How dare you say that American poor people are not really poor compared to real poor people throughout the world!

</facetiousness>

"80 percent of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, in 1970, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning"

See - more proof of global warming!

 (;~>

80 percent of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, in 1970, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.

And don't forget, in 1870 only zero percent of the entire U.S. population had air conditioning.  I sense a trend.

For our liberal friends who seem to have a problem with basic math and context, I will flip the numbers to what the poor don't have since you seem to say what's wrong with America:

• 54 percent of all poor households don't own their own homes. The average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau is a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage, and a porch or patio.  Compared to 68.2% general home ownership rates for 2007 http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/hvs/historic/histt14.html or the flip side - 31.8% who generally don't own a home.

• 20 percent of poor households don't have air conditioning. By contrast, in 1970, only 64 percent of the entire U.S. population didn't enjoy air conditioning.
• Only six percent of poor households are overcrowded; one third have less than two rooms per person.
• The typical poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens, and other cities throughout Europe. (These comparisons are to the average citizens in foreign countries, not to those classified as poor.)
• Nearly one quarter of poor households don't own a car; 69 percent don't own two or more cars.
• 3 percent of poor households don't have a color television; less than half don't own two or more color televisions.
• 22 percent don't have a VCR or DVD player.
• 38 percent don't have cable or satellite TV reception.
• 11 percent don't own microwave ovens, less than half don't have a stereo, and a less than a two thirds don't have an automatic dishwasher.

Interesting perspective don't you think?  And who is complaining about subprime mortgages giving poor people an opportunity to own a home???  Why that would be liberals.  The only bright spot for AGW folks is that 25% of poor households don't own a car, they have to take public transportation, walk or take a bike.  Give the AGW supporters time to get Pelosi to jack up all the taxes on fuel and disensentivize the oil companies from drilling for more oil, and that percentage should be sharply up in 5 years.

dscott's postulate:  The degree to which someone exaggerates or deceives is inversely proportional to the merit of the advocated position.

Wow. The nerve of you people to ignore the plight of the poor Americans out there.

 Look, just because someone has a house, a car, an air conditioner, a TV, a microwave, a refrigirator, a stove, a stereo, a place to sleep, food to eat, and clean water to drink doesn't mean they aren't poor.

If John Edwards tells you they are poor, then that is the end of story!

The earth is on fire and it is YOUR fault for owning a car...

It must include net worth and living conditions to be accurate. It cannot be just a measure of a certain revenue amount that is attained or not, else Bill Gates could decide to forgoe his salary and stock options one year and be included in "the poor". We must be able to speak of poor people in Honduras or Bangladesh or Arkansas and be refering to the same "thing". Otherwise, if being "poor" is relative to others in the same area, state, region, country, whatever...there will always be "poor" simply for the reason that there will always be those who are better off.

And maybe that is the hidden point. The liberals WANT there always to be "poor" because they always want to put people in classes to segregate them and to further their agenda of "class warfare". Because you see, if there were no classes then the liberals could not engage in the "us against them" ideology.

The key take aways that Robert Rector's terrific article are two fold in regard to children and poverty:

Parents don't work much

Their fathers are absent from the home

Rector goes on to explain that if both parents together just put in what is a normal work/year of 2000 hours that 75% of the poor children would be lifted out of official poverty.

Rector states that two-thirds of poor children reside in single parent homes and each year 1.5 million children are born out of wedlock.  If poor mothers married the fathers of their children nearly three quarters of the nation's impoverished youth would immediately be lifted out of poverty.

The welfare reform bill that passed the Congress in 1996 went a long way to address the first issue.  While it still need work to encourageg those on the dole to work, major programs like food stamps, public housing and Medicaid continue to reward idleness and penalize marriage.

These are areas that shoud be addressed be all of us conservatives and we should urge our elected officials to spearhead still greater reform.  While President Bush still has time left in office, he should address these issues and propose legislation to remedy them.  He is only a lame duck if he lets himself be one.  Given the control that the Democrats have in both houses, it is unlikely that he will prevail.  However, the future Republican president in 2008 will have grist for his first legislative initiatives in 2009.