My intrepid Mercatus Center colleague Veronique de Rugy is furious with politicians who support that great geyser of cronyism, the U.S. Export-Import Bank. Go Vero! (Do note that while the GOP is rightly understood to be the cronyish ‘party of business’ – as distinct from the party of free markets – one wonders why the Democrats are not even more thoroughly slathered with that dishonorable label: a far higher portion of House Democrats than of House Republicans recently voted to reauthorize Ex-Im. Whatever. A pox on the houses of all politicians, of whatever party, who support the atrocious and inexcusable Ex-Im.)
John Tamny ponders Hillary Clinton’s ominous promise to “rein in the excess of capitalism.”
According to the study, by University of Chicago researchers Bruce Meyer and Nikolas Mittag, survey respondents in deep poverty reported only 52 percent of government resources they received. Considering all people in poverty, survey data captured only 46 percent of government assistance. The implication was that poverty researchers — who often recalculate the poverty rate to include income from programs that the official metric ignores — have been reporting bad numbers. Using this type of measure, with the thresholds from the official metric but more safety-net income included, single-mother households had a poverty rate of 30.2 percent using the survey data, but only 19.2 percent once underreporting was accounted for.
A much smaller percentage of single mothers were also found to “fall through the cracks” completely when factoring in underreporting. Past research suggests that roughly 20 percent of single mothers had no earnings and no income from cash welfare, suggesting that government programs were failing them. But Meyer and Mittag found that relying on survey data overstated the percentage of these “disconnected” single mothers by one-third.
