EDITORIAL

Mar 10, 2010 — Richmond Times-Dispatch

Mar. 10, 2010 (McClatchy-Tribune Regional News delivered by Newstex) -- For years, America's official poverty measure has failed to account for the social welfare state. But a poverty measure that fails to factor in food stamps, tax credits, housing vouchers, and so on does not give a clear picture of genuine need.

The Obama administration is proposing a new alternative system of measuring poverty that will include government benefits. But it also is expected to find that poverty in America is actually higher than the old measurement that did not include those benefits. How can that be?

The new formula also will include expenses not included in the old one, such as child care and health care. That makes sense. But it will do something else as well that makes very little sense: The poverty threshold will rise in proportion to living standards.

To see why that makes no sense, imagine a society of 10 people whose average income is $10. Suppose their economy grows and everybody's income increases by at least $5. But two people who were making more than the $10 average see their incomes increase by $9 rather than $5. Everybody is better off. Yet according to the Obama administration's approach, poverty would have increased.

This approach is even more devious than the math makes it seem -- because it renders poverty a permanent, systemic problem that must be addressed holistically. Even if you give the poor income assistance, teach them trades, and give them jobs that lift them into the middle class, it doesn't matter unless you also take steps to make sure that nobody else's income rises any faster than the income of the poorest derelict. (John Rawls would be proud.)

In other words, the new approach isn't aimed only at giving the poor a hand up. It aims to keep everyone else down -- to produce an egalitarian society that guarantees an equality not just of opportunity, but of outcomes as well. That is not socialism, strictly defined. But you could easily mistake it for socialism in a room with poor lighting.

Newstex ID: KRTB-0177-42736771