Since “The Great Society” of President Johnson in the 1960’s poverty in America has worsened. He took fathers out of the home, he made families dependent for housing and food on government and created a society dependent on government. We became a nation of takers—which caused people to give up hope and created homelessness, drug and alcohol abuse—and a dependence on government for jobs, housing and the basics of life.
“Life is tough for poor people in California — particularly the working poor who are trying to pay their way, but must deal with the state’s very high costs for necessities such as rent, gasoline and utilities.
In fact, those high living costs are the chief factors in the Census Bureau’s calculation that California has the nation’s highest poverty rate. The poor and the near-poor, as determined by the Public Policy Institute of California, are well over a third of the state’s nearly 40 million residents.”
California is what happens when you go fully into the welfare State.
How governments worsen poverty in California
BY DAN WALTERS, Calmatters, 3/7/22
IN SUMMARY
California politicians lament California’s high poverty rate, but state and local government policies hurt the poor.
Life is tough for poor people in California — particularly the working poor who are trying to pay their way, but must deal with the state’s very high costs for necessities such as rent, gasoline and utilities.
In fact, those high living costs are the chief factors in the Census Bureau’s calculation that California has the nation’s highest poverty rate. The poor and the near-poor, as determined by the Public Policy Institute of California, are well over a third of the state’s nearly 40 million residents.
California’s politicians talk a lot about the poverty conundrum and are forever advancing proposals to put a little more money in the pockets of poor families. However, at the same time, state and local government practices often exacerbate the tribulations of being poor in California.
Restrictive land zoning processes, arbitrary building standards and crushing fees, for instance, make it nearly impossible to build cost-effective housing for low- and moderate-income families and the shortage of such housing drives up rents..
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Overly complicated state and local regulations on business and professions throw up roadblocks that make it difficult for enterprising poor Californians to lift themselves up.
California’s public schools are notoriously lax in educating children from disadvantaged backgrounds. When the state gave schools billions of extra dollars to close what’s called the “achievement gap,” local officials diverted much of the money into other purposes. Months of school closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic widened the gap even more.
Two recent news items frame how California’s poor are mistreated by policies enacted by officials who profess to sympathize with their plight.
A coalition called Debt Free Justice California issued a report on how very hefty “civil assessments” tacked onto minor offenses, including traffic offenses, create a vicious circle for those who can’t afford them. When the assessments go unpaid, additional fines and fees ensue, sometimes resulting in the suspension of driver’s licenses that then make people unable to legally travel to and from work.
Very often, the civil assessments have been tacked onto fines simply to raise money for programs and projects without raising taxes that might generate political backlash. Eight years ago, then-Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed a bill that would have increased some traffic fines, calling it “a regressive increase that affects poor people disproportionately.”
A year later, Brown, terming the state’s traffic court system a “hellhole of desperation” for the poor that had resulted in millions of driver’s license suspensions, called for an amnesty.
The second news item came out of Oakland, whose left-of-center politicians constantly profess concern about the poor.
