Oh my my. Makes me want to leave everything and move to Alabama. Does it?
California has the USA’s highest poverty rate, when factoring in cost-of-living
31–40 of 130 posts
Re: California has the USA’s highest poverty rate, when factoring in cost-of-living
#32There is something very important missing - the SPM poverty measure is relative poverty, not absolute. All this means is that CA has many rich people.
It's not an entirely relative measure. My understanding is that it:
a) Includes income transfers, like SNAP, housing assistance, EITC, etc.
b) Is based on the affordability of a bundle of food, clothing, shelter, and utilities consumed at the 33rd percentile.
In other words, after including most government anti-poverty transfers, is the person able to afford food, clothing, shelter and utilities equivalent to that consumed by the 33rd income percentile.
It is relative, but it's not strictly relative, because it's based on a small basket of necessities.
Re: California has the USA’s highest poverty rate, when factoring in cost-of-living
#33There 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 .
So, living in places like that and paying that much is definitely not normal.
For 1900 $/mo, you can get a bedroom in a really nice 2 or 3BR place in the desirable neighborhoods or a studio/1BR in the undesirable neighborhoods (sunset/richmond). I don't understand why the people in that article are living like that (Poor credit? Desperation to find a place fast? Ignorance of the existence of Craigslist?), but they're very, very far from being representative of SF real estate.
Re: California has the USA’s highest poverty rate, when factoring in cost-of-living
#34The 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 mu…
Everything you state is true, but are we really supposed to use third world countries as our baseline? If Michael Phelps used Terry Schiavo as his competition, I doubt he would be as good as he is.
In the US we should be comparing ourselves to the best countries with the least amount of poverty, the highest socioeconomic mobility, and the healthiest populions.
We can't and won't improve if we always look for the lowest denominator then pat ourselves on the back because we are better than that.
Re: California has the USA’s highest poverty rate, when factoring in cost-of-living
#35There is something very important missing - the SPM poverty measure is relative poverty, not absolute. All this means is that CA has many rich people.
It's not an entirely relative measure. My understanding is that it: a) Includes income transfers, like SNAP, housing assistance, EITC, etc. b) Is based on the affordability of a bundle of food, clothing, shelter, and utilities consumed at the 33rd percentile. In other words, after including most government anti-poverty transfers, is the person able to afford food, clothing, shelter and utilities equivalent to that co…
According to the report, a lot of what triggers this is the massive need for housing assistance.
Re: California has the USA’s highest poverty rate, when factoring in cost-of-living
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
As with everything in life, context matters.
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.
So all the improvements the US us made in standards of living was completely pointless? We just need to be better than dying from diarrhea from our drinking water, then fuck it we've accomplished everything! No reason to improve anymore.
Comparing the US to India is fucking stupid.
Re: California has the USA’s highest poverty rate, when factoring in cost-of-living
#37Earlier 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.
Why not? as long as they spend their money, it would be good for India.
Re: California has the USA’s highest poverty rate, when factoring in cost-of-living
#38A 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…
> 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?
If the USA and Mexico set different thresholds for the poverty line, with the Mexican threshold being lower, then people above the Mexican poverty line but below the USA poverty line could emigrate. This would raise the poverty rate in both countries, but this is an artifact of the two countries differing definitions of poverty. But if you measured poverty in the entire USA+Mexico region using a single definition of poverty, you would see it decrease, assuming those immigrants are better off after moving. (Note that actually measuring poverty this way is difficult due to factors like differing currencies with exchange rates varying over time, so the concept of a unified poverty definition is mostly just theoretical.)
Re: California has the USA’s highest poverty rate, when factoring in cost-of-living
#39Not a surprise to me given that LA has the least affordable rent in the country (a measure of average percent of income spent on rent --- not absolute rent). But in both cases, my intuition is that this just means California is a very desirable place to live. If Dallas has lots of jobs and relatively affordable housing but you choose to live in California despite the financial burden, it must be because you think it has greater intrinsic value (weather, culture, community, etc).
Re: California has the USA’s highest poverty rate, when factoring in cost-of-living
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Middle class Mexican citizens can live good lives in Mexico, so they don't need to risk dangerous border crossing to end up a poor illegal immigrant in the US.