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What the Media, Academics Get Wrong When They Blame Crime Rate on Poverty, Discrimination

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Some are puzzled by the dishonesty, lack of character, and sheer stupidity of many people in the media. But seeing as most of them are college graduates, they don’t bear the full blame. They are taught by dishonest and irresponsible academics. Let’s look at it.

“A Clash of Police Policies,” a column written by Thomas Sowell, presents some readily available statistics:

Homicide rates among black males went down by 18 percent in the 1940s and by 22 percent in the 1950s. It was in the 1960s, when the ideas of Chief Justice [Earl] Warren and others triumphed, that this long decline in homicide rates among black males reversed and skyrocketed by 89 percent, wiping out all the progress of the previous 20 years.

Academics and the media blame poverty and discrimination for today’s crime. No one bothers to ask why crime was falling in the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s, when blacks faced far greater poverty and discrimination.

The 1960s riots were blamed on poverty and discrimination. Poverty and discrimination were worse in the South than in the rest of the country, but riots were not nearly so common there. Detroit’s deadliest riot occurred at a time when the median income of black families in Detroit was 95 percent of their white counterparts, plus the black unemployment rate was 3.4 percent and black homeownership was higher than in other major cities.

Academics teach that the breakdown of the black family is the legacy of slavery and discrimination. They ignore the following facts.

In 1950, 72 percent of black men and 81 percent of black women had been married. Also, only 17 percent of black children lived in single-parent households; today it’s close to 70 percent. Every census from 1890 to 1950 showed that black labor force participation rates exceeded those of whites. During the late 1940s, the unemployment rate for black 16- and 17-year-olds was less than that for white teens.

According to the 1938 Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, that year 11 percent of black children and 3 percent of white children were born to unwed mothers. Before 1960, the number of teenage pregnancies had been decreasing; both poverty and dependency were declining; and black income was rising in both absolute and relative terms to white income. As late as 1965, 75 percent of black children were born to married women. Today, over 73 percent of black babies are born to unwed mothers. Again, so much for the “legacy of slavery” argument.

Academics teach that school integration is a necessary condition for black academic excellence. Blacks, their logic implies, cannot achieve academic excellence unless they go out and capture a white kid to sit next to their kids. Public charter schools such as those in the Knowledge Is Power Program, or KIPP, and Success Academy Charter Schools are having some successes without race mixing.

Sowell points out that only 39 percent of students in New York state schools who were tested recently scored at the “proficient” level in math, but 100 percent of the students at the Crown Heights Success Academy scored at that level in math. Blacks and Hispanics are 90 percent of the students in the Crown Heights Success Academy.

More than 43,000 families are on waiting lists to get their children into charter schools. Teachers unions are opposed to any alternative to public education and contribute to politicians who place obstacles and restrictions on the expansion of charter schools. The NAACP, at its 2016 national convention in Cincinnati, voted to support “a moratorium on the proliferation of privately managed charter schools.”

It’s easy to understand why the NAACP is against any alternative to public schools. Many of its members work in public education. However, many of those people do want alternatives for themselves.

In Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, 25 percent of public school teachers send their children to private schools. In Philadelphia, 44 percent of teachers send their children to private schools. The percentages are similar in several other cities: Cincinnati, 41 percent; Chicago, 39 percent; and Rochester, New York, 38 percent. This demonstrates the dishonesty, hypocrisy, and arrogance of the elite. They effectively say, “One thing for thee and another for me.” (For more from the author of “What the Media, Academics Get Wrong When They Blame Crime Rate on Poverty, Discrimination” please click HERE)

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The Global Poor Aren’t Dominated by Markets — They’re Excluded From Them

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Religious and political leaders often talk about how poor people are dominated by markets, and how we need to protect the poor in the developing world from the crushing effects of globalization. The reality is that the poor aren’t dominated by markets. They’re excluded from them.

When Pope Francis said we must say “no to an economy of exclusion and inequality,” he underscored the fundamental problem that the poor face today: They’re disconnected and excluded from the institutions of justice that would enable them to create prosperity in their own communities.

Our immediate reaction to statements like this can be to gather and send money or goods overseas, or to focus on taxation/redistribution policies aimed at eradicating inequality. But these reactions miss the deeper sources of injustice — things like a lack of access to justice in the courts, an absence of clear title to land, or the inability to register a business.

Where the poor have gained these things in cultures around the world, they have lifted themselves out of poverty by the hundreds of millions. Where they have been denied these things, they have remained mired in extreme poverty, generation after generation.

Reform is possible. Unleashing the creative capacity of the poor is possible. But getting there requires overcoming at least four key challenges.

1. The Current System Benefits the Wealthy and Well-Connected.

Many of the powerful and wealthy don’t have an economic incentive to build institutions of justice like clear title to land or broad access to the formal economy. They are doing well under the status quo and many of them are actually benefiting from the current situation through connections, access to special privileges, bribes and sweetheart deals on things like mineral rights.

The point here isn’t to critique everyone who is privileged and well-connected in developing countries. Rather it’s to point out that pure economic incentive is not enough to build inclusive institutions. There must be a moral and spiritual motivation and a change of heart, as well as a hunger for justice that only a spiritual conversion can bring about.

2. Many are Fixated on the Bugbear of “Unfettered Capitalism.”

A second challenge to justice and inclusion for the poor is the widespread misconception that “unfettered capitalism” is the source of our economic troubles. This is a common refrain from politicians, celebrities and religious leaders, and even, unfortunately, from business professors.

I once participated in a panel discussion about capitalism at the Academy of Management. Accompanying me on the panel was a European professor from a prestigious Ivy League business school who argued that the biggest problem we face is unfettered capitalism — not crony capitalism, but unfettered capitalism. He said this several times, so I finally pressed him to give an actual example of where such unfettered capitalism exists. Of course he could not.

In Europe, on average 40% of GDP is made up of government spending. We often hear about the brutal Anglo-American model, but the U.S. is not much different from Europe: Government spending is close to 40% of GDP, with a government debt to GDP ratio of over 100%. In the last several years, thousands of new regulations have been added. Corporate tax rates are at 39%, the highest among OECD countries, and with personal rates, five of the seven brackets are at 25% or more, with a top bracket of 39% to help pay for all this spending. Even the original Keynesian, John Maynard Keynes — a proponent of government interventions in the market — once commented in a letter (to Colin Clark, May 1, 1944) that he thought the highest tolerable limit of taxation was around 25%.

The problem is that, while the unfettered capitalism we hear so much about does not really exist — and is a distraction from the real issue which is, more often than not, crony capitalism and oligarchy — an economy controlled from the top down benefits politicians and corporate insiders, and excludes the poor.

3. Populist Policies and Populist Rhetoric Distract.

A third and related challenge is that populist programs and populist rhetoric distract from building an economy that allows the poor to enter the formal economy and create wealth through business enterprise. A majority of countries throughout world create burdensome and exclusionary rules that harm the poor, but they enact one or two high profile populist programs that make it look like they care for the poor. Then they try to shift the blame to others to mask the obstacles and exclusionary policies they create.

India, for example, provides up to 100 days of paid labor for the poorest, which makes the state look benevolent. But if instead the government built institutions of justice, if they didn’t suffocate the poor under corruption and cronyism, then the government wouldn’t need to offer the subsidy. The poor would be able to find work that paid better, and they would have the dignity of knowing they were taking care of their families, not dependent on the benevolence of the state.

It has been a classic Latin American strategy to blame some other outside force for its own problems. Whether it is neoliberalism or hidden interests, or U.S. foreign policy, the cause of poverty is always something from outside. While the U.S. and Europe are not blameless, the main reason for poverty in Latin America is bad governmental policies of the right and the left that enrich a few at the expense of the majority. It’s important to unmask this deception so people understand the root of the problem.

4. The Idea That Charity, and Not Business, is the Solution to Poverty Misleads.

Charity and concern for the poor is essential. There will always be poverty and human need, and, as Benedict XVI wrote in Deus Caritas Est, this requires a response of love. The state cannot solve all our problems. Neither can economic development alone. There will always be the need for human love and care for the widow and the orphan. But at the same time, for the majority of the world’s poor, the long-term problem is they are excluded from the institutions of justice that would enable them to create prosperity in their own families and communities.

The challenge of global poverty is complex. Thoughtful economic and legal reforms are necessary, but so too are spiritual transformation, moral clarity and a hunger for justice rooted in prudence, charity and truth. One of the first things we need to do is identify the problems correctly. (For more from the author of “The Global Poor Aren’t Dominated by Markets — They’re Excluded From Them” please click HERE)

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The Truth About How Many Americans Are Living on Less Than $2 a Day

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Over the last 20 years, welfare reform has reduced poverty trends, national welfare experts say.

President Bill Clinton signed into law the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act in 1996. This comprehensive, bipartisan welfare reform act contains work requirements and supports families moving from welfare to work.

After the law went into effect, welfare rolls dropped by 60 percent, employment among low-income Americans rose, and poverty rates for single mothers dropped to historic lows.

“The official poverty rate, this would be about $17 per day per person, drops dramatically after welfare reform,” Robert Rector, a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, said Tuesday during a lecture at Heritage.

Rector, who played a key role in writing the original Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) legislation 20 years ago, says there has been a downward trend in official poverty levels. He says that both regular poverty and deep poverty are trending downward and there has been a reduction in dependency.

In Kathryn Edin and Luke Schaefer’s book “$2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America,” Edin and Schaefer allege that 4 percent of all families with children live on less than $2 per person per day and that poverty is on the rise.

Of about 273,000 observations in a government survey collected over a 30-year period, researchers found 61 instances of families spending less than $2 per person per day. Extreme poverty levels of $2 per day per person are consistent with poverty standards in Third World nations.

Heritage’s Rector said of the book’s conclusions:

When you look at the survey data that is being used to proclaim that children live with less than $2 per day, the actual living conditions in those families in no way resembles anything that would be considered extreme deprivation. … When you look at consumption, you see that these families are spending over $20 for every dollar of income. When you look at over 30 years of consumption data, you can virtually find no families whatsoever that spend less than $2 per day.

Only 1 percent of Americans in the government data said they didn’t have enough food to eat.

“The reports of the death of welfare are greatly exaggerated,” Bruce Meyer, McCormick Foundation professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy Studies, said Tuesday at The Heritage Foundation.

Meyer says that those at the bottom of the economic ladder are better off than when welfare reform passed.

Looking at consumption data gives you a better idea of people’s living standards than income data, Meyer said.

“Statements about a rise in extreme poverty are based on faulty data and should be dismissed,” Meyer said. “Conservatives should acknowledge that our programs have reduced deprivation, but liberals should acknowledge that we are spending more and more and not always spending it well.”

Almost 90 percent of Americans agree with the idea that welfare beneficiaries “should be required to work or prepare for work in exchange for receiving benefits,” according to recent polling from The Heritage Foundation.

Moving forward, Heritage’s Rector says that the same principles from welfare reform should be taken and applied more broadly to other programs. (For more from the author of “The Truth About How Many Americans Are Living on Less Than $2 a Day” please click HERE)

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Marriage Reduces Child Poverty, but Our Welfare System Penalizes Marriage

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According to a recently released study from the American Enterprise Institute, 82 percent of lower-middle-class families with young children face “marriage penalties” in the welfare system.

Couples who marry would lose all or some of their welfare benefits because their combined income is often greater than each of their independent incomes.

The study found that couples with young children are less likely to marry if they face a significant marriage penalty. Furthermore, nearly a third of Americans between the ages of 18 and 60 reported that they personally know someone who has chosen not to marry because of the marriage penalty.

And this study only examines welfare marriage penalties for a few means-tested welfare programs: food stamps, Medicaid, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. There are over 80 means-tested welfare programs that provide other food, medical, and cash assistance, as well as housing assistance and social services to poor and lower-income Americans. Marriage penalties exist throughout the welfare system.

Marriage is one of the greatest protectors against child poverty. It is counterintuitive to have a welfare system that penalizes this institution.

Children in married-parent homes are more than 80 percent less likely to be poor, compared to their peers in single-parent families. Tragically, far too many American children live in single-parent homes. One in four children is born to an unwed mother, and more than half of U.S. teenagers aged 15 to 17 live without married parents.

Not only are these children at greater risk of poverty, but they are at greater risk of social conditions that would hinder their ability to thrive.

Children who grow up with their married parents have better life outcomes compared to children who grow up in single-parent homes. For example, children raised by their married mothers and fathers generally obtain more education and have better emotional health. They also have lower rates of delinquency and teen pregnancy.

How can we reform our welfare system so that it does not penalize marriage?

First, policymakers must avoid policy changes that would increase marriage penalties. This would include preventing increases in the earned income tax credit for childless adults. Such an increase would only further incentivize parents to remain single.

Second, we should implement stronger work requirements to decrease the appeal of welfare as a long-term substitution for both work and marriage. Fostering a sense of self-reliance and pride in one’s work encourages parents to move away from welfare and toward the kind of financial independence found in marriage. This, in turn, results in greater economic opportunities for both parent and child.

Marriage is a strong tool against poverty and also provides the best setting for children to thrive. Policymakers have an opportunity to improve conditions for the American family. They must work toward reducing and eliminating the anti-marriage policies of the current welfare system. (For more from the author of “Marriage Reduces Child Poverty, but Our Welfare System Penalizes Marriage” please click HERE)

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Compassion International Is One of the Best Charities to Financially Support, Here’s Why

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Which child-centered charity for 14 years in a row has received the highest rating from Charity Navigator, began with South Korean war orphans, and currently serves over 1.7 million children in 26 countries on four continents? If you said “Compassion International” you would be correct! These reasons and so many more make Compassion International one of the best charities to financially support. Here are four more reasons to consider giving them aid:

1. Research from the University of San Francisco has shown that Compassion International’s model of advocating for children by directly helping the sponsored child actually produces long-term positive outcomes. Children who are sponsored through Compassion International are more likely to finish high school and find jobs as adults than those children not given the same opportunities (footnote 1).

2. Compassion International not only produces positive outcomes for children but they also have other programs helping many other members of the community. They have created centers for helping Mothers and their babies who are living in poverty and equipping college students to become Christian leaders in the community. At the same time, they also give emergency aid during natural disasters in those communities.

3. They are different from other child-sponsored charities in that they are Christ-centered with 122,588 children and Mothers inviting Jesus to be their savior over the last year, child-focused, church-based with 6,900 international church partners, and committed to integrity.

4. One of the best reasons to help and partner with Compassion International is their featured stories of children like Lalitha from India. Lalitha’s father wanted to force her into marriage during her teens which would have prevented her from continuing her education. Lalitha with the help of Compassion International community leaders had the courage to stand up to him and fight for her right to finish her education. Today she is completing her education as a pharmacy student in one of the best colleges in her state. She hopes that through her example in her village she can help stop the antiquated tradition of child marriage so that these young girls also have the opportunity to experience the love of God and reach their full potential.

Lalitha’s story and so many others demonstrate the real work Compassion International is doing in these impoverished communities by both taking care of the needs of individual children and furthering the Great Commission by helping them to become responsible adults following Christ. Please consider supporting Compassion International through one of their many programs and make a long-term positive difference in the life of a child and community.

Footnote:

https://ssir.org/articles/entry/sponsoring_hope

Compassion International: Releasing Children From Poverty in Jesus’ Name

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Photo Credit: Compassion In a world where more than a billion people live on less than U.S. $2 per day, child sponsorship is the most strategic way to end child poverty, particularly when it is integrated into a holistic approach to child development.

All of our programs are rooted in our Christian faith and are implemented by the commit to honor Jesus Christ in all we do.

We are a “love thy neighbor” ministry. We are advocates for children in poverty. We see them as whole beings with bodies, minds, souls and spirits. We see them as unique and precious in God’s sight. We give them an opportunity to learn about Jesus.

Who We Are

What is Compassion? Compassion means “to suffer with” and is an emotional response of sympathy. But it’s not just a feeling. The feeling is combined with a desire to help. Because we have compassion, we want to take action and help the person who is suffering.

Notice the last word of the definition above — “with.” We are called to suffer with someone, to suffer together. This is what differentiates compassion from empathy.

Who is Compassion International? Compassion International is a child-advocacy ministry that pairs compassionate people with those who are suffering from poverty. The ministry releases children from spiritual, economic, social, and physical poverty. The goal is for each child to become a responsible and fulfilled adult.

Compassion’s work has grown from modest beginnings in South Korea in 1952 when American evangelist Rev. Everett Swanson felt compelled to help 35 children orphaned by the Korean conflict. Today it is a worldwide ministry where millions of children are now reaping the benefits of one man’s clear, God-given vision.

What We Do

We are the world’s leading authority in holistic child development through sponsorship.

Holistic child development means we begin, in some cases, with prenatal care and go all the way through leadership development for qualified young adults. It means we take a long-term approach to what we do and go beyond simple involvement in the lives of the children and families we serve.

All of our child development programs provide opportunities that encourage healthy development in four areas — spiritual, physical, social and economic.

And when it specifically comes to child sponsorship, our Child Sponsorship Program is the only child sponsorship program validated as effective through independent, empirical research.

Want to know how you can get involved in the mission to release children from poverty? Click HERE to find out.

Make a Donation Today

Share the love of Jesus Christ with children today when you make a tax-deductible donation to one of the critical needs HERE.

Sponsor a Child Today

As you exchange letters, send photos and offer encouragement in Jesus’ name, your love will bring hope to a child that will last a lifetime. Sponsor a child today!

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Another Obama First: More Children Living in Poverty Now Than During Great Recession

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A higher percentage of children live in poverty now than did during the Great Recession, according to a new report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation released Tuesday.

About 22% of children in the U.S. lived below the poverty line in 2013, compared with 18% in 2008, the foundation’s 2015 Kids Count Data Book reported. In 2013, the U.S. Department of Human and Health Service’s official poverty line was $23,624 for a family with two adults and two children.

“The fact that it’s happening is disturbing on lots of levels,” said Laura Speer, the associate director for policy reform and advocacy at the Casey Foundation, a non-profit based in Baltimore. “Those kids often don’t have the access to the things they need to thrive.” The foundation says its mission is to help low-income children in the U.S. by providing grants and advocating for policies that promote economic opportunity.

The report examined data from several federal agencies ranging from 2008 to 2013 to assess state-by-state trends of 16 factors of children’s well-being, including economics, education, health and family and community. It found that one in four children — a total of 18.7 million kids — lived in low-income households in 2013; low-income families were defined as those who use more than 30% of their pre-tax income for housing.

However, the numbers are from 2013, and Speer said the outcome may be different now that the unemployment rate has lowered to 5.3%; it was 7.5% in June 2013. Speer said more employed parents would naturally lead to fewer impoverished kids, but she doubted it would change the number of children in low-income neighborhoods. (Read more from “More Children Living in Poverty Now Than During Recession” HERE)

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A Major Concern of Progressives is Their Supposed Interest in the Fate of the Poor

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

The Poverty Hoax

A major concern of progressives is their supposed interest in the fate of the poor. They purport to be the champions of the poor. But the truth is that they need the poor more than the poor need them, in a symbiotic relationship. As much as 75% of the money allocated to the poor is consumed by the vast bureaucracies that administer this aid. These agencies are actually job programs for college graduates who would often find it difficult to find employment in the private sector. The late William Raspberry wrote a column dealing with Gina, a 14 year old living in a group home, who had a caseworker, a psychotherapist and a court appointed lawyer. These caregivers have to be supported by a number of clerical workers and supervisors who compose the vast helping bureaucracy. If the “poor” were suddenly to disappear they would have to redefine their definition of poverty in order to maintain their sinecures. And that is exactly what they have done.

Advocates for the poor do not ordinarily live by what they preach. The President has informed us that, “We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times.” Yet during a recent trip to China the first family and their staff of about 70 stayed in the presidential suite at the Westin Chaoyang Hotel, which USA Today reports costs about $8,400 a night. Clearly the elite live by a different standard and have for a long time. Communist defector Victor Kravchenko recalled that during the famine in the Soviet Union, “I found myself among men who could eat ample and dainty food in full view of starving people not only with a clear conscience but with a feeling of righteousness, as if they were performing a duty to history.”

What is poverty? The late political scientist Edward Banfield provided four degrees of poverty: destitution, which is lack of income sufficient to assure physical survival and to prevent suffering from hunger, exposure, or remediable or preventable illness; want, which is lack of enough income to support essential welfare; hardship, which is lack of enough to prevent acute persistent discomfort or inconvenience. To this he added a fourth: relative deprivation which is a lack of enough income, status, or whatever else may be valued to prevent one from feeling poor in comparison to others. This last category is elastic enough to include millionaires who covet the possessions and power of billionaires. One important category of poverty Banfield does not mention is psychological or spiritual poverty. This is the most significant form of poverty in an affluent society when physical needs are easily met.

Where do America’s “poor” stand in this scale of poverty? In a nation of over 300 million people there are undoubtedly cases of destitution, want and hardship. However, these cases appear to be the exception. As former Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman stated, “More people die in the United States of too much food than of too little.” According to William Bennett, “Poor people in America have a higher standard of living than middle-class Americans of previous generations.” According to the Heritage Foundation, 80% of poor households have air conditioning. Nearly three-fourths have a car or truck, and 31% have two or more. Two-thirds of poor households have cable or satellite TV with 18% having a big screen television. And .6% of poor households own a Jacuzzi. The Los Angeles Times reported the California’s “poor” spent $69 million using their welfare payments on at least 14 cruise ships sailing from Miami and other ports, at Disney World, in Hawaii and Guam and at hotels in Las Vegas. Many of the “poor” enjoy luxuries that the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt would envy. Heather MacDonald claimed in 2000 that New York City spent $790 million on the homeless, or $39,500 per person. According to Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation the U.S. has spent over $20.7 trillion on means-tested welfare since the beginning of the War on Poverty.

Read more from this story HERE.

Joe Miller: This is The Best Anti-Poverty Program

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610px-Signing_of_the_EOAAs we mark the 50th Anniversary of the Great Society, the greatest lesson that we can draw from it is that the best anti-poverty program is a job. The question then becomes what is the best manner to create jobs and grow the economy. 

The lesson of the 1920s, the 1960s, the 1980s and the 1990s, is that if you create an atmosphere in which businesses can thrive and hire new workers, who turn around and buy goods and services, the rising tide of economic prosperity raises all boats. Both John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan knew this to be true and acted on it.

Unemployment during all four of those decades following pro-growth tax reform and reduction in regulations was 5 percent or less, which resulted in a significant decrease in the poverty rate. 

Using the government as the instrument to raise people out of poverty and put them back to work failed in the 1930s, the 1970s (as the full weight of the Great Society programs came into play), and the late 2000s/early 2010s. Under FDR, the federal government undertook all manner of programs and regulations in an attempt to control the economy and put Americans back to work, but it failed miserably. 

Roosevelt’s own Treasury Secretary testified before a Senate committee in 1939, in terms of creating jobs, that the New Deal had been a failure and doubled the National Debt. Does any of this sound familiar?

Today, true unemployment in the United States remains at over 13 percent, and we are on course to double the national debt within the decade. 

Big Government Begich holsters a rubber stamp with a big fat “YES” on it: ObamaCare, Yes; trillion dollar stimulus bill, Yes; for the nuclear option to end the filibuster and push radical nominees through the senate, Yes; for nearly $8 trillion in new debt since taking office a mere 5 years ago, Yes; Voting 91 percent of the time with Harry Reid and the Democrats, YES! So much for being an independent voice for Alaska in the Senate.

He and the Democrats must be stopped and replaced. As Alaska’s next senator, I will link arms with reformers like Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and Rand Paul and work to restore economic prosperity and our constitutional freedoms.

Thank you for your support!

In the fight,

Joe Miller, Candidate
United States Senate

Poverty Under Obama Rises to Alarming Level

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Photo Credit: WND As Americans celebrate Thanksgiving, it is important to remember that despite establishment-media reporting of an Obama “economic recovery,” the number of Americans on welfare today is higher than the number that have full-time jobs, says Michael Snyder, creator of TheEconomicCollapseBlog.com.

Snyder outlined the economic reality in a recent editorial that points out the fragility of the U.S. economy.

“The gap between the wealthy and the poor is at a level that America has never seen before, and this is beginning to create a ‘Robin Hood mentality’ that could cause a tremendous amount of social chaos in the years ahead,” Snyder writes.

“Anger at the ‘haves’ in America continues to rise at a very alarming pace, and the ‘have nots’ are becoming increasingly desperate. At some point all of this anger is going to boil over, and you won’t want to be anywhere around major population centers when that happens.”

Documentation for Snyder’s claim that there are more Americans on welfare than the number of Americans working full-time comes from Census Bureau statistics that show there were 108.6 million people in the U.S. in the fourth quarter of 2011 who were recipients of one or more means-tested government benefit programs. That’s compared to the 101.7 million people who worked full-time year round in 2011, including both private sector and government workers.

Read more from this story HERE.