Reducing poverty should be N.C.'s primary goal
Published September 29, 2014
Editorial by The Daily Tarheel, September 26, 2014.
If there were a disease afflicting one out of every five North Carolinians — an affliction that caused people to go hungry, made learning more difficult, made career advancement a pipe dream for the afflicted and affected generation after generation in the state — then it would be absurd for the state’s elected leaders to ignore it.
But, in effect, this is largely the way public debate over North Carolina’s elected positions has treated one of the most devastating issues facing the state.
Poverty is not a literal disease, but it is just as infectious. And yet, the politicians running for statewide offices display little concern in their rhetoric about the 17.9 percent of North Carolinians who live below the poverty line.
In the first debate between Sen. Kay Hagan, D-N.C., and state Speaker of the House Thom Tillis in their race for U.S. Senate, neither used the word “poverty.” The word “poor” was used twice, but the term “middle class” was used five times.
Beyond measures of word usage, Hagan, who is attempting to advance a populist message, made it clear the middle class is the demographic she is most committed to.
“I believe that our middle class and small businesses come first, and the economy should work not just for the wealthy, but for everyone,” she said in the debate.
The middle class, people who work in small businesses and the wealthy do not comprise “everyone.”
The existence of a robust middle class is an essential part of the national character and should also be a goal for North Carolina. But in order to craft an acceptably just society, merely protecting the existing middle class should not be the state’s elected leaders’ first priority.
Eliminating as much poverty as possible should be a prominent goal of any person running for public office in the state, and any doing so should pursue policies designed to accomplish that end.
North Carolina recently saw its poverty rate fall by a tenth of a percent, but this is not sufficient progress, and North Carolina is still more impoverished than the national average.
According to critics including Gene Nichol, the director of the Center on Poverty, Work & Opportunity at UNC, the federal poverty line is woefully inadequate in measuring the pervasiveness of poverty.
And in an interview with The Daily Tar Heel, Tazra Mitchell, a policy analyst at the North Carolina Justice Center, said her research indicated that the poverty line for four-person family should be $52,000 a year, which is more than double the current poverty line.
Tillis has not sufficiently addressed the issue of poverty either. He has led the passage of policies in the N.C. General Assembly that have actively hurt the poor.
One such piece of legislation was 2013’s tax reform bill, which instituted a flat income tax and raised sales taxes. Flat income taxes and increased sales taxes are, in effect, regressive, asking more from North Carolina’s already struggling poorer residents, while easing tax burdens on the wealthy.
Both candidates for U.S. Senate — and all other candidates for public office — should outline proposals for how to deal with North Carolina’s crippling poverty, and they should adjust their rhetoric to reflect this needed shift in priorities.
http://www.dailytarheel.com/article/2014/09/opinion-redicuing-poverty-should-be-ncs-primary-goal
October 5, 2014 at 7:24 pm
Norm Kelly says:
The 'war on poverty' has been waged by libs in our country for well over 50 years. What have we got to show for it?
The libs claim there is a 'war on women' being waged by the Republican party. Of course, there is no proof. And libs are at least as guilty, if not more so, of waging a war on women. Usually when some lib points a finger of accusation at a Republican, they are reflecting their own guilt.
What should be done about poverty? Simple. The answer is provided in the text of this post. Raise the poverty line to $52,000 per year. What an absurd suggestion! This has to be one of the MOST OUTRAGEOUS statements by any lib; and there are a host of outrageous comments by libs to pick from. But to say that setting a poverty line so incredibly high would HELP anything or anyone is so out of touch with reality as to be a pointless comment. Like most of liberalism, there is no common sense behind what they say.
What COULD be a solution to raising people out of poverty? Good education. Which includes CHOICE.
More freedom, both for workers and for businesses. Less taxes for everyone; which starts with less spending by EVERY LEVEL of government. There are some things that government should be spending money on. But certainly not to the extent that has put us OVER $17TRILLION in debt, with an eye to being over $20TRILLION in debt shortly after the current occupant has been removed from the White House. How does ANYONE, even a lib, justify spending at this level? Especially when it hasn't done anything worthwhile to reduce poverty.
The answer is to allow people to accept jobs that will TRAIN them to do the job, allow businesses to hire people to be trained without penalizing the business if the employee does not work out. Stop rewarding people for NOT working or for working at such low-wage jobs so as to qualify for government subsistence payments.
Raising people out of poverty HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ILLEGAL ALIEN AMNESTY. So, this means that the lib plan for amnesty does the opposite of what they CLAIM they are pushing for. Just like most lib plans. Raising people out of poverty also HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH RAISING THE MINIMUM WAGE! The only thing an increased minimum wage does is satisfy some liberal idea of 'fairness'. It doesn't create fairness mind you. It just makes libs FEEL GOOD about doing SOMETHING. Not anything useful. Just SOMETHING.
Poverty can be defined however any one wants to define it. Libs should be allowed to define the poverty line at $52,000 if that makes them happy. Hell, why not set the poverty line at $75,000 or $100,000. What difference does it make? Even the lib policies, as failed as they are, have proven incapable of reducing poverty at the existing line, so what difference would it make now if we changed the definition of poverty. (cute huh? referencing billary there with the what difference reference! gotta appeal to the lib readers too!) How much money needs to be spent, assisting bankrupting our country, just to prove the lib idea of poverty, it's causes, and it's cures, are wrong? At what point do the payers/earners in the country scream ENOUGH before the libs catch on that their ideas are failures? If not soon, it will be too late. Not just for the poor either. But for all of us.
Re-electing K can and will be disastrous for not just our state, but for our country. We have the chance to change things in Washington. But will we? Do we care enough to change direction? Do we love our neighbors enough to encourage them to self-sufficiency, instead of government subsistence?
(no time to proofread, so my apologies for any misspellings or words out of order)
