, 8 tweets, 2 min read Read on Twitter
What with everything else, I suspect not many people noticed that the Economic Report of the President -- the one Jabba the Hutt helped write – says that we basically have no poverty in America 1/
Here's their chart. Worth noticing that just a few years ago Paul Ryan had a report claiming that the War on Poverty should be cancelled because it completely failed to reduce poverty. 2/
Now they say the War on Poverty should be cancelled because it has been won -- their own calculations say that it was government programs that did the job. But mainly, let's focus on the absurdity and cruelty of the no-poverty claim 3/
According to the Census, 5.7 percent of the U.S. population lives below 1/2 of the official poverty line. For a single parent with two children, the poverty threshold is $19,749. So the White House is basically saying that a single mother with 2 kids and an income of $10K ... 4/
That is, half the poverty line is ... not poor. Let me repeat that: the WH claims that a a single parent of 2 with $10,000 in income isn't poor. Does anyone who has ever stepped outside a gated suburban community believe that? 5/
You can follow the links from @MilesCorak for serious scholarship on this issue, but the absurdity of the claim should have told the WH right away that there was something drastically wrong with their whole approach 6/
I might also note that 9% of Americans still lack health insurance. Do you really believe that the number of poor people is only a quarter as large as the number of uninsured? 7/
I know that complete lack of empathy or understanding of other people's hardship is basically a required qualification to serve in the Trump admin. Still, this really beggars belief 8/
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