Originally posted on 10/15/2011:

I love the people who claim the "poor" do not pay taxes. Like its some good thing that they do not make enough to qualify to pay income taxes. We should all be so lucky to live below the poverty line.

It is incorrect that 50 percent pay no income tax, it is around 47 percent. That is because THEY DO NOT MAKE ENOUGH MONEY TO QUALIFY. They would trade places with you any damn day.

At issue for the Republicans is the fact that an estimated 46% of Americans don't owe any federal income tax. That's because many of them earn so little that the standard deduction and personal exemption absolve them of liability.
http://money.cnn.com/2011/10/14/news...warfare_taxes/



The_Madcap - People are not poor because they are a minority. No matter what color or faith, everyone wants to work and provide for their family. Intellectualized Racism is still racism. You are not accounting for "Institutionalized Racism". Look at our Judicial, School and Penal system for excellent examples. You are doing what people have been doing throughout history, trying to scapegoat those who are different. Furthermore, you are incorrect in your assumption that the majority of Caucasians are wealthy and the impoverished are minorities. That is just not true. I am not going to waste my time arguing this with you, because my experience with people like you has been you are completely unreachable. We will just have to disagree.


Bigdaddy, if you are a cop, your existence is provided by the Government. You are a government employee...


The average recipient of Welfare is a single mother who works two jobs and does not stay on it for life, facts and facts. No matter what that fat POS Rush tells you. I worked directly with this population for years. Just like any other group, a few bad apples, but most are hard working people.

5. Anyone who wants to get off welfare can just get a job.

Many welfare recipients do work to supplement meager benefits (Harper's, 4/94). But workforce discrimination and the lack of affordable childcare make working outside the home difficult for single mothers. And the low-wage, no-benefit jobs available to most AFDC recipients simply do not pay enough to lift a family out of poverty.

Although it is almost never mentioned in conjunction with the welfare debate, the U.S. Federal Reserve has an official policy of raising interest rates whenever unemployment falls below a certain point--now about 6.2 percent (Extra!, 9-10/94). In other words, if all the unemployed women on welfare were to find jobs, currently employed people would have to be thrown out of work to keep the economy from "overheating."
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1302

4. We've spent over $5 trillion on welfare since the '60s and it hasn't worked.

Conservatives and liberals alike use this claim as proof that federal poverty programs don't work, since after all that "lavish" spending, people are still poor. But spending on AFDC, the program normally referred to as welfare, totaled less than $500 billion from 1964 to 1994--less than 1.5 percent of federal outlays for that period, and about what the Pentagon spends in two years.

To get the $5 trillion figure, "welfare spending" must be defined to include all means-tested programs, including Medicaid, food stamps, student lunches, scholarship aid and many other programs. Medicaid, which is by far the largest component of the $5 trillion, goes mostly to the elderly and disabled; only about 16 percent of Medicaid spending goes to health care for AFDC recipients. ("What Do We Spend on 'Welfare'?," Center for Budget and Policy Priorities)


Furthermore, the poverty rate did fall between 1964 and 1973, from 19 percent to 11 percent, with the advent of "Great Society" programs. Since the 1970s, economic forces like declining real wages as well as reduced benefit levels have contributed to rising poverty rates.
Notice how I have included articles and sources to back up my arguments. Some of you should try to do the same, because lots of the stuff you are spewing is old and tired BS that you hear on talk radio.