Justice Department Accepts Responsibility For Deficiencies Of Baltimore Police Department

Yesterday the U.S. Justice Department, Office of Civil Rights, came out with its big (163 page) Report excoriating the Baltimore Police Department for a laundry list of outrageous, deficient, discriminatory and unconstitutional policing practices.  This is the Report that has resulted from the Justice Department investigation launched in the aftermath of the death of Freddie Gray in the custody of Baltimore police in April 2015.

You can get some idea of the extent of the systemic deficiencies that the feds uncovered by looking at a few of the section headings in the table of contents:

BPD Engages in a Pattern or Practice of Conduct That Violates the United States Constitution and Laws . . . .; BPD Makes Unconstitutional Stops, Searches And Arrests; BPD Discriminates Against African Americans in its Enforcement Activities; BPD Uses Unreasonable Force; BPD Fails To Supervise Its Officers' Enforcement Activities; BPD Fails To Adequately Support Its Officers; BPD Fails To Hold Officers Accountable For Misconduct; BPD Lacks Adequate Systems To Investigate Complaints And Impose Discipline . . . .

And that's just a sample.  As you might suspect, there is a pervasive theme of discrimination against and unfair treatment of African Americans by the Baltimore police.  For instance, from the executive summary:

[I]n Baltimore, . . . law enforcement officers confront a long history of social and economic challenges that impact much of the City, including the perception that there are “two Baltimores:” one wealthy and largely white, the second impoverished and predominantly black. Community members living in the City’s wealthier and largely white neighborhoods told us that officers tend to be respectful and responsive to their needs, while many individuals living in the City’s largely African-American communities informed us that officers tend to be disrespectful and do not respond promptly to their calls for service. Members of these largely African-American communities often felt they were subjected to unjustified stops, searches, and arrests, as well as excessive force. 

What time period is covered by this Report?  It's very unspecific.  The Report is all written in the present tense.  The clear impression conveyed is that they are talking about both right now and at all recent times.   

Well, this is quite the disaster.  So who is responsible?

Funny, but somehow they seem to have omitted the answer to that question from this Report.  Let's consider some of the possibilities:

• There's the Mayor.  The Police Department ultimately reports to her.  That would be Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, Mayor since 2010.  Of course, she is an African American.  So was her predecessor, Sheila Dixon (2007-2010).  Before that it was Martin O'Malley (2000-2007) -- white, but serious left-winger to make Bill de Blasio look small time.  And before that, Kurt Schmoke (1987-1999), another African American.  All of them Democrats, of course.  (Baltimore hasn't had a Republican mayor for over 50 years.)  Anyway, you won't find any of these names, let alone race or party affiliation, in this Report.
• How about the police commissioners?  The current guy, Kevin Davis, is white; but he only got the job in October 2015, after the Freddie Gray fiasco, to clean up the perceived mess.  On whose watch did Gray's death occur?  That would be Anthony Batts (2012-2015), an African American.  Here's a review of Batts at the Marshall Project: "Batts came to town as the darling of progressive police reformers, who were excited by his PhD in public administration and the enlightened views he honed researching at Harvard rather than his record as an urban police chief. But in Baltimore he was regarded by the rank and file as a carpetbagger and an egghead — misgivings that turned to open hostility after scores of officers were injured in riots following the death of Freddie Gray in police custody."  Going  back before Batts, the police commissioner was a guy named Frederick Bealefeld (2007-2012), who was white; and before that, Leonard Hamm (2004-2007), who was black.  Anyway, you won't find any of these names in this Report either.
• But maybe the Baltimore police force is overwhelmingly white, in a city that is majority black.  Actually not.  Again, although this Report harps at length on alleged racial discrimination by the Baltimore police, you won't find this information here.  But the Daily Caller compiled some statistics in May 2015, immediately after Gray's death:  

  Here’s what the data shows about the racial makeup of Baltimore’s finest:

  * Of the 2,745 active duty police officers in the department — 1,445 — more than half are African-American, Hispanic, Asian or Native American, according to data provided by the Baltimore police department to The Daily Caller News Foundation.

  * Four of its top six commanders are either African-American or Hispanic.

* More than 60 percent of the incumbents at the highest command levels hail from minority communities.

* Among the 46 Baltimore police officers who hold the rank of captain and above, 25 are from ethnic or racial minority groups. That constitutes 54 percent of the command leadership.

If you are looking in this Report for some explanation of why a series of African American mayors, African American police commissioners, and a majority-minority police command structure, not to mention the police rank-and-file, systematically discriminate against African Americans, you will not find it.

So could it be that there has been this completely pervasive misconduct going on totally in the open for years upon years and absolutely nobody bears any responsibility?  I would only point out that in a world where the Justice Department claims the right and privilege to tell the Baltimore police department how to behave, then the Justice Department itself must accept the responsibility for the situation.  After all, these problems all occurred right under the nose of the feds, in the nearest city of any consequence to Washington, just about 40 miles up the road.  If you have the right to tell them what to do, then you bear the responsibility if they didn't do what you think they should have done.  (Oh, the Attorneys General for the past almost-8 years have also been African Americans, not to mention the President.  So?)

UPDATE, August 12:  Somehow I had missed that the New York Times ran two big articles yesterday on this Report.  The bigger one, starting on page A10, is headlined "Police Bias Found in Baltimore, and Many Ask What Took So Long."  Excerpt:

“Mere words by officials mean little when it’s people on the ground who are living with these material conditions every day,’’ said the Rev. Heber Brown III, a Baptist pastor who was among a small group of community leaders who met privately last year with Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch. “From the streets to the suites, everybody is skeptical and furious.’’  In one stark statistic after another, the department’s report helped validate the experiences of Mr. Brown, Mr. Kelly and countless others in poor African-American neighborhoods who regard the police as an occupying force.    

So perhaps they might at least ask the question of who here bears any responsibility?  Really, don't be ridiculous.  With one exception, they don't so much as mention the name, race or political affiliation of any individual in a position to bear responsibility, whether (starting from the top) it's Obama, Holder, Rawlings-Blake, Batts, or anyone else in the police command structure of Baltimore at the time of the Gray incident.  The one exception is Rawlings-Blake, whose name they mention, but not race or political affiliation.  And responsibility?  Don't be silly.  She is merely said to have "accepted the findings."  And don't forget, she just got rewarded with the honor of chairing the Democratic convention!

Why Capitalism Works And Socialism Doesn't: Arbitrage

If you can buy something cheaply and immediately turn around and sell it for more, chances are you will do it.  Why shouldn't you?  Is there something wrong with that?  This is completely normal and pervasive human behavior.  This behavior is also a source of a very large percentage of the wealth in wealthy countries where such behavior is permitted.  It is also the reason why, in market economies, comparable things almost always trade for very comparable prices.  

But of course, in a world of socialism -- that is, where a government attempts to create perfect fairness and justice by means of coercive distribution -- arbitrage poses a mortal threat.  Do you understand why?  If not, there are some good examples coming out of Venezuela, not to mention the ongoing saga of "affordable housing" here in New York.

At the Washington Post's Wonkblog on Monday, a guy named Matt O'Brien reports on the ongoing disaster in Venezuela.  The title of the article is "Venezuela's death spiral is getting worse."   I will give serious credit to Mr. O'Brien for actually doing some investigation of what is causing Venezuela's problems.  (Contrast that to the likes of idiots from such outlets as the New York Times, CNN and Time Magazine, cited in my posts from May here and here, who purport to give reasons for Venezuela's economic disaster without ever mentioning socialism, price controls, nationalizations, or anything else of significance.)

Venezuela of course has made a run at creating perfect justice and fairness by the device of price controls.  Included among items with controlled prices are most consumer staples, as well as the currency itself.  As a result, the consumer staples with controlled prices have completely disappeared from stores.  As to the currency, you can't buy anything with a bolivar, so you need to get dollars; but you can't get dollars at the controlled price unless you are somehow connected.  On the other hand, if you are importing, say, butter, and you have the right connections, you can get the dollars.  Yet somehow butter still does not appear in the stores.  The government blames "hoarders" -- but is someone really hoarding tons of butter somewhere?

O'Brien describes how this works in the real world.  And really, it's extremely simple.  It's just people engaging in obvious arbitrage that presents itself.  For example, as to butter, O'Brien links to this 2014 article from The New Republic.  The essence is this:  Suppose you get the government license to import butter, and are given the right to buy enough dollars to do it at the official rate of about 7 bolivars to the dollar.  So you buy a dollar for 7 bolivars.  Now, are you actually going to buy butter with that dollar, or are you going to turn around and go to the black market, where you can now get well over 1000 bolivars for that dollar?  Probably, you'll buy a little butter to cover your tracks, and bolivars with the rest.  From TNR:

If you can persuade the state to sell you $17 to import butter, you'd have to be insane to spend it on five kilos of butter that you can only sell for 545 bolivars, because that same $17 in the hands of your local black market currency operator will buy you almost 1,450 bolivars. [It would be far more bolivars today.] 

As it turns out, there's a simple fix: fudging the receipt. Say you import 1 kilo of butter—just get your foreign supplier to give you paperwork showing you've imported 2 kilos. The first $17 will buy 5 kilos of butter and net you a modest 545 bolivars. But the second $17 you can sell on the black market, for 1,450 bolivars. In this example, 73 percent of your income comes from the currency deal rather than the sale of butter. . . .

It's easy to see how the actual butter becomes an afterthought in a deal like this. The more the official and black market exchange rates diverge, the bigger the profits to be made out of dollar arbitrage, the more onerous the clean part of the business becomes. In the end, "butter importers" are no such thing: They're currency arbitrageurs, with a loss-making side-business in butter imports.

By the way, the divergence between the official and black market exchange rates has widened greatly since 2014.  Of course people more and more spend their time arbitraging the currency rather than distributing butter (or anything else).  People are not stupid.  A version of the same process goes on with every price-controlled product in Venezuela.

As usual, you would think that here in the U.S. we would not succumb to such idiocy; but you would be wrong.  Fortunately, we don't have much in the way of a price-controlled economy.  But New York housing is certainly one large exception.  We have about a million apartments subject to what is called "rent stabilization," plus we have the big new so-called "affordable housing" initiatives of our genius Mayor de Blasio, whereby small numbers of low and mid-income people win lotteries and are awarded the lifetime rights to apartments at as little as 10% of market rents.

Would anybody be so crass as to think of arbitraging these opportunities?  Of course, that's what makes Airbnb such a hit in New York.  Needless to say, our legislature is outraged at tenants handed subsidized and discounted apartments and turning around and making a profit for themselves.  The Wall Street Journal today reports that a bill has passed both houses of the New York legislature that would impose criminal penalties of up to $7500 on any Airbnb host who advertises rentals of fewer than 30 days in a New York multi-family building, unless the tenant will be present during the rental.  The bill currently awaits the signature (or veto) of Governor Andrew Cuomo.  Well, this kind of economic thinking sure works in Venezuela!  But somehow, literally everyone in New York thinks this "affordable housing" thing is a good idea.    

"A Culture Of Cheating . . ."

The Business Section of today's Sunday New York Times has a very long article on the situation in Puerto Rico, headlined "A Surreal Life On The Precipice In Puerto Rico."  For those who haven't been following the situation, Puerto Rico has gotten itself into a situation of a way unsustainable debt load (over $70 billion for a population of only about 3.5 million with a per capital income only about half that of Mississippi).  On June 30 the feds approved a quasi-bankruptcy law for Puerto Rico, by which it can restructure its debts under the supervision of a federally-appointed control board.  The next day, July 1, Puerto Rico defaulted on a debt service payment of $2 billion, with lots more defaults to follow.  The Times article reports on how things are going down there amidst the big debt crisis. 

In something unusual for Pravda, the article reports more or less straight on the end game for a jurisdiction that has followed all the official prescriptions of Krugmanomics -- i.e., take on all the debt anyone will lend to you and use the money for blowout spending programs thought to "grow the economy" and help the poor.  Here's the short version of what happened: the economy didn't grow, the poor are still poor,  taxes went up beyond what the economy could support, and much economic activity was either driven off the island or underground.  Oh, and the debt can't be repaid.

And here's the most remarkable part about this article:  It reports more or less honestly on the pervasive culture of corruption and stealing that has been brought about by all the government (federal and local) handout programs in Puerto Rico.  I say this is remarkable because back here in New York Pravda has what can only be an absolute rule that prohibits any mention of the pervasive corruption in the handout programs in its own home jurisdiction of Manhattan, where we are supposed to believe that close to 300,000 people live in "poverty" in the richest county in the country despite tens of billions of dollars of annual federal, state and local handouts supposedly designed to fix the problem.  Anyway, contrast that to this reporting on Puerto Rico.

For example, we are introduced to Dalia Ramos, a local Spanish teacher who lives in a public housing project in Puerto Rico which she is "dying" to leave.  Why?  Because of "the crime and a culture of cheating."  Tell us about the "culture of cheating" Dalia: 

The projects were built to house the working poor, like [Ms. Ramos], but over time they have cultivated a beat-the-system culture, in which working off the books and lying about your income means getting more money from Washington.  “I have all these people around me who don’t pay anything,” she says. “They just hang out.”

Ms. Ramos recounts to the Times reporter that many of her neighbors not only pay no rent at all to live in the project, but have what they call "negative rent" -- where the government actually pays the tenant to live in the apartment.  How could that possibly happen?  Easy!  First, when asked, a tenant can simply say that his or her income is zero:

[P]eople lie about their incomes, seeing it as the only way to protect themselves.  Federal Housing and Urban Development records say that 36 percent of the families in Puerto Rico’s housing projects have incomes of zero.

And, of course, the geniuses from HUD take the word of the tenants as to what their income is, and proceed to calculate the rent without the slightest hint of skepticism.  Now, here's how your rent is calculated:  You must pay 30% of your income, but you are entitled to a utility allowance of approximately $65 per month.  You say your income is zero?  Then you owe nothing, plus you are entitled to a $65 check!  And finally, why bother to pay the $65 over to the electric company?

Some people pocket the money and stiff the Electric Power Authority, a government monopoly with a bad track record for bill collections.

Puerto Rico has just in the last month embarked on its program to restructure things and get a fresh start.  Will they make a dent in the culture of pervasive corruption and cheating described in this article?  That kind of culture is a very hard thing to break.  

Meanwhile, back here on the mainland, we don't have any comparable pervasive corruption and cheating in our handout programs, do we?  Well, not that anyone will report on as such.  But what we do have is a situation of gradual changes in the food stamp program that seem to be leading to some ugly revelations, like when you turn over a rock and find some creepy bugs crawling around.  As you may know, during the recent recession, the eligibility requirements for food stamps were loosened to remove the requirement that able-bodied adults without children needed to work to receive the benefit.  But more recently, the work requirements for childless able-bodied adults have gradually been reinstated, at least in certain states.  From the Daily Signal on August 1, here are the results in three states that reinstated work requirements:

Maine, one of the most proactive states in reinstating work requirements for food stamps, saw its caseload of able-bodied adults without dependents decrease by 80 percent within just a few months after re-establishing the work requirement.  Kansas has experienced similar results, seeing its caseload decline by 75 percent. Accompanying the decline in caseload has been an increase in employment and earnings for able-bodied adults without dependents. . . .   Indiana reinstated work requirements in July 2015. Six months after reinstating these requirements, the state’s caseload of able-bodied adults without dependents decreased by 68 percent.

Now, one way of looking at this is that people who were not previously required to work went out and got jobs for the first time.  Sure.  I'm sorry, but far more likely is that most of these people were working all along and just not reporting it.  Once they were required to report the job in order to continue the benefit, they reported the job.

Meanwhile, one of the things that everybody seems to be worrying about these days is that the economy has gone into permanent slow-growth mode.  The current recovery is the most sluggish since World War II, and "growth" in the most recent reported quarter was a paltry 1.2%.  In considering the various factors that might have brought about such results -- from regulatory explosions, to suppression of fossil fuels, to high taxes, to Obamacare, and plenty more -- don't forget about the effect of handout programs in causing pervasive cheating on the reporting of income.  How much effect does such cheating have on the numbers for things like size and growth of the overall economy?  Nobody knows of course.  Once cheating becomes pervasive, the government numbers become worthless.

How Do You Tell The Corrupt Politicians From The Honest Ones?

Across the big river from me, New Jersey State Senate President Stephen Sweeney has just created a big stir by calling on New Jersey's Attorney General and U.S. Attorney to investigate the New Jersey Education Association (teachers union) and Fraternal Order of Police for what he calls a "clear case of extortion."  NJ.com has the story here.  

This is not a small deal.  Sweeney is of course a Democrat, often referred to as the most powerful Democrat in the state (the current Governor -- Chris Christie -- being a Republican).  But more than that, Sweeney's background is as a unionized construction worker.  Before going into politics, he started in the Ironworkers union in 1977, and held several positions in that union, including serving as an organizer.  So it's quite something for Sweeney to take on the most powerful public employee unions in this way. 

And what have the teachers and police unions done to be on the receiving end of a charge of "extortion"?  It seems that the unions want a particular piece of legislation passed (setting up a referendum they think they will win on a constitutional amendment to get increased pension funding), and they orchestrated a series of calls to legislators threatening to withhold campaign contributions from anyone who did not support the legislation.  From nj.com:

Representatives from the powerful teachers' union contacted Democratic party leaders Monday and said unless and until there is a vote on a proposed constitutional amendment guaranteeing billions of dollars to the government worker pension fund, they would not make campaign contributions this year.  Sweeney also told reporters his legislative office had received a direct threat from Bob Fox, president of the Fraternal Order of Police. Fox said no state senator would receive a contribution from the union until the resolution to put the referendum on the ballot is passed, according to an internal email describing the phone message.

OK, here's your quiz for today:  Crime, or not crime?  How do you tell?

As a clue, I will give you the quote from the expert on the subject chosen by nj.com. He is Jeffrey Brindle, executive director of New Jersey's Election Law Enforcement Commission.  If anyone is in a position to know whether this is OK or not, he would be the guy -- right?  Well, he doesn't know:

"It doesn't look good," said Jeffrey Brindle, . . .  "[But] political scientists have had to wrestle with this for some time: What is quid pro quo? A contribution in exchange for supporting certain policies and legislation? I think it's pretty close."

And he's right.  The law is a complete mess.  For more on the totally muddled legal situation, see my posts here and here.  The short statement of the law is, a "quid pro quo" payment to a politician in return for some "official act" is a crime.  So, is a legislator who takes a campaign contribution from someone who hopes he will vote a particular way on some piece of legislation guilty of a crime?  Unfortunately, it is inevitable that every single legislator will at some point vote on some piece of legislation in a way favorable to some campaign contributor.  Are they all criminals?  How do you tell which are which?

As readers here know, my position is, government is inherently corrupt.  There is no way around it.  That's just one of the reasons (although perhaps the most important one) why we are complete fools to entrust to the government more and more power to redistribute the wealth of society, supposedly to create more fairness and justice in the world.  What this process actually creates is more corruption.  And does this process create more fairness?  If it did, why does Manhattan -- the jurisdiction with the highest taxes and the most extensive suite of progressive welfare and redistributive government programs in the whole country -- have the highest income inequality?  

Meanwhile, kudos to Mr. Sweeney for calling out these corrupt union thugs.  The fact that their conduct may not be criminal does not make it any less disgusting.  People, this is how the government operates out of your sight.  Once in a while you get a little peak at the inner processes.  

What Does It Mean For A Politician To "Move To The Left"?

Much of the talk about Hillary Clinton's positions in the campaign has been about whether she has "moved to the left."  For example, here is an article from NPR on March 31 titled "Has Bernie Sanders Moved Hillary Clinton To The Left?"  Sometimes in these discussions the word "liberal" is used as a synonym for "left," as in this article from the Washington Post in April ("Sanders wasn’t the only force pushing her to the left.  Democrats, in general, have become much more willing to embrace liberal policies over the past couple of decades.")  

In this context, what does it mean to be "further left" or "more liberal"?  As far as I can see, the terms refer to very little more than merely the blind faith that more government spending, mandates and rules can cure all the perceived unfairness and injustice in the world without any negative consequences to speak of.  And since there are no negative consequences, why are we wasting our time worrying about things like budgets, deficits, debt, or crowding out of private activity?  

And thus Hillary's campaign has consisted of gradually going along with every big new idea for more spending coming out of the Sanders/Warren wing of the party, with not a moment's worth of discussion of costs or limits:

• Elizabeth and Bernie say that Social Security should be expanded?  OK, I'll get on board with that.
• Free college?  Why not?
• A student loan forgiveness program?  Hey, what's a trillion or so dollars?
• Minimum wage?  Maybe we should be a little modest and only go to $12 for now.  No, forget about that, make it $15.
• A new blowout government "stimulus" program to create millions of new jobs?  Hey, all wealth comes from the government spending the free money, right?

Now here's the problem:  As soon as one concedes that the government has a legitimate role in providing a so-called "safety net," there immediately will be a line that needs to be drawn between those that get the handouts and those that pay for them.  And there will be pressure from all those not getting the handouts to get in on them.  So, what's the basis on which the line gets drawn?  Have you ever heard anyone on the Left, any liberal or self-described "progressive," ever so much as considering the need for a line or a limit, or a reasoned basis on which such a line should be drawn?

If you think that the Sanders and Warren (and now Clinton) proposals constitute the high bid on potential government blowout spending, then perhaps you haven't seen the new manifesto that came out from the Black Lives Matter movement a few days ago.  It's called "A Vision for Black Lives."  Here is a link.  A short summary is:  We'll see Sanders and Warren, and raise them several trillion more!  For starters, there are healthcare demands and education demands to make Sanders and Warren look ridiculously cheap by comparison.  For example:

Real, meaningful and equitable universal healthcare that guarantees: proximity to nearby comprehensive health centers, culturally competent services for all people, specific services for queer, gender nonconforming, and trans people, full bodily autonomy, full reproductive services, mental health services, paid parental leave, and comprehensive quality child and elder care.

Or this on education:

[A] free education for all, special protections for queer and trans students, wrap around services, social workers, free health services (including reproductive body autonomy), a curriculum that acknowledges and addresses students’ material and cultural needs, physical activity and recreation, high quality food, free daycare, and freedom from unwarranted search, seizure or arrest.

Hey, we're just getting started.  How about "universal" jobs programs:

Federal and state job programs that specifically target the most economically marginalized Black people, and compensation for those involved in the care economy. Job programs must provide a living wage and encourage support for local workers centers, unions, and Black-owned businesses which are accountable to the community.

Oh, and did I mention "reparations"?  They don't give us any numbers.  Will $1 trillion do?  How about ten?  A hundred?  And then plenty more on environmental regulation (ban fossil fuels!), "economic justice," and more.

So Hillary, are you on board with all of this?  Or is there a limit somewhere?  If there is a limit, can you kindly enlighten us on how to find it?

Meanwhile, how's it going with the trillion or so per year of current government spending supposedly designed to combat poverty?  I think that's what the BLM manifesto characterizes as the "War on Black People."  Somehow government spending in the real world not only doesn't cure the problem, but makes it worse.

Where Are The "Millions Of Full Time Workers Living In Poverty"?

The famous Bernie Sanders quote when he advocates for his socialist-model government programs and a greatly increased minimum wage is this one:  "It is a national disgrace that millions of full-time workers are living in poverty . . . ."     That phrase has been repeated by Bernie multiple times in multiple venues.

When you hear this line, what image comes to your mind?  Typically, the image would be of a hard-working twenty- to thirty-something, striving at a job all day every day and struggling single-handedly to support him/herself, one or more children, and maybe a spouse, and coming up with not enough to eat or pay the rent.  Oh, and receiving little or nothing from the government to alleviate the poverty.  What kind of cold-hearted person would be OK with allowing "millions" of people in this very affluent country to suffer such deprivation despite their hard work?

But is that image that I depicted really a fair characterization of any significant number of people in this country, let alone millions of people?  Remember, as I have pointed out many times on this site, "poverty," as defined by official federal criteria, is almost completely unrelated to your mental image of what it means to be poor.  You are thinking of a state of physical deprivation -- insufficient food, clothing, or shelter -- but the official definition is talking about a statistical artifact that considers only one piece of the resources available to low income people ("cash income"), while ignoring the bulk of their means of support in a cynical game to inflate the numbers.  Now, of course I am not saying that there are no people in the United States who work full time for the whole year and yet are in a bona fide state of physical-deprivation poverty.  But if we actually look at the statistics for the number of people in this country in full time minimum wage and other low-wage jobs, and we consider the benefits already provided to them by existing federal programs, how many people can we identify who are in poverty as defined by the federal government's own poverty line (FPL)?  Is it millions, or only hundreds of thousands, or maybe as few as tens of thousands?  

You will not be surprised to learn that in the reams of federal statistics that supposedly address this issue, it is remarkably difficult to get real information that goes to the answer to this question.  The best we can do is nibble around the edges.  So, let's start nibbling away:

• First, how many people earn the federal minimum wage (currently $7.25 per hour) or less?  According to Department of Labor data here, there were just about 3 million people in the U.S. who were paid at or below the federal minimum in 2014 (latest data).  This was 3.9% of the approximately 77 million people in the U.S. paid by the hour, but barely over 2% of the approximately 144 million total jobs.
• But at least all of those 3 million are in poverty -- right?  Wrong.  First of all, a single person working full time for the whole year at $7.25 per hour, and receiving no other government benefits of any kind, earns about $14,500 for the year -- against a federal poverty level threshold of $11,770 (2015 level).  Second, most of those minimum wage workers are second and third workers in larger families with other earners (e.g., dad and/or mom) and other income.  According to data at the Foundation for Economic Education here, fully half of all minimum wage workers are age 24 and less, aka "kids," most of them still attached to the families in which they have grown up.  The average income of a family with an under-25 minimum wage earner is $64,500.  And by the way, most of the 25-and-up minimum wage earners are also in families with other earners.  The average income of a family with a 25-and-up minimum wage earner in 2013 was $42,500.  
• So how many minimum wage earners are the sole earner for a multi-person family?  The Washington Policy Center put out a report addressing that issue in October 2013.  They found that 15% of minimum wage earners were sole earners in families with children.  That would be about 450,000 people; but, of course, most of those were working part time, rather than full time, and so don't fit Bernie's description.  The percent of minimum wage earners who were full-time workers and also single parents of children was 4%.  That would be about 120,000 -- a far cry from Bernie's "millions."
• The statistics for minimum wage earners typically include workers earning less than the minimum wage.  What, you say, how could anyone earn less than the minimum wage -- I thought it was the "minimum"?  You will be surprised to learn that about half of the workers earning "minimum wage or less" actually earn less.  The reason is that there is a patchwork of exemptions from the minimum wage that cover surprising numbers of people.  But when you start looking at the categories, you quickly realize that this again is not what you had in mind when you think of hard-working people in poverty.  One large category is disabled people who work in so-called "sheltered workshops."  The Washington Post reported in February that there are approximately 228,000 such people in the U.S.  In some cases they earn as little as $1 per hour or even less; but of course, these people rarely are supporting anyone else, and their needs are generally provided for from other resources.  Other large exemptions include things like camp counselors (but, of course, they get free room and board) and agricultural workers employed by their own families.  The largest category is "tipped workers," who, under federal rules can be paid well less than the $7.25 -- but, of course, they get the tips in addition.  The tips can take them well above the $7.25 -- in many cases, to a multiple.
• And finally, how about the big one?  For that small number of multi-person families with only one earner making at or near the minimum wage, are there other resources already provided to such people that would take them above the FPL if only the additional resources were counted?  Let's consider just the two biggest such programs -- food stamps and the Earned Income Tax Credit.  Annual federal spending for food stamps ("SNAP") is around $75 billion; for the EITC it is around $70 billion.  As discussed on this blog many times, although these two programs are very much the same thing as cash (the EITC is actually paid in cash), and are often described as "anti-poverty" programs,  both food stamps and the EITC are arbitrarily excluded from the definition of "poverty" when poverty statistics are reported, in a cynical effort to keep the numbers up.  But how would these programs affect the numbers if we just count them?  Consider one of those 120,000 families that we identified earlier as having children and also a sole earner working full time at minimum wage.  The earnings from the minimum wage job are about $14,500.  The FPL for a family of three is $20,090.  So, at first blush, this family is in poverty.  But wait.  According to the EITC calculator here, they would be entitled to an EITC of $5548.  And according to a food stamp calculator here, they would be entitled to food stamps worth about $1800.  So those two items alone, if counted, would take them to an income of $21,848, which is above the poverty threshold.  And this is before getting to other handouts.  As just one example, such a family is likely to be entitled to another $2000 of the so-called "additional child tax credit."  And then there are other nutrition programs like WIC, energy assistance, clothing assistance, and public housing.  Many low-income families in my area get public housing benefits worth $50,000 per year and more.

As you think about the numbers here, you will quickly realize that there can be very few full time workers, even ones with substantial families with no other earners, who will fall below the federal poverty threshold once the already-available cash-like benefits are taken into account.  As far as I can work the numbers, I think it is almost impossible for any family to be in this position with three or fewer children.  (Over three children it becomes possible because the EITC stops growing after three children.)  

So where does that leave Bernie and his "millions of full-time workers living in poverty"?   I have no idea where he even comes up with such a number.  He can say it over and over again like it is true, and he gets away with it because nobody is willing to challenge him on it.  Who would be so cruel as to criticize those of the poor who are also so hard-working that they work full-time jobs?  But the fact is that this is a complete fraud.  

And here's why it matters.  It matters because the theme of the "millions of full-time workers living in poverty" is used to advocate for more and yet more government programs supposedly to address this scourge.  And then the government programs either make the problem of poverty worse (e.g., the minimum wage, by eliminating jobs) or are not counted in the statistics.  We get more and more programs, at greater and greater cost, and "poverty" never goes down.