There was a story last week that nearly got away from me, and after I read it I wish it had.
The Indianapolis media reported on a 43-year old woman was who attacked at an Eastside hotel by a man who was the father of some of her 20 children.
Yes, that’s right, 20 kids and he fathered some of them.
I will spare you the details of the story but suffice it to say when the cops showed up it was 4 a.m., she was also drunk and pregnant with child number 21.
The woman had 20 kids. Are you kidding me? The only thing worse than this woman’s uterus being the functional equivalent of a clown car, is the fact, which I am willing to bet my Superman comics and Davidoff cigars, that she was not footing the bill for her brood – we were.
You all have figured out by now that I have one heck of a social libertarian streak and I frankly don’t care what consenting adults do in the privacy of their own homes, until it either encroaches on my property or costs me money.
The fact this woman had 20 kids, was working on lucky number 21, was drunk and probably trying to hook up one of her babies daddies, is pretty clear evidence that she has likely already cost us money and somehow I get the sneaking suspicion that some of her children will be encroaching on our properties in the form of a residential burglary or car break in.
Now while this may not be typical of someone living in poverty, you have to admit, the way we fight poverty in this country has not been working.
Fifty years ago last week the federal government declared war on poverty. A half-century later, what do we have to show for it? How about more people living in poverty.
Don’t believe me? No problem. It’s simple math.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 1964 when the “War on Poverty” began, we had 36 million people living in poverty. Today, that number is 46.5 million. So after spending what some have estimated is about $15 trillion over 50 years, all we have to show for it is more poor people.
In fact, in 2012, we spent more than $1 trillion fighting poverty, which is tantamount to writing each man, woman, child and hermaphrodite a check for about $22,000 and telling them to have at it. Sometimes I think that would actually be more efficient than the way the federal government does it currently.
Now this is the point in the program where my liberal and progressive friends yell and scream that I am being intellectually dishonest because the rate of people living in poverty has fallen since 1964. Fair enough, but hear me out.
In 1964 the poverty rate for the United States was about 19 percent, today it’s 15 percent. Actually, it’s averaged about 15 percent since the 1980s. And if I really wanted to be a four-letter word that rhymes with “stick,” I’d point out that even before the “War on Poverty” began, from 1959-1964 the rate dropped from 22 percent to 19 percent, so it was already falling without spending some ridiculous amount of your tax dollars. So once again, trillions of dollars spent and the needle doesn’t move much.
Actually, what does appear to move the needle is economic growth. From 1983 to 1989 the poverty rate fell from 15 to 13 percent. And from 1994 to 2000 the rate fell from 15 to 11 percent. If you remember your U.S. history, these were both periods of strong economic growth. These were also periods where we either cut taxes and reduced federal regulation (the 1980s) or we cut down our deficit through tax increases and reduced spending (the 1990s) both of those led to healthy economies.
So maybe our cure to deal with poverty isn’t more government programs, but creating an environment where economies can thrive? That seems a lot more reasonable and I think you can do it for a lot cheaper than $15 trillion and some change.
Abdul-Hakim Shabazz is an attorney, political commentator and publisher of IndyPolitics.org. You can email comments to him at abdul@indypolitics.org.
