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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

#81

Post by ricw »

NumberSix wrote: post #77

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 (…

The direct negative effect on the quality of life of high housing costs is astonishing. Yet there's no real public uproar. When the price of gas goes up, seemingly everyone is up in arms. But housing?! People complain, but no where near as much as they should. In areas with high housing costs, this should be the primary political issue. I guess nepotism just wins the argument...

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

#82

Post by Spooky23 »

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 a complex issue.

NAFTA fucked rural Mexico as a tidal wave of cheap corn flooded the economy and killed the smaller scale agriculture, just as it did in the US. You also have periods where economic crisis and monetary devaluation in Mexico wipes out a lot of middle class type people. A lot of laborers and construction guys came because of this.

You also have an insurgency in many parts of Mexico where the cartels have taken over and often little functional government exists. People there bug out if they can.

Many of the "peasant" immigrants are from Central America and pass through Mexico.

As far as economic impact, it's a complicated issue there too. The big land interests in Western States generally control the senate delegations pretty tightly. A lot of people are making a lot of money off of illegals, so if there were some major change, you'd see some sort of guest worker visa or change to labor laws (especially minimum wage, workers compensation and overtime) to keep the farms picked and slaughterhouses running.

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

#83

Post by fullshark »

ricw wrote: post #81
NumberSix wrote: post #77

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 (…

The direct negative effect on the quality of life of high housing costs is astonishing. Yet there's no real public uproar. When the price of gas goes up, seemingly everyone is up in arms. But housing?! People complain, but no where near as much as they should. In areas with high housing costs, this should be the primary political issue. I guess nepotism just wins the argument...

Well a lot of people own houses and are happy about it. There is plenty of uproar about it from renters. Mountain View just passed a rent control measure for example.

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

#84

Post by matt_wulfeck »

ricw wrote: post #81
NumberSix wrote: post #77

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 (…

The direct negative effect on the quality of life of high housing costs is astonishing. Yet there's no real public uproar. When the price of gas goes up, seemingly everyone is up in arms. But housing?! People complain, but no where near as much as they should. In areas with high housing costs, this should be the primary political issue. I guess nepotism just wins the argument...

There is an uproar, but there's an equal and greater uproar in the opposite direction whenever there's a new housing attempted to be built. Existing homeowners and establishment rally against it and they're quite organized.

Couple this with the fact that California is entrenched in bureaucratic red tape, and you can see why nothing ever gets done about it.

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

#85

Post by throwaway76543 »

ricw wrote: post #81
NumberSix wrote: post #77

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 (…

The direct negative effect on the quality of life of high housing costs is astonishing. Yet there's no real public uproar. When the price of gas goes up, seemingly everyone is up in arms. But housing?! People complain, but no where near as much as they should. In areas with high housing costs, this should be the primary political issue. I guess nepotism just wins the argument...

It's a split issue. Renters want prices to go down. Owners want prices to go up.

Who wins the political clash? Are there more voting owners, or voting renters?

Generally there are more owners, though California has one of the lowest home ownership rates at around 53%. Cities draw this average down -- most suburbs have higher ownership rates.

With this in mind it shouldn't be a surprise that owners outvote renters.

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

#86

Post by jon-wood »

Epenthesis wrote: post #33
HarryHirsch wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think you making that an example of a great deal just shows how skewed the SF housing market is. I'm in the south of the UK, just within commuting distance of London, and for $800/mth less than that rent a 3 bedroom house with a garden in a well connected area, and that's a bit expensive for the area because its well located. The housing market in London is just as ridiculous at the moment and I'm so glad to have got out.

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

#87

Post by [deleted] »

throwaway76543 wrote: post #85
ricw wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The direct negative effect on the quality of life of high housing costs is astonishing. Yet there's no real public uproar. When the price of gas goes up, seemingly everyone is up in arms. But housing?! People complain, but no where near as much as they should. In areas with high housing costs, this should be the primary political issue. I guess nepotism just wins the argument...

It's a split issue. Renters want prices to go down. Owners want prices to go up. Who wins the political clash? Are there more voting owners, or voting renters? Generally there are more owners, though California has one of the lowest home ownership rates at around 53%. Cities draw this average down -- most suburbs have higher ownership rates. With this in mind it shouldn't be a surprise that owners outvote renters.

[deleted]

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

#88

Post by erikpukinskis »

throwaway76543 wrote: post #85
ricw wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The direct negative effect on the quality of life of high housing costs is astonishing. Yet there's no real public uproar. When the price of gas goes up, seemingly everyone is up in arms. But housing?! People complain, but no where near as much as they should. In areas with high housing costs, this should be the primary political issue. I guess nepotism just wins the argument...

It's a split issue. Renters want prices to go down. Owners want prices to go up. Who wins the political clash? Are there more voting owners, or voting renters? Generally there are more owners, though California has one of the lowest home ownership rates at around 53%. Cities draw this average down -- most suburbs have higher ownership rates. With this in mind it shouldn't be a surprise that owners outvote renters.

> Are there more voting owners, or voting renters?

Doesn't matter. Owners win because we live in capitalist society, and capitalism means you must be an owner to get full rights. Non-gentry are second class citizens (no free movement, no access to clean water, no right to work the land, no right to build shelter).

No free movement: I can't travel to many places without a car because property owners decided only people who own cars should be legally allowed to access a place.

No access to clean water: water is a resource owned by corporations, the people drink at the corporation's pleasure.

No right to work/shelter ones self: all land has been sold off, new people born into this world must first serve the gentry until the gentry decide to pay them enough to buy some land of their own.

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

#89

Post by e40 »

lettergram wrote: post #78
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…

And let's not forget all the cities in the US that send their homeless to CA, usually to SF or Berkeley, where the police and citizens are more tolerant than most places.

I befriended a homeless guy I saw every day walking to/from work. He never asked for money. I struck up a conversation, offered to buy him food and we talked for months, every few days (when I would sometimes buy him food). He had been a machinist in PA, got laid off, and got to N CA somehow. The weather made it easier to live outside, year round. I pushed him to get an ID, which is needed for pretty much anything, and he did. I haven't seen him in a couple of months, so I hope he got into a shelter.

So, the weather and tolerance is a big reason people come to CA when they are homeless or near homeless.

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

#90

Post by pm90 »

Throwaway23412 wrote: post #56
yummyfajitas wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with this and support more or less open borders due to comparative advantage (even below average people can provide benefits due to trade). I was simply questioning whether Mexico is really sending us people above their mean/median.

Would they have to? The USA has a GDP (PPP) per capita around 3x that of Mexico. The sheer magnitude of the difference in purchasing power would make patio11's claim true, even if they were hypothetically, in our president's words, sending us drug dealers, criminals, and rapists.

I'm not sure exactly what you are arguing for here, so please correct me if I'm wrong. You seem to to saying that the middle class in Mexico are not the same as middle class in the US because their wealth + income would not be regarded as middle class by US standards.

I don't think that is a good argument, since once they move to the US they would be making middle class wages in the US, since they have the relevant skills to be employed in middle class jobs.

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