What does it mean for someone to be on the verge of poverty or to live in poverty? What is this word falsely used and poorly analyzed? Poverty is being extremely poor, being of inferior quality, or being in insufficient quantity. In 2010, 16.4 million children, or 22.0 percent, were poor in the United States alone. (Tanner, 2014) Child poverty rates also vary widely by race and origin. If the poverty rate continues to rise, will there still be hope for humanity? The real question is not what poverty is but why so many people live in it. The ideal task of government (federal and state) is to create a better and safer environment for the people. The “government’s” campaign model is that everything they do is for the “benefit” of the people. When does the word “advantage” come into play when twenty-two percent of the population cannot provide a place for their children to sleep, put food on the table, and find a job that pays well enough to provide for the needs of their family. Are there any real benefits to knowing that families living in poverty have only a one percent chance of escaping? Whose fault is it? Where and how did this problem start? What is this so-called “government” doing to help stop the increase in poverty rates? As you read this essay, you will explain what it means to be truly poor and why the government does so little to help. Include real stories of people living in poverty, what the government is doing to help (and if it's enough), and is the poverty problem getting worse or slowly improving. The United States determines the official poverty rate using poverty thresholds that are published annually by the Census Bureau. The thresholds represent the annual amount...... middle of paper ...... today the federal government has only reduced the percentage of children living in poverty by one percent, even though trillions of dollars have been spent trying to do this. SO. How can we, the people, make our voices heard, because after all, it is our tax money that is being used and abused in the wrong way. What can we do to end poverty? We will soon live in a world where there will be only rich people and only poor people. The middle class is what makes the economy what it is today. The middle class can either destroy or create an economy. The middle class is where the majority of government spending, taxes, and all other benefits come from. Now what will we do when all this is gone? The war on poverty was therefore a disaster. Why hasn't anything been done before? And what should we do now? And why are progressives falling apart?