Progressive Democrat Fails Fact-Check on Her Claim About Poverty in America

People laugh at the intelligence or the lack of the four original members of The Squad. But they have an IQ of 160. Of course, that comes out to 40 each. The latest idiotic response is from Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington. She claims that one-third of all billionaires live in the United States and that we have the fourth highest poverty rate of all the countries in the world. That is out of 195 countries in the world.

She was fact-checked and as it turns out, there were 788 billionaires in the United States by the end of 2019, which is slightly more than a quarter of all billionaires. Not really close, but compared to her second statement, she was much closer. But, instead of having the highest poverty rate, we rank 105th in the world. Of course, we really didn’t need to look to know her statement was pathetically wrong. To think only four countries had more poor people than us is ludicrous.

Our poverty rate is 17.8% and when you compare it to other developed countries you would see the United Kingdom at 18.6%, India at 21.9%, Mexico at 41.9%, and South Africa at 50.5%. Many on social media mocked Jayopal for her ignorance. Here are just a few:

“LOL, this is so ridiculous,” replied Jonah Goldberg of the Dispatch.

“Imagine what your view of the country must be to believe that the US’s poverty rate is 4th highest in the world. No one’s common sense told them to not hit <tweet> on that one??” tweeted editor Jeryl Bier.

“This statistic is so bonkers wrong I cannot fathom how it could have made it past an elementary gut check, even if the gut belonged to an ardent Communist,” responded commentator Megan McArdle.

“I like Jayapal, but this is embarrassingly false. There are plenty of valid criticisms that can be made about the level of poverty in the US, but it isn’t even remotely close to having the fourth highest poverty rate in the world. These balderdash stats don’t help anything,” read another critical tweet.

I wonder if Congress has remedial education classes for it’s members. Maybe they do, but they have not been able to cover reading comprehension because they are too busy with CRT and other far-left criteria.