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The Economist comments on the current poverty line report just released, it writes, Whatever crude logic it possessed at the time, the Orshansky poverty line is by now quite arbitrary. Its originator calculated the cost of meeting a family’s nutritional needs and then multiplied this figure by three, because families in the early 1960s spent about a third of their income on food. The Census Bureau does not repeat this exercise to determine today’s poverty line; it does not recalculate the cost of an adequate diet or remeasure the share of income spent on food. It simply adjusts Ms Orshansky’s figures for inflation. Thus today’s dollar thresholds do not tell us how much a family or individual needs to get by in today’s America; they simply restate the cost of feeding a family in the 1960s in today’s prices, and multiply it by three. The Census Bureau has already experimented with such measures, and is probably itching to finally retire the Orshansky line. But its political masters in t...

Thomas Sowell writes extensively on black issues, nonetheless, his points have a close relevance to hispanic issues, giving the close political ties of our cultures. Thomas Sowell writes , August 20th marks the 40th anniversary of one of the major turning points in American social history. That was the date on which President Lyndon Johnson signed legislation creating his "War on Poverty" program in 1964. Never had there been such a comprehensive program to tackle poverty at its roots, to offer more opportunities to those starting out in life, to rehabilitate those who had fallen by the wayside, and to make dependent people self-supporting. Its intentions were the best. But we know what road is paved with good intentions. What was the result of these social programs? The article goes into specifics , but based on historical economic experience, I can already guess what the results were.