President Donald Trump’s White House is declaring the War on Poverty at an end while claiming that “poverty is over” in a new economic report that forced Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman to fact-check it on Twitter.
The report erroneously claims that the poverty rate in America stands at 2.3 percent as of 2017.
This figure might be a typo considering the Census Bureau lists the official rate at 12.3 percent, and that means 40 million Americans live in poverty instead of 4 million.
Mistake or not, the claim in the White House report that poverty has basically been wiped out in the United States is absurd.
And Krugman knows it, which is why he spent time on Twitter debunking the report in a brutal fact-checking session on Twitter.
What with everything else, I suspect not many people noticed that the Economic Report of the President — the one Jabba the Hutt helped write – says that we basically have no poverty in America 1/ https://t.co/fUmgX3ta78
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) March 23, 2019
Here’s their chart. Worth noticing that just a few years ago Paul Ryan had a report claiming that the War on Poverty should be cancelled because it completely failed to reduce poverty. 2/ pic.twitter.com/BB6PVstytF
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) March 23, 2019
Now they say the War on Poverty should be cancelled because it has been won — their own calculations say that it was government programs that did the job. But mainly, let’s focus on the absurdity and cruelty of the no-poverty claim 3/
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) March 23, 2019
According to the Census, 5.7 percent of the U.S. population lives below 1/2 of the official poverty line. For a single parent with two children, the poverty threshold is $19,749. So the White House is basically saying that a single mother with 2 kids and an income of $10K … 4/
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) March 23, 2019
That is, half the poverty line is … not poor. Let me repeat that: the WH claims that a a single parent of 2 with $10,000 in income isn’t poor. Does anyone who has ever stepped outside a gated suburban community believe that? 5/
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) March 23, 2019
You can follow the links from @MilesCorak for serious scholarship on this issue, but the absurdity of the claim should have told the WH right away that there was something drastically wrong with their whole approach 6/
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) March 23, 2019
Krugman also pointed out that nearly ten percent of Americans don’t have health insurance, a figure that will likely skyrocket if Trump has his way. He then concluded by blasting Trump and his team for having zero empathy for struggling Americans.
I might also note that 9% of Americans still lack health insurance. Do you really believe that the number of poor people is only a quarter as large as the number of uninsured? 7/
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) March 23, 2019
I know that complete lack of empathy or understanding of other people’s hardship is basically a required qualification to serve in the Trump admin. Still, this really beggars belief 8/
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) March 23, 2019
Basically, Trump is pretending that government programs have not worked to lift people out of poverty but history proves that government programs have lifted millions of Americans out of poverty. The reason why more Americans are falling into poverty now is because Republicans have spent decades attacking and weakening those programs while giving more and more money to the wealthy. And by claiming that “poverty is over,” Trump is demonstrating that he either has no clue of the struggles millions of Americans experience or he simply does not care.
And yet, Republicans wonder why more Americans than ever support socialism.
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