The poverty rate was 12.7 percent in 2004, up from 12.5 percent the year before. In the last year of the supposedly halcyon 1950s, the poor constituted 22.5 percent of the U.S. population. Since then, the first year of such calculations, the official poverty rate never has fallen below 11.1 percent. However, the statistics cannot reveal how many Americans are poor because of bad judgment. We do know that among people in families headed by women with no husband present, the poverty rate is 30.5 percent. To be clear, poverty is not destitution. The number who chronically don’t have sufficient food, clothing and shelter is rather small. People transition in and out of poverty; chronic poverty, not necessarily destitution, is actually less prevalent than imagined — perhaps 2 percent to 4 percent. Likewise, poverty measures do not factor into income the value of food stamps, housing subsidies, transportation subsidies, tax credits and medical benefits from Medicare and Medicaid. Regularly received private charity is counted, but sporadic private charity is not. That life is hard and insecure for millions of Americans is beyond doubt. But life is not as bad — generally — as the government-is-the-answer Left would have us imagine. And as the government does not create wealth, the answer lies with less-expensive government, freeing the private sector to create more and better jobs.

---

Copyright ©2026— Trib Total Media, LLC (TribLIVE.com)

---