Poverty

As Massachusetts governor, Romney proposed a plan requiring more people to work in order to receive state welfare benefits, bringing Massachusetts policy in line with federal welfare reforms. He supports increasing the minimum wage in line with inflation, but vetoed a bill to raise it in Massachusetts, saying it called for increases that were too extreme and too abrupt.

2005

07-08-2005, ROMNEY FILES LEGISLATION TO LIFT FAMILIES FROM POVERTY

Some people are "Poverty Pimps". They go around talking about poverty all the time, but don't really want it to go away. They were rolexes and drive mercadies bends.

The poverty

pimp's poem

MY FELLOW-ECONOMIST WALTER WILLIAMS has for years kept track of how much money it would take to lift every American man, woman and child in poverty above the official poverty level. That sum has consistently been some fraction of the money actually spent in "anti-poverty" programs. In other words, if you gave every poor person enough money to stop being poor, that would cost a fraction of what our welfare state programs and bureaucracies cost.

Obviously, a lot of anti-poverty money is going to people who are not poor. There are whole classes of people who live off the poor -- or rather, off the vast sums of money that are poured out from the public treasury and private philanthropy, in hopes of helping the poor.

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell103098.asp

The Cause of Poverty

1. The poverty problem isn't an economic problem, a lack of motivation problem, or a lack of opportunity problem. For those who are mentally and physically capable of providing for themselves, but are stuck in poverty, the problem is often cultural. These people have decided that people who study are nerds and that life should be a constant party.
2. Erasing poverty isn't a matter of efficiency, it is a matter of desire. If we were willing to equally distribute our belongings, there would be no need for poverty.
3. The poverty problem is a matter of desire, but it's not a problem of the selfish rich not having enough desire to share their resources, it is a problem of the poor who do not have a desire to live the kind of life that will result in wealth.
4. Saying that the poor don't work as hard as the rich, or made bad choices is oversimplification, scapegoat, and class warfare, which is not good for our country. One economic group is not always to blame, and no one is advocating communism.
5. Some poverty can be blamed on poor choices, and lack of hard work, but the majority of it can be blamed on lack of opportunity.

The homeless vote

1. If the homeless are not allowed to vote, they may be taken advantage of.

The war on poverty

If we become efficient enough at doing the things we do, we could erase poverty.