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1/ Seeing the clip of Mike Pence today complaining that Democrats want to make poor people more comfortable (as if that’s a bad thing) reminded me how powerful anti-poor folks stereotypes are in this country, especially about poor folks of color and Black folks in particular...
2/ A common claim is that poor people (especially if Black) are sitting around collecting checks from the government. Bullshit. The most recent data shows only 2 million people in the entire U.S. getting “welfare checks.” Cash aid has been basically ended since the mid 90s...
3/ Of the 2m receiving cash aid under TANF (formerly AFDC), 29% are Black. So, 580k Black folks receiving cash aid out of 40m Black folk in all, and 7.5m Black folk in poverty. That’s 1.5% of Black folk and <8% of the Black poor receiving cash aid.
https://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/documents/ofa/fy19_characteristics_final.pdf...
https://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/documents/ofa/fy19_characteristics_final.pdf...
4/ Of the 2m people getting cash aid overall, only about 437k are adults. 31% of these are black. This means there are 135k Black adults in the entire U.S. receiving cash assistance. Out of 29m Black adults in all. That’s 0.047, or <1/2 of 1% of Black adults...
5/ I want to repeat that: less than 1/2 of 1 percent of Black adults in the U.S. are receiving cash assistance from the government. Put another way, 99.53 percent of Black adults in this country are NOT. Neither are 92% of all Black folks including kids...
6/ Let me say it in the form of a quiz for your friends & family.
U of M stadium seats the most of any in the US (108k). If we filled it to capacity w/Black adults randomly from around the country on 12/31 how many would have received cash welfare this year? The answer: 508...
U of M stadium seats the most of any in the US (108k). If we filled it to capacity w/Black adults randomly from around the country on 12/31 how many would have received cash welfare this year? The answer: 508...
7/ My guess is that if people were asked that question, and had to guess correctly within a factor of 20 or else be shot in the head, the death toll from COVID would look like a day at the beach by comparison...
8/ And yes, I know the snappy comeback: well yeah but they get food stamps (SNAP) & public housing and free health care! Well, although most who get TANF also get SNAP averaging $1.33 per person per meal, the combined value of cash & SNAP is <1/2 poverty line in 49 of 50 states..
9/ ...and although 80% who get TANF also get SNAP, <8% who get SNAP get TANF. They're mostly different people. Only 1 in 10 who get checks get subsidized housing of any kind (and btw those who get housing aid still pay 28-32% of their income in rent each month…it’s not free)...
10/ In other words, most who get some form of aid are not double and triple dipping in various programs, but getting small amounts of help, and usually for short periods of time unless they are disabled or elderly...
11/ As for Medicaid, nearly 9 in 10 recipients are disabled, elderly, children, or adults who work. Of those able bodied adults not working who receive aid, almost all are looking for work but unable to find it at a pay level that would allow them to afford private health care...
12/ Plus, Medicaid puts $ in the hands of docs & hospitals, not the poor. It’s not as if the poor, in the absence of it could buy health care. They would do without, so Medicaid isn’t increasing their income or allowing them to buy more lottery tickets or whatever folks think...
13/ The mythology about poor people and those in need are false, classist, racist (in most cases), and part of a culture of cruelty to which the right is wedded and has been for a long time...
14/ They are modern day Scrooges, whose view of the poor is essentially that perhaps they should die and “reduce the surplus population.” The poor are not the problem. It is poverty and our callousness about addressing it which is the problem...
15/ Perhaps we should remember Dickens's point in his rendering of Scrooge. Scrooge was not a great moral philosopher. He was the asshole of the story. END
16/ Oh, one more thing, before folks say Dickens's point with Christmas Carol was that Scrooge changed and came to support private charity not state action, it was a parable. His inspiration was the cruelty of conditions in the tin mines...
17/ He very much supported state action on behalf of the poor but felt a parable about greed would make the point more strongly than a simple political treatise...
