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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

#71

Post by mariojv »

dmode wrote: post #53

This headline gets repeated a lot, but it is extremely misleading. Due to it's huge size, California has communities and cost of living that are vastly different. I don't understand how you can assign a single cost of living measure to the entire state. A cost of living adjustment that is true for coastal California will be wildly off base for people living on Mojave desert. A better study will reflect supplemental p…

I definitely agree in the case of California. In the case of smaller states (Rhode Island, Massachusetts except Boston to an extent), I would imagine that state-level info is more useful.

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

#72

Post by massysett »

dragonwriter wrote: post #49
bagacrap wrote: post #39

Not 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…

> 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 Or because you were born here and can't afford to leave; the share of California's population that is native born Californian has been growing for the last decade or so.

For many people, having family nearby saves so much money that a much lower cost of living elsewhere won't offset it. Having to pay for childcare (vs. having Grandma do it) alone is enough to wipe out the savings of moving to Dallas.

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

#73

Post by [deleted] »

vacri wrote: post #62
eitally wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You've got a pretty stereotypical view of the developing world. Nevertheless, SF actually has pretty good services for the homeless. That's why there's a lot of homeless people there. Given also that the median black household income in California is $35k, it sounds like you can actually survive of $30k in Cali without your kids dying of dysentery. Alternatively, if you want to 'scrounge crude shelter', there's 11 mi…

[deleted]

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

#74

Post by xienze »

orasis wrote: post #58
j4kp07 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because one person can be deported multiple times and the definition of "Deportation" has changed to include those apprehended at the border.

Can you provide more credible data on this?

Two seconds of Googling would have led you to this:

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-obama-deportations-20140...

Which I'm sure you'll find credible since it's a left-leaning source.

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

#75

Post by username223 »

dmode wrote: post #53

This headline gets repeated a lot, but it is extremely misleading. Due to it's huge size, California has communities and cost of living that are vastly different. I don't understand how you can assign a single cost of living measure to the entire state. A cost of living adjustment that is true for coastal California will be wildly off base for people living on Mojave desert. A better study will reflect supplemental p…

Absolutely. California is wildly divided into places you want to live but can't afford (SF), and places you can afford but don't want to live (Barstow). $100k in SF is $33k in Barstow ( http://www.bestplaces.net/cost-of-living/san-francisco-ca/ba... )

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

#76

Post by xienze »

temp wrote: post #65
adventured wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should we be comparing the US of 330 million people versus tiny nations that have artificial advantages due to their small size and homogeneous culture? Which pushes further into how you compare such dramatically different examples in the first place. Consider Finland. Five million people, 82% white, extremely anti-immigration, and they don't have to defend themselves for the most part. The US military shield has mos…

>Japan as one example has a median income 20% below Mississippi and Louisiana Can you provide sources for that? What are you comparing? Median disposable income? Median household income?

Median household income. From a couple seconds worth of Googling:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income#Gallup_gross_med...

> Japan: 34822

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi

> MS: 40037

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

#77

Post by NumberSix »

Urban areas in California, where most of the people live, such as the Silicon Valley have extremely high home ownership and apartment rental costs. The article notes this briefly and somewhat obliquely, but it is worth emphasizing.

The median home price in San Jose, CA is about $850,000 at present (March 12, 2017) according to Zillow.

The average rent for a one bedroom apartment in San Jose is about $2473 per month (https://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-san-jose-rent-tre...)

The US Census lists a median home price for the United States as a whole of $221,800 in 2010 (https://www.census.gov/const/uspriceann.pdf)

Median monthly gross residential rent in the United States was $934 in 2014 according to the Census ACS survey. (http://www.deptofnumbers.com/rent/us/)

Other living expenses are often 10-25 percent higher in the major urban areas in California where most people live than other parts of the United States. (personal experience)

It is housing and rental costs that dominate the disparity with much of the country however.

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

#78

Post by lettergram »

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…

This is ancidotal, but there are a stupid amount of homeless in California. Virtually none of those immigrated here recently.

There is literally a second City of tents in Oakland under the freeway that stretches for miles. San Francisco has a similar problem, although it isn't as clear.

LA, San Diego, and other south west coast cities have beech bums and equal homeless problems. The fact is, homeless can survive here, where they wouldn't survive in Chicago, DC, New York, because it simply doesn't get too cold there.

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

#79

Post by Spooky23 »

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…

No way.

The poorest people are rural whites and southern/inner city African Americans. The immigrant communities, especially Hispanic immigrants and some asians are harder to assess because they do old school immigrant things like pool resources in the community/extended family and work a lot, but off the books.

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

#80

Post by laughfactory »

username223 wrote: post #75
dmode wrote: post #53

This headline gets repeated a lot, but it is extremely misleading. Due to it's huge size, California has communities and cost of living that are vastly different. I don't understand how you can assign a single cost of living measure to the entire state. A cost of living adjustment that is true for coastal California will be wildly off base for people living on Mojave desert. A better study will reflect supplemental p…

Absolutely. California is wildly divided into places you want to live but can't afford (SF), and places you can afford but don't want to live (Barstow). $100k in SF is $33k in Barstow ( http://www.bestplaces.net/cost-of-living/san-francisco-ca/ba... )

Except they all face the same tax burden which, as a California resident until recently, is quite high: sales tax, property tax, income tax...they tax everything there, and there are few exemptions. Even at $60K the taxes in CA will eat you alive. Great weather (in SoCal), but the sunshine tax, it seemed to us, was perhaps as much as 50%!
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