‘The best story in the world today’ is about free enterprise, not antipoverty programs

This week, the World Bank announced the historic news that extreme global poverty will drop below 10 percent this year for the first time in recorded history.

Self-congratulatory enthusiasm, typical among global elites, has ensued. In a press release about the news, the Bank’s president Jim Yong Kim called it “the best story in the world today,” and said, “These projections show us that we are the first generation in human history that can end extreme poverty.” By “we,” Mr. Kim is of course referring to elites in the “international community.”

Is Kim right? Was it the elites or was it something else?

Read more at AEI.org

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Energy Poverty Around the World

(Hat tip: KimR) - The global warming/climate change industry has been aggressively pushing renewable energy, wind, solar, and biofuels for a long time even though the economies of various industrialized countries need much more energy than what renewables generate. Read more at the Canada Free Press Read More......

Climate Alarmists Unnecessarily Condemn Poor to Continuing Energy Poverty

(Hat tip: KimR) - Poverty and energy poverty go hand in hand. It is estimated that three billion people [1] still rely on solid fuel (firewood, cornstalks, etc.) for cooking, which, according to the World Health Organization, causes four million deaths per year from the indoor air pollution. Read more at Read more at CNS News Read More......

Relief of Poverty: Four Centuries of Futility

More than 400 years ago, the British adopted the Poor Law system, under which local communities were made responsible for the relief of poverty. For the next four centuries the Poor Laws were amended again and again, as the following argument went to and fro: Was the system providing necessary relief or was it in various ways interfering with the natural workings of the labor market by subsidizing idleness and encouraging indolence.

Read more at Townhall.com
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A higher minimum wage doesn't reduce poverty, says ... the federal government

We reach the end of the year with yet another tale of crazy, one percenter wingnuts trying to claim that jacking up the minimum wage won’t do much to alleviate the issues facing the poorest Americans who the Democrats are seeking to help. This time the hateful claims are coming from... a study published by the federal government.

Read more at Hotair.com
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Try different tactic in fighting war on poverty

Printed in Corvallis Gazette-Times 7/8/2015 and titled "Behavioral economics can reduce poverty." Posting here, in case you missed it.
By Michael A. MacDowell - Insanity has often been defined as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome. While this statement is used for a variety of situations, perhaps it is nowhere better applied than in characterizing this country's numerous attempts to eradicate poverty. --In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson declared war on poverty. At the time, 14.7 percent of Americans were living below the poverty line, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Fast-forward to 2013, and 14.5 percent of our citizens were poor. --Jason Zweig of Money magazine says there are many reasons for the lack of progress in this ongoing battle. In a Wall Street Journal article, he shows that most antipoverty programs have not considered how people actually act.

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Obama Blames Rich People Like Him For The Country's Poor

Welfare: President Obama talked this week about poverty, a subject he should know a lot about, since he's done such a good job of expanding it. Instead, he offered only fact-challenged and badly misguided ideas. --Earlier this week, Obama was part of a panel discussion on poverty hosted by Georgetown University and attended by Catholics and evangelical Christians. --He started off OK. "I think we can all stipulate that the best anti-poverty program is a job," he said, and "we don't dispute that the free market is the greatest producer of wealth in history."

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The Inconvenient Truth about Ghetto Communities’ Social Breakdown

Among the many painful ironies in the current racial turmoil is that communities scattered across the country were disrupted by riots and looting because of the demonstrable lie that Michael Brown was shot in the back by a white policeman in Missouri — but there was not nearly as much turmoil created by the demonstrable fact that a fleeing black man was shot dead by a white policeman in South Carolina. Totally ignored was the fact that a black policeman in Alabama fatally shot an unarmed white teenager, and was cleared of any charges, at about the same time that a white policeman was cleared of charges in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown.

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Why America Cannot have an Honest Dialogue on Poverty and Race

When it comes to race in America, there is a lot of yelling, name calling, and finger pointing, but little in the way of honest dialogue. This is too bad because if there was ever an issue in need of honest dialogue, that issue is race. As a college professor, I witness this need on a daily basis at the retail level in face-to-face interactions with students. My classes are comprised of people of all races, many of whom come from poor and lower-middleclass backgrounds. Most of my students need to get a good education as an essential step toward building a better life. What I see in my classes are plenty of students who work hard and smart toward that end. Unfortunately, I also see students who are just passing through on their way to nowhere. The latter group is composed of students who work neither hard nor smart. In fact they hardly work at all. They appear to believe that an education is something that can be given to them and should be because they are entitled to it. Their attitude can be summarized in these words: “I paid the tuition—give me the degree.” I should add that entitled college students come in all races and both genders and rarely pay their own tuition.

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Unexpectedly: The New York Times discovers that many don’t have to work in the age of Obama

You already knew that Mitt Romney was right about just about everything.

He was right when he called Russia America’s “number one geopolitical foe.” With Moscow occupying sovereign foreign territory in Europe for the first time since 1989, and as American tanks and possibly even nuclear weapons are headed back to the European front, the 1980s called and they clearly got their foreign policy back.

He was right to warn about the expansion of Islamic extremists into formerly obscure places like Northern Mali. Despite being mocked by the unduly self-assured for his insistence that Islamic radicalism in North Africa was a threat to global security, France introduced troops into that country in 2013 at the behest of Mali’s president in order to quell the raging conflict between Islamist insurgents and government forces.  He was right about Detroit.

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Chart of the greatest and most remarkable achievement in human history, and one you probably never heard about

AEI: Everybody’s featuring their “graphs and charts of the year,” like The Atlantic and the Washington Post (be sure to see Vice-President Joe Biden’s “Graph of the Year” on Amtrak ridership). Well, the chart below could perhaps qualify as the “chart of the century” because it illustrates one of the most remarkable achievements in human history: the 80% reduction in world poverty in only 36 years, from 26.8% of the world’s population living on $1 or less (in 1987 dollars) in 1970 to only 5.4% in 2006. (Source: The 2009 NBER working paper “Parametric Estimations of the World Distribution of Income,” by economists Maxim Pinkovskiy (MIT) and Xavier Sala-i-Martin (Columbia University).

What accounts for this great achievement that you never hear about?

AEI president Arthur Brooks explains in the video below, summarized here:

It turns out that between 1970 and 2010 the worst poverty in the world – people who live on one dollar a day or less – has decreased by 80 percent (see chart above). You never hear about that.

It’s the greatest achievement in human history, and you never hear about it.

80 percent of the world’s worst poverty has been eradicated in less than 40 years. That has never, ever happened before.

So what did that? What accounts for that? United Nations? US foreign aid? The International Monetary Fund? Central planning? No.

It was globalization, free trade, the boom in international entrepreneurship. In short, it was the free enterprise system, American style, which is our gift to the world.

I will state, assert and defend the statement that if you love the poor, if you are a good Samaritan, you must stand for the free enterprise system, and you must defend it, not just for ourselves but for people around the world. It is the best anti-poverty measure ever invented.

Source: American Enterprise Institute
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Sowell: Two Different Worlds

Excerpt from Thomas Sowell's article, Two Different Worlds: Wealth is ultimately the only thing that can reduce poverty. The most dramatic reductions in poverty, in countries around the world, have come from increasing the amount of wealth, rather than from a redistribution of existing wealth. Read the full article at Townhall.com... Read More......

The Bad Luck President

By Dr. Milton R. Wolf at The Washington Times - America’s misfortune is nothing if not Obamanomics: [Excerpt] “Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded - here and there, now and then - are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as ‘bad luck.’“ ✧ Mr. President, you didn’t run into bad luck. You created it. ✧ America is indeed blessed, but it’s not by some accident that previous generations were able to create the most prosperous nation in the history of humankind. Our founding principles of constitutionally limited government, individual liberty and free-market capitalism have unleashed the powerful American engine of prosperity. This engine is fueled by individual players’ investments of labor and capital, and both are supplied directly in proportion to their confidence of realizing reward. Read more at the Washington Times...
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VDH: Behind the D.C. Slugfest

NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE/CORNER, Victor Davis Hanson - "Barack Obama will be remembered not so much for being the nation’s first African-American president, or even the man who ordered the killing of Osama bin Laden, or even for his Obamacare, but as the president who grew government the largest, ran up the largest deficits during any presidential tenure, and laid out most candidly and confidently the argument of why the United States is an intrinsically unfair society and how that must be remedied by government."

Read more at the Corner

Also: Astute comment by Robert Hanson Read More......

Top ten poverty cities

What do the top ten cities (over 250,000) with the highest poverty rate have in common?

1. Detroit, MI - 32.5% - hasn't elected a Republican mayor since 1961;
   
2. Buffalo, NY - 29.9% - hasn't elected one since 1954;
   
3. Cincinnati, OH - 27.8% - since 1984;
   
4. Cleveland, OH - 27.0% - since 1989;
   
5. Miami, FL - 26.9% - has never had a Republican mayor;
   
6. St. Louis, MO - 26/8% - since 1949;
   
7. El Paso , TX - 26.4% - has never had a Republican mayor;
   
8. Milwaukee, WI - 26.2% - since 1908;
   
9. Philadelphia, PA - 25.1% - since 1952;
   
10. Newark, NJ - 24.2% - since 1907.

Data Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2006 American Community Survey, August 2007

Einstein once said, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

It is the poor who habitually elect Democrats---yet they are still POOR.

"You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred. You cannot build character and courage by taking away people's initiative and independence. You cannot help people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves." -- Rev. William J. H. Boetcker, pamphlet writer, 1916

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Poverty & Inequality

MyHeritage.com, Hat tip: Jean Nelson

For most Americans, the word “poverty” suggests destitution: an inability to provide a family with nutritious food, clothing, and reasonable shelter. Advocates of the welfare state often urge large expansions of welfare spending to combat allegedly “widespread” poverty in America, yet only a small portion of the 37 million persons classified as “poor” by the Census Bureau fit that description. While real material hardship certainly does occur, it is much more limited in scope and severity than one might imagine. The typical American categorized as “poor” by the government has not only a refrigerator, a stove, and a washing machine, but also a car, home air conditioning, a microwave, a color TV, a VCR, and a stereo. His home is in good repair and is not overcrowded. He is able to obtain medical care. By his own report, his family is not hungry, and he had sufficient funds to meet his essential needs during the past year. This individual’s life is not opulent, but it is also far from the popular images of poverty conveyed by politicians, the press, and activists.

For 'Heritage Recommendations' and 'Facts and Figures' Read more...

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