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This is one of the stories deemed undercovered.
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The most undercovered story of this year is one that goes virtually ignored year after year: the fact that poverty would be nearly twice as high without our safety net. It was overlooked last year, and it was missed again this year too, when we learned that 38 million people escaped poverty thanks to public investments. (It is a mystery as to how this figure was calculated. The poverty rate is currently 13.5%, which means 44,550,000 are under the poverty line. The author suggests that 38 million are not in poverty because of government programs, so that means less than half of the poor are not poor now.
This is one of the stories deemed undercovered.
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The most undercovered story of this year is one that goes virtually ignored year after year: the fact that poverty would be nearly twice as high without our safety net. It was overlooked last year, and it was missed again this year too, when we learned that 38 million people escaped poverty thanks to public investments. (It is a mystery as to how this figure was calculated. The poverty rate is currently 13.5%, which means 44,550,000 are under the poverty line. The author suggests that 38 million are not in poverty because of government programs, so that means less than half of the poor are not poor now.
The poverty rate history is as follows:
The obvious question is, how is it possible that anti-poverty programs have had any impact at all on poverty, if the poverty rate is steady at around +/-12% year after year? And why has there been no change in the poverty rate despite the explosion in federal spending on anti-poverty programs?
The author's supplied link suggests that government programs like SNAP [$74.1 billion], SSI [$58.8 billion], federal housing assistance [$50 billion], the Earned Income Tax Credit [$69 billion], and the Child Tax Credit [$57 billion] deserve the credit for this feat. Just these programs total $308.9 billion, and they're only a part of what government does. There's also $646 billion for Medicaid. $39 billion for unemployment, $107.8 billion for food assistance, plus a plethora of state and local government programs.
Total? $1101.7 billion per year, just at the federal level! So, if 38 million people were lifted out of poverty, that means $29,134 was spent on each one. There are 136,080,353 taxpayers in the U.S., which means the average cost per taxpayer is $8095 per year!
This is the author's definition of success.)
When we hear politicians talk about “government,” it is often as a distant bureaucracy — the IRS “taking your tax dollars” or the bloated Pentagon budget. Lost in the conversation are the millions of people who receive services or assistance that they cannot obtain through the private sector. This includes everything from Social Security to food stamps to rental assistance to Head Start to school lunch programs.
For the tens of millions of people who escaped poverty last year, these are more than just government programs. They are a hot meal for your family when your low-wage job isn’t enough to make ends meet, or paying rent at the end of the month instead of facing eviction. When the media ignores these individual stories — and the larger one about the success of our anti-poverty programs — it directly contributes to the right’s ability to demonize government and people who are struggling.
This failure in reporting is especially dangerous at a moment when anti-poverty investments are the part of “government” most threatened by the incoming Trump administration.
To fund his tax breaks, Trump has proposed massive cuts to these public investments —threatening to increase poverty at a time of Gilded Age-like inequality. By 2026, funding would be cut by more than $200 billion — one-third below the previous record low for non-defense spending as a share of the economy.
When it comes to the media’s failure to report this story, the gravest consequences are borne by those who are already struggling.
— Greg Kaufmann, editor, TalkPoverty.org and Jeremy Slevin, associate director of advocacy, poverty to prosperity program, Center for American Progress
When we hear politicians talk about “government,” it is often as a distant bureaucracy — the IRS “taking your tax dollars” or the bloated Pentagon budget. Lost in the conversation are the millions of people who receive services or assistance that they cannot obtain through the private sector. This includes everything from Social Security to food stamps to rental assistance to Head Start to school lunch programs.
For the tens of millions of people who escaped poverty last year, these are more than just government programs. They are a hot meal for your family when your low-wage job isn’t enough to make ends meet, or paying rent at the end of the month instead of facing eviction. When the media ignores these individual stories — and the larger one about the success of our anti-poverty programs — it directly contributes to the right’s ability to demonize government and people who are struggling.
This failure in reporting is especially dangerous at a moment when anti-poverty investments are the part of “government” most threatened by the incoming Trump administration.
To fund his tax breaks, Trump has proposed massive cuts to these public investments —threatening to increase poverty at a time of Gilded Age-like inequality. By 2026, funding would be cut by more than $200 billion — one-third below the previous record low for non-defense spending as a share of the economy.
When it comes to the media’s failure to report this story, the gravest consequences are borne by those who are already struggling.
— Greg Kaufmann, editor, TalkPoverty.org and Jeremy Slevin, associate director of advocacy, poverty to prosperity program, Center for American Progress
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