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California has the USA’s highest poverty rate, when factoring in cost-of-living

politifact.com

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Re: California has the USA’s highest poverty rate, when factoring in cost-of-living

#21

Post by throwaway198743 »

patio11 wrote: post #9
xienze wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> immigration from e.g. Mexico to the US often causes the poverty rate in both countries to rise Both countries? How's that work if it's poor Mexicans coming here?

Fun fact: most immigrants from Mexico are not poor-relative-to-Mexico.

I'm not surprised. There are one or two particular foreign-crazed states in India where people often spend ~$50k on people to smuggle them across into Western Europe/US. They come apparently as refugees "fleeing religious persecution", but I fear this is often a mere ruse.

The routes they takes are often batshit crazy - the usual Afghanisthan-Egypt/Turkey-Europe route or the Guyana-Mexico-Texas/Cali route (this all the way from India!).

Re: California has the USA’s highest poverty rate, when factoring in cost-of-living

#23

Post by HarryHirsch »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #5

There is something very important missing - the SPM poverty measure is relative poverty, not absolute. All this means is that CA has many rich people.

And all the the pretty money you earn as a software engineer in SF is sufficient only for a kommunalka: http://venturebeat.com/2017/03/10/tech-workers-live-40-to-a-...

We had one in town when I was a student. The thing had a name. It was called Schweinebunker.

Re: California has the USA’s highest poverty rate, when factoring in cost-of-living

#24

Post by HillaryBriss »

When I look around at approaches for reducing poverty in CA, almost everything I see is proposals for additional government subsidy programs. What I don't see is proposals for increasing the supply of the things that make COL so high in the first place.

How do you make things like housing, health care, and education more abundant, cheaper, more competitive in CA?

No one seems to know.

Re: California has the USA’s highest poverty rate, when factoring in cost-of-living

#25

Post by throwaway198743 »

eitally wrote: post #19
danjoc wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Context, yes. They can tell me about how they are struggling to make ends meet because of their two car payments and interest only mortgage. That's totally the same as having your kids die from diarrhea, because they get their drinking water straight out of a dirty river and you don't have access to simple medications.

The problem is that in countries where you can survive on $2/day, you can also largely squat where you want and scrounge crude shelter whilst begging for food. You can't do any of that in California, in any reliable way... and in many parts of the state, $30k/yr just isn't enough to rent an apartment and cover the basics (food, transport, medical care). So yes, the poor in the US are both better and worse off than po…

Actually, $2/day is actually completely manageable in rural India. I mean you won't be eating fancy stuff, but you'd be nowhere as miserable as being alone/homeless in the US.

Re: California has the USA’s highest poverty rate, when factoring in cost-of-living

#26

Post by hkmurakami »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #10
patio11 wrote: post #4

A challenge with poverty rates in the US is that they often essentially proxy for "what proportion of the population recently immigrated from low-wage countries"; immigration from e.g. Mexico to the US often causes the poverty rate in both countries to rise and every actual human to be better off. California has ~10 million immigrants; many of them arrived rather recently. (I think this is a variation on Simpson's pa…

Is this really true for Mexican immigration? The stereotype is that the US gets Mexican peasants and Indian doctors, at least. Everything you say is true for the Indian doctor or Chinese software engineer. Thus their departure would raise incomes in Mexico while lowering it in the US. So your point is mostly right, at least as it relates to this story.

It's possibly the middle class Mexican citizens who have the resources to make the journey across the border in the first place.

Re: California has the USA’s highest poverty rate, when factoring in cost-of-living

#27

Post by hkmurakami »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #13
megous wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So perhaps move those poor americans to the third world. They'll feel like top 1% with those dollars.

Please don't - here in India we don't need a bunch of people too lazy to make their way in America.

Definitely saw similar things discussed in an East Asia -> SE Asia context and I had conflicting feelings about it as well.

Re: California has the USA’s highest poverty rate, when factoring in cost-of-living

#28

Post by rpmcmurphy »

The problem with the way poverty is measured in the US is it measures relative income. Being poor relative to other people sucks, but consider the following. You can be poor in the US, and have:

- Clean running water - Electricity - Heat - Phone, now plus internet access - Paved roads - Access to basic health care (for now, thanks Obama!)

Disclosure: I went through bankruptcy and foreclosure, so I know exactly how much not having money sucks in this country, but I would take being broke in the US over being broke almost anywhere else, with one important caveat, if you have a long term physical or mental disability and do not have family to support you, then you are truly fucked (but that would be true anywhere outside of northern Europe or Canada as well).

Re: California has the USA’s highest poverty rate, when factoring in cost-of-living

#29

Post by Buge »

megous wrote: post #11
psyc wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe try restating your point in units of food and shelter. Dollars have no intrinsic value.

So perhaps move those poor americans to the third world. They'll feel like top 1% with those dollars.

Will their income move with them?

Re: California has the USA’s highest poverty rate, when factoring in cost-of-living

#30

Post by mrb »

danjoc wrote: post #2

$30,000 a year "poverty" https://www.dosomething.org/us/facts/11-facts-about-global-p... "more than 3 billion people — live on less than $2.50 a day."

It's comparable, I guess?

$30k for a family of 4 is $20 per person per day. That's 8 times more than $2.50, but the cost of living in CA is (probably?) approximately 8x the cost of living of Africa, rural India, China, etc (where these 3 billion people live.)

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