9. A local politician conducted his own study on the state of poverty in his community. Intuitively, he doubts the US census bureaus’ findings about poverty in that region of the country. His results were in the local newspaper. “As I traveled around our community and saw the rich opportunities here, I began to suspect that we are overcoming poverty. We have a knitting mill, a bus factory, and a furniture factory. The employees at these factories spend their money locally and support the rest of the economy. I now believe that the gap between the rich and the poor is starting to close. Programs that assist the poor can be reduced or eliminated. My assistant went door to door to determine household income. The study found that the average income is $60,000 per year; way up from the approximate $43,000 figure published by the US Census.”