What do you mean he don’t eat no meat? Oh, that’s okay. I make lamb.

My family paid more in taxes last year than these people were given by the government to live on. But we’re far from rich – we have a 3 bedroom ranch house in a middle class neighborhood, and have two ten year old Saturns to drive. And after my husband and I worked full time jobs and as much overtime as we can get our hands on, our lifestyles are not significantly better than these people who have lived on the dole for years. Poverty isn’t what it used to be.

NPR’s sob story (h/t MM) about these women is pitiful. Especially the part about how “Nunez, 40, has never worked and has no high school degree. She says a car accident 17 years ago left her depressed and disabled, incapable of getting a job.” After reading that, I’m depressed. Can I get on the dole too? Is there NO job this woman can perform? Good grief. The NPR headline is “For Some Ohioans, Even Meat Is Out Of Reach” but it seems clear these women are not malnourished – and that kind of weight gain is not from stretching a grocery budget with more potatoes and noodles.

NPR also states,

Nunez’s van broke down last fall. Now, her 19-year-old daughter has no reliable transportation out of their subsidized housing complex in Fostoria, 40 miles south of Toledo, to look for a job.

Nunez and most of her siblings and their spouses are unemployed and rely on government assistance and food stamps. Some have part-time jobs, but working is made more difficult with no car or public transportation.

I suggest they scrimp and save and pool their money and get that van fixed, then. Do they have anything they can sell, like big screen TVs? Do what it takes to get that van fixed and get to work, because that is the only reliable way out of poverty. [Added: commenter nyc123me at MM's said, "No car? Boohoo - get a bike."  Well, yes.  A bike would get them to work and they could save the money to get the van fixed.  Problem solved; a little creativity and hard work generally does the trick.] But then, poverty isn’t what it used to be, so people aren’t terribly motivated to get out of it. When you look at lifestyle, most people classified as poor are not at all what we think of as poor. As I pointed out in You Can’t Have Your Poverty and Your Big Screen TV, Too, here’s what “poverty” looks like for most people:

Not too bad, is it? NPR bemoans how hard these women have it, but I bet a look inside their subsided housing, like Sharon Jasper’s, would tell a different story. Like Nunez’ family, most of the people in even our relaxed classification of poverty are there because they are only working part time. The typical poor family with children is “supported” by an adult working only 16 hours per week. Three quarters of children living in poverty – most of whom have Playstations and cable TV along with their free school lunch – would not be classified as poor if just one adult in their household worked forty hours a week.

This New York Times op-ed took a look at American poverty and concluded that the gap between the rich and the poor in this country is shrinking, not widening – at least in terms of consumption.

To understand why consumption is a better guideline of economic prosperity than income, it helps to consider how our lives have changed. Nearly all American families now have refrigerators, stoves, color TVs, telephones and radios. Air-conditioners, cars, VCRs or DVD players, microwave ovens, washing machines, clothes dryers and cellphones have reached more than 80 percent of households.

As the second chart, on the spread of consumption, shows, this wasn’t always so. The conveniences we take for granted today usually began as niche products only a few wealthy families could afford. In time, ownership spread through the levels of income distribution as rising wages and falling prices made them affordable in the currency that matters most — the amount of time one had to put in at work to gain the necessary purchasing power.

At the average wage, a VCR fell from 365 hours in 1972 to a mere two hours today. A cellphone dropped from 456 hours in 1984 to four hours. A personal computer, jazzed up with thousands of times the computing power of the 1984 I.B.M., declined from 435 hours to 25 hours. Even cars are taking a smaller toll on our bank accounts: in the past decade, the work-time price of a mid-size Ford sedan declined by 6 percent.

The welfare reforms signed by Clinton – amidst the hysterical shrieks of the grievance class and their victicrat leaders – were incredibly effective because they forced people to work and gave them a subsidy via the earned income tax credit while their incomes were still quite low. And while no one makes much money at an entry level job, the key is that people don’t stay at entry level. Wages increase the more you work. Stick with it long enough and you’re supporting yourself – you don’t need the subsidy. The American dream is certainly attainable by nearly everybody – Adam Shepard is a great example.

Perhaps the worst part is how many Christians have boarded the nanny state/populist class envy train, in spite of a bible that is chock full of verses promoting commerce and condemning envy, greed and the love of money (not the actual money!), and the simple reality that larger government and an increased welfare state is the opposite of Christian charity. It’s harmful and it glorifies government, not God.