Let's Get Started by Talking About The Word Bamboozler and The Poverty Level

Bamboozle


Definition: To cause to accept what is false, especially by trickery or misrepresentation.
Synonyms: beguile, betray, bluff, cozen, delude, double-cross, dupe, fool, hoodwink, humbug, mislead, take in, trick

Definition: fool; cheat
Synonyms: baffle, befuddle, bilk, con, confound, confuse, deceive, defraud, delude, dupe, flimflam*, hoax, hoodwink*, hornswoggle*, mystify, perplex, puzzle, stump, swindle, trick
Related forms:bam⋅boo⋅zle⋅ment, noun-bam⋅boo⋅zler, noun
–verb (used with object)
1. to deceive or get the better of (someone) by trickery, flattery, or the like; humbug; hoodwink (often fol. by into): They bamboozled us into joining the club.
2. to perplex; mystify.
–verb (used without object)
3. to practice trickery, deception, cozenage, or the like.

Synonyms:
1. gyp, dupe, trick, cheat, swindle.

The link to the dictionary I used on the internet although all of them use the same wording.


http://dictionary.reference.com/dic?q=bamboozler&search=search

I used this word in my title as this is what our government does daily and for the intrigue factor. By intrigue factor, I mean that someone just surfing through blogs on the internet may be intrigued by the word itself and stop and read my blog. Which is what I am after, mainly because not many people know a lot of the information that I am going to be writing about and it is high time that they did. It does and will have an impact on all citizens of this country. Especially in light of the fact that WE ARE ALL being cheated at an alarming rate.

Let's talk about the Federal Government poverty level. This is the level which the federal government uses to base how it pays out money and determining eligibility for many of it's programs.
"The poverty thresholds were originally developed in 1963-1964 by Mollie Orshansky of the Social Security Administration. Orshansky based her poverty thresholds on the economy food plan — the cheapest of four food plans developed by the Department of Agriculture. The actual combinations of foods in the food plans, devised by Agriculture Department dietitians using complex procedures, constituted nutritionally adequate diets; the Agriculture Department described the economy food plan as being "designed for temporary or emergency use when funds are low." (Orshansky also developed a second set of poverty thresholds based on the Agriculture Department's somewhat less stringent low-cost food plan, but relatively little use was ever made of these higher thresholds.) (Take note of the green text as it is designed to bring attention to important facts.)Orshansky knew from the Department of Agriculture's 1955 Household Food Consumption Survey (the latest available such survey at the time) that families of three or more persons spent about one third of their after-tax money income on food in 1955. Accordingly, she calculated poverty thresholds for families of three or more persons by taking the dollar costs of the economy food plan for families of those sizes and multiplying the costs by a factor of three — the "multiplier." In effect, she took a hypothetical average family spending one third of its income on food, and assumed that it had to cut back on its expenditures sharply. She assumed that expenditures for food and non-food would be cut back at the same rate. When the food expenditures of the hypothetical family reached the cost of the economy food plan, she assumed that the amount the family would then be spending on non-food items would also be minimal but adequate. (Her procedure did not assume specific dollar amounts for any budget category besides food.) She derived poverty thresholds for two-person families by multiplying the dollar cost of the food plan for that family size by a somewhat higher multiplier (3.7) also derived from the 1955 survey. She derived poverty thresholds for one-person units directly from the thresholds for two-person units, without using a multiplier. The base year for the original thresholds was calendar year 1963. While the poverty thresholds had been calculated on the basis of after-tax money income, they were applied to income data — the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey — that used a before-tax definition of money income; this was done because when the thresholds were being developed, the Current Population Survey was the only good source of nationally representative income data. Orshansky was aware of the inconsistency involved, but there was no other alternative; she reasoned that the result would yield "a conservative underestimate" of poverty.
You can read the rest of it here: http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/papers/hptgssiv.htm
Some of the important found in the paper:
1968: The Social Security Administration tried to take steps to raise the poverty thresholds to reflect increases in the general standard of living but were shot down by The Bureau of the Budget (now the Office of Management and Budget) that decide after review to limit increases to prices changes and and not for changes in the standard of living.
1973: a review by 3 subcommittees recommended updating the poverty level only every ten(10) years and changing the poverty definitions used to make those changes. No changes were made.
1974: Poverty Studies Task Force (inter agency review) DID NOT recommend and specific changes
1981: Several minor changes where made to family size, farm/non-farm and male and female head of household differentiation.
1990: Congressional Committee requested a study to provide a basis for possible revision.
1992: A panel was appointed to conduct the study.
1995: Report published. ([GSS/SSS Newsletter [Newsletter of the Government Statistics Section and the Social Statistics Section of the American Statistical Association], Winter 1997, pp. 6-7)

And as of this date, there have been no changes to the poverty level in this country.

Isn't it nice to know that your government bases their poverty level on data gathered in 1955? And remember this is the guideline the government uses to base your benefit entitlements on.

Please someone explain to me how that is even appropriate in the year 2009.