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

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

#101

Post by mdpopescu »

xg15 wrote: post #91

After reading many mental gymnastics excercises of varying creativity in this thread that try to explain why the supplemental poverty measure is irrelevant and/or misleading, I'd like to know, how would you define a measure for poverty that's both objective and gives a realistic account of the quality of life in the measured area?

Following Julian Simon, I'd use "how much X can you buy with an hour's worth of work", where X can be food, a basket of goods [1], precious metals or whatever seems more appropriate. I think the official basket of goods can be taken as a good first approximation.

[1] http://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/basket_of_goods.asp

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

#102

Post by danjoc »

estsauver wrote: post #20
deelowe wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a meaningless metric. Food can't be magically shipped to the regions that need it. A better measurement would be waste per capita or farm land utilization.

The other thing of course to remember is just shipping food out of the US and into the developing world is how you break local farming economies. Who wants to buy food from the local farmer when there's ample free food from relief programs. Development is hard.

Most of the food wasted is "ugly" food. It's not putting farmers out of business. It could keep starving people alive though.

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

#103

Post by NumberSix »

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 (…

A follow up as a point of reference:

The median home price in Plano, TX is $317,800 according to Zillow (March 12, 2017 https://www.zillow.com/plano-tx/home-values/)

One bedroom apartments in Plano rent for $956 a month on average and two bedroom apartment rents average $1293. (according to RentJungle https://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-plano-rent-trends...)

Plano (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plano%2C_Texas) is a suburb of Dallas-Ft.Worth where many people who work in the Telecom Corridor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecom_Corridor live. It is similar to the Silicon Valley and more generally urban areas in California but with much lower home prices and apartment rental rates.

The high housing prices are not a consistent nationwide pattern.

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

#104

Post by danjoc »

dikdik wrote: post #36
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.

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.

Improvement isn't debt. Interest on debts is a direct transfer of wealth from the have-nots to the haves.

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

#105

Post by edblarney »

Spooky23 wrote: post #79
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.

"The poorest people are rural whites and southern/inner city African Americans. "

I don't agree.

There are very large numbers of Central/South Americans who come to Cali, largely unskilled, and they occupy the biggest part of the economic underclass.

Think of how many are not even 'on the books'? I'd argue it's very difficult for an undocumented person to make that much.

It's not a 'moral' statement, it's just a reality of the blending of people from different civilizations in one pot.

Large scale migration from poor countries will definitely be a factor.

And as one commenter above noted - the 'weather' does as well.

Nice weather attracts more vagabonds. This is true in Canada s well, BC has way more street people than Ontario where it's extremely cold and extremely uncomfortable for street people in the winter. Again, not a moral statement. Just fairly rational human nature.

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

#106

Post by danjoc »

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…

>in many parts of the state, $30k/yr just isn't enough to rent an apartment and cover the basics

Oh no, I can't afford beach front property or a mansion in Beverly Hills on $30K a year? Poverty!

http://www.apartmentcities.com/Los-Angeles-Apartments/Los-An...

15 pages under $500 in Los Angeles.

>and worse off than poor in the developing world.

So you won't mind moving there and living on a local salary, eh?

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

#107

Post by jackcosgrove »

pm90 wrote: post #94
laughfactory wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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%!

To be fair though, its not like the tax money is going into the pockets of corrupt politicians (well maybe not all of it). California is the most progressive state and spends that money on its residents via education, healthcare, scientific research etc. I would be willing to pay more taxes if the State made good use of what I pay them.

California's public education system is below average. It is not what it used to be before Prop 13.

California's public funds are increasingly going towards paying public employee pensions. Given how generous these pensions are and how they can be manipulated for maximum payout I would consider it corruption.

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

#108

Post by artpepper »

xienze wrote: post #74
orasis wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That article does not dispute the claim that net immigration from Mexico has been negative.

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

#109

Post by objclxt »

edblarney wrote: post #105
Spooky23 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"The poorest people are rural whites and southern/inner city African Americans. " I don't agree. There are very large numbers of Central/South Americans who come to Cali, largely unskilled, and they occupy the biggest part of the economic underclass. Think of how many are not even 'on the books'? I'd argue it's very difficult for an undocumented person to make that much. It's not a 'moral' statement, it's just a real…

19% of SF's homeless are Hispanic, versus 15% of the general population.

36% of SF's homeless are African American, versus 7% of the general population.

The data doesn't back you up. The very poorest unable to even find housing are statistically more likely to be African American than Hispanic.

[1]:http://sfmayor.org/sites/default/files/FileCenter/Documents/...

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

#110

Post by throwaway743824 »

obstacle1 wrote: post #96
erikpukinskis wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 peopl…

>Owners win because we live in capitalist society NYC exists under the same capitalist system as SF or LA or wherever. Nothing you have described (need to drive, no clean water, etc.) applies to NYC. Therefore, your gripes aren't caused by the capitalist system you are blaming.

I guess one can say it's a similar system. But, while definitions might differ, I'm not sure how capitalist I would call one of the largest government run subway systems in the world [0], half century long water tunneling projects [1] or the longest running rent control system in the US [2].

[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/timothylee/2012/06/03/infrastru... [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/10/nyregion/10tunnel.html [2] http://www.tenant.net/Oversight/50yrRentReg/history.html

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