of just live in it.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/10/31/a-disturbing-movement-is-picking-up-steam-on-the-left-letting-noncitizens-vote/

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Another colossal Democrat lie

Each December, the Poynter Institute's fact-checking website PolitiFact singles out one political statement as its "Lie of the Year." According to the site's editor, the term is reserved for "the most harmful and egregious falsehood we've seen after a year of fact-checking." In 2021, PolitiFact applied the label to the campaign to whitewash the Jan. 6 Trump-instigated riot at the Capitol. Previous "Lies of Year" included claims that the Parkland, Fla., high school massacre was a hoax (2018), wild exaggerations about the Ebola virus (2014), and Barack Obama's constant assurance that no one's health insurance would be canceled if the Affordable Care Act were passed (2013).

As PolitiFact considers which falsehood to spotlight for 2022, its researchers might want to focus on the election in Georgia, where early voting in the general election got underway on Oct. 17.

Georgia voters have been smashing turnout records. As of Tuesday morning, more than 1.8 million early ballots had been cast. At the same point in the 2018 midterm elections, just 1.3 million people had voted. Black voter turnout has been especially strong. In a press release on Oct. 21, the advocacy group Black Votes Matter exulted: "Black Voters in Georgia have done it again!" Approximately 30 percent of the ballots cast to date have come from Black voters — proof, the release cheered, that "Black voters are deeply engaged in this election cycle."

To anyone who heeded the words of liberals and Democrats from President Biden on down, this must come as a jaw-dropping surprise. Georgia's election is being conducted under new voting rules enacted by the Legislature and signed by Governor Brian Kemp last year — a law that a deafening chorus insisted over and over was designed to restrict voters' ability to vote and to disenfranchise Black citizens. Again and again, Georgia's law was characterized as a racist scheme to reimpose the antidemocratic bigotry of the pre-civil rights South.

Republican lawmakers in Georgia, asserted an essay published by the Brookings Institution, were "taking their cues from the old white supremacy playbook, which teaches: If you can't win fair and square, then suppress the vote." That accusation was repeated endlessly over the airwaves, on editorial pages, and in corporate boardrooms. Even Major League Baseball jumped on the bandwagon, stripping Atlanta of the All-Star Game to demonstrate opposition to the new law.

But the most influential denunciation of Georgia's revised election rules came from the American with the biggest bully pulpit. On numerous occasions in 2021, Biden castigated the new law as a "21st century Jim Crow assault" or "Jim Crow on steroids." In January, he traveled to Georgia and tore into the Republicans who had passed the measure as the equivalent of "Bull Connor" and "Jefferson Davis."

Before an audience in Atlanta, Biden declared that "Jim Crow 2.0 is about two insidious things: voter suppression and election subversion." Georgia's election reforms were "designed to suppress your vote," he declared. "It's not hyperbole; this is a fact."

But it wasn't a fact. It was a falsehood — a falsehood so harmful and egregious that it ought to be a candidate for PolitiFact's highest mark of dishonor.

Notwithstanding the tsunami of invective, those who took the trouble to analyze Georgia's voting changes knew they were intended to boost, not suppress, participation in elections. "This new law will expand voting access in the Peach State," Kemp predicted at the signing ceremony. Sure enough, when Georgians voted in their state's primary in May, the early voting turnout broke every previous record. That didn't silence the "Jim Crow" accusers, who maintained that high turnout in a primary proved little, since Republicans' suppression tactics were crafted with the general election in mind.

Well, Georgia's general election is here and voter enthusiasm is again off the charts. Allegations that voters were thwarted have again proven false. Just days before early balloting commenced, US District Judge Steve Jones issued a sweeping judgment against Stacey Abrams, the Democrats' nominee for governor in Georgia's last two elections. Abrams, who claimed she was robbed of victory in 2018 by nefarious racist Republican machinations, took her charges to federal court. In a lengthy Sept. 30 ruling, Jones — who is Black, a Democrat, and an Obama appointee — found that Abrams's charges were without merit and that there had been no unlawful voter suppression in Georgia.

"Jim Crow 2.0" was a lie. So was "Jim Crow on steroids." Democracy is alive and well in Georgia, as throngs of early voters, white and Black alike, are proving. The state's governor and lawmakers are entitled to an apology. They probably shouldn't hold their breath waiting.

https://jeffjacoby.com/26533/jim-crow-20-was-the-lie-of-the-year

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True the Vote’s Engelbrecht and Phillips Jailed For Fighting For Election Integrity

True the Vote’s Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips are sitting jail today for defying two of the Uniparty’s most sacred commandments: “Thou shalt not expose Red China for the existential enemy that it is,” and, “Thou shalt not expose the intentional security failures of America’s election process.”

Ms. Engelbrecht and Mr. Phillips didn’t set out to tear down those two Shibboleths of America’s political establishment, but by exposing the fact that Konnech, an election software company, had stored confidential American poll worker data on a server in Red China, they managed to break news that got the company’s CEO arrested and, most astonishingly, themselves thrown in jail.

The Texas Tribune reports the Konnech’s founder and CEO, Eugene Yu, is facing felony charges of grand theft by embezzlement and conspiracy to commit a crime. The Los Angeles district attorney’s office said Yu and Konnech violated the company’s contract with Los Angeles County by illegally giving contractors in Red China access to data that was supposed to be stored only in the United States. Yu has filed a motion to dismiss the charges, arguing that even if the charges are true, they aren’t criminal. Los Angeles prosecutors have acknowledged receiving an early tip from Phillips.

Konnech, the election management software company whose CEO got busted, filed a federal lawsuit in September alleging that True the Vote’s viral social media campaign targeting Mr. Yu, led to personal threats to him and his family and damaged his company’s business.

Now, here’s where things go off the rails.

As part of this suit Konnech’s attorneys pressed Phillips for additional information about what Phillips claimed was an hourslong Konnech research session in Dallas back in 2021. On the stand, Phillips revealed that another “analyst” was present in the room when True the Vote was allegedly offered evidence he’d uncovered about Konnech, showing the company had stored American poll worker data on a server in China.

Phillips, and later Ms. Engelbrecht, refused to divulge the name of their source claiming he was in danger from “drug cartels” and was a confidential law enforcement informant.

So, just so we get this clear, Konnech isn’t denying they stored the sensitive confidential poll worker data in Communist China, and gave Communist Chinese citizens access to it, they are arguing their actions were not criminal.

So, if the True the Vote information was true, and admitted by Konnech, where’s the defamation?

Well, you’d have to be a lawyer for Konnech or U.S. District Judge Kenneth Hoyt to answer that question.

Judge Hoyt has allowed the suit to proceed and ruled that Engelbrecht and Phillips must reveal their source, which they have refused to do, thereby earning them a contempt of court citation and ticket to the Graybar Hotel from Judge Hoyt.

True the Vote’s attorney Michael Wynne entered more than two dozen pages of evidence onto the record late Friday night, including dozens of text messages between Engelbrecht and individuals True the Vote has claimed are FBI agents. They also included two affidavits from Phillips and Engelbrecht and details of Yu’s arrest in Los Angeles.

Hoyt, a Ronald Reagan nominee, was unmoved by the submission, calling it irrelevant given its failure to identify the confidential source, reported the Texas Tribune.

In a recent “Secure Freedom Minute” our friend Frank Gaffney explained the practical effect of Judge Hoyt capriciously locking up True the Vote’s Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips is to prevent them from warning of an ominous prospect: Communist China may be able to exploit access given to sensitive electoral data by the indicted CEO of Konnech Inc. to affect our midterms a week from today.

Suppressing such information could make a difference in turnout and outcomes, just as preventing voters from knowing the truth about Hunter Biden’s laptop did in the 2020 presidential race. That would make Judge Hoyt’s arbitrary decision tantamount to election interference.

How this will pan-out and how long Engelbrecht and Phillips will remain in jail remains to be seen. In the meantime we are left wondering why an obscure federal judge in Houston is protecting what could be a major vehicle for Chinese Communists to penetrate the security of American elections.

https://www.conservativehq.org/post/true-the-vote-s-engelbrecht-and-phillips-jailed-for-fighting-for-election-integrity

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Australia: Childcare sector ramps up calls for higher wages as pre-schools forced to turn kids away

There is an alternative to hitting the taxpayer over this. There are ferocious regulations governing childcare. Reduced regulation would allow more people to enter the field and reduce the numbers required to run a childcare service

More Australian parents could soon be forced to stay at home and not go to work as childcare centres face staff shortages.

Childcare operators fear the situation will get worse next year when the government's new childcare subsidies begin.

Community Early Learning Australia CEO Michele Carnegie said the policy, which she supports, will make more parents want child care and put pressure on an already struggling system.

"If [job] vacancies continue to grow at this rate, we estimate that there will be over 10,000 vacancies by July 2023," she said.

"This [the new childcare subsidies] will see an increase in demand for child care that simply will not be matched by workforce supply."

The government says the subsidies will ease cost of living pressures and help the economy, because cheaper child care will allow an extra 37,000 parents to take on a full-time job.

However Ms Carneige asked how that figure could be reached with the childcare worker shortage.

"The risk is that parents are going to be subjected to really long waiting lists, they're going to be subjected to the vulnerability of not knowing whether or not today's the day when their child is going to be able to access early education and care," she said.

"This is absolutely going to be impacting their ability to fully participate in the workforce."

Goodstart Early Learning, which is Australia's largest provider of early learning and care, has been struggling to recruit staff in recent years.

Its advocacy manager John Cherry said a lack of workers stops parents from being able to hold down full-time jobs.

"Every [staff] vacancy that we have is up to 15 families effected. The flow on economic consequences is profound," he said.

'Leaky bucket'

Narelle Myers is the director of Bermagui Preschool on the far south coast of New South Wales. She said the sector has dramatically changed over the past few years. "I've been there for over 20 years, we have always had long term staff," she said.

"But that all changed in 2020, we were impacted by bushfires, then COVID… also the housing crisis… we have actually had a turnover of about 36 staff in the last two years."

Mr Cherry said his centres were turning away children because they do not have enough workers to care for them.

"This has never happened before in Goodstart's history," he told a parliamentary inquiry earlier this week.

"Over the last two years up to 80 and 100 centres each week are enrolment capped because we can't find enough staff.

"It is mad and crazy for an organisation like ours, desperate to increase our occupancy, that we can't increase our occupancy because we can't find enough staff," he said.

United Workers Union executive director of early education Helen Gibbons said these stories were all too familiar.

"We have a leaky bucket in early education," she said. "We are struggling to attract people to work in the sector, but we're also having people leave daily."

Wages a key problem

Early childhood educators have long citied low pay as a reason for leaving the sector. Ms Gibbons said wages must be addressed to attract and keep more workers. "The elephant in the room is the wages of early educators, they're appallingly low."

Ms Myers said she pays her staff above award rates but still can't compete with other industries.

"We have lost so many staff who have gone to work in the primary school system… a lot of our staff have left to care for clients on the NDIS and they are getting paid over $60 an hour to work with one client," she said. "We can't compete with that."

Ms Gibbons said the government's proposed changes to multi-employer bargaining could be game-changing.

"I think the sector is really embracing the idea of multi-employer bargaining and I've heard a number of providers talk really positively about it," she said.

"The only question mark is, how quickly can we get it done because we want to see educators' wages lift as quickly as possible."

Both Goodstart and Community Early Learning Australia want the government to provide a wage subsidy in the short term.

Ms Carnegie said better pay is needed before the new childcare subsidies are introduced in July to avoid more workforce shortages.

"This will impact on retention of our existing qualified workforce and encourage more people to choose to be part of an incredibly rewarding career in early education," she said.

"An increase in remuneration will need to be funded by government, otherwise the cost will be passed on to parents through increased fees.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-11-03/child-care-is-cheaper-but-the-workers-arent-there/101608292

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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