Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

U.S. Suffers Sharpest Rise in Poverty Rate in More Than 50 Years

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 252 posts

Re: U.S. Suffers Sharpest Rise in Poverty Rate in More Than 50 Years

#81

Post by hrjfkgkgk »

pietrovismara wrote: post #71
lumost wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These two seem at odds, are we defining poverty in such a way that it's decoupled from the expected living standard of the age?

Exactly. Some people seem to refer to poverty as living with the standards of 2000 years ago. Of course we improved. That doesn't mean that relative poverty is getting worse and that other factors like free time have worsened if compared with centuries ago.

idk man poverty in the us is not as bad as in india but it sure is worse than east europe. there is a dude here stating inequality is not bad, perhaps they’d want to visit communist countries to see how wide the gap is between regular folks and the elite

Re: U.S. Suffers Sharpest Rise in Poverty Rate in More Than 50 Years

#82

Post by hrjfkgkgk »

slashdev wrote: post #77
lumost wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These two seem at odds, are we defining poverty in such a way that it's decoupled from the expected living standard of the age?

Inequality is not a bad thing. It's actually necessary to have inequality of outcomes otherwise you have no incentives for improvement. An example of a society with very low inequality is old-school communism where most people are equally poor - it's clearly not a good thing. What is bad is extreme inequality where a lot of people are in poverty. I think most people would agree that poverty is a bad thing that we sho…

[flagged]

Re: U.S. Suffers Sharpest Rise in Poverty Rate in More Than 50 Years

#83

Post by JumpCrisscross »

macspoofing wrote: post #11
whateveracct wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now, talks for a massive federal minimum wage increase means further sending people into poverty by destroying the value of what small savings anyone on the bottom might have. are you suggesting the newly-proposed $15 minimum wage will cause inflation so bad it will destroy people's savings?

I think that's what OP is saying and if that's the case, they are wrong. Minimum wage is not inflationary. It has other problems like the fact it never ever decreases poverty, and has a good chance of increasing unemployment, and is a one-size-fits all ($15/hr in NY, is different than $15/hr in Alabama) ... but it isn't inflationary. You're not creating new money.

> it isn't inflationary. You're not creating new money

Nitpick. We have no evidence minimum wage increases are inflationary. (We have evidence it is not [1][2].) But something doesn't have to create new money to be inflationary.

Increasing money velocity causes inflation as much as printing bills. The poor spend their dollars in the real economy (as opposed to the wealthy, who buy GameStock calls). That increases demand for those goods and services, which can result in a price spike.

Again, we don't have evidence of this happening. But theoretically, it's sound. (And less theoretically, it's why central banks can print pots of money while still fighting deflation.)

[1] https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/36750/1/MPRA_paper_36750.pdf

[2] https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/20104/1/dp861.pdf

Re: U.S. Suffers Sharpest Rise in Poverty Rate in More Than 50 Years

#84

Post by eloff »

hrjfkgkgk wrote: post #82
slashdev wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inequality is not a bad thing. It's actually necessary to have inequality of outcomes otherwise you have no incentives for improvement. An example of a society with very low inequality is old-school communism where most people are equally poor - it's clearly not a good thing. What is bad is extreme inequality where a lot of people are in poverty. I think most people would agree that poverty is a bad thing that we sho…

[flagged]

That was a very small ruling class exploiting pretty much the entire population. That's very low levels of inequality.

Re: U.S. Suffers Sharpest Rise in Poverty Rate in More Than 50 Years

#85

Post by mjevans »

unpolloloco wrote: post #53
searine wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Frankly I'm surprised the effect was so small It's not over yet! And won't be for a long time. There are a lot of people just scrapping by right now. All it will take is one big financial hit to knock them down into true poverty.

This metric is income-only. Which is why it's so small - extended unemployment benefits (with the bonuses) have keep a lot of people above this line. In reality, there are a lot more people than this who are just on the edge of scraping by. Some of their own volition (some people on the edge make $200k+ and it's because of a series of poor decisions), but even more people because the poverty line doesn't even pay for…

California, from every source I've seen, has a major, systemic, generations long market failure. The supply of housing has been nearly inelastic while demand remains high, with the obvious results.

However there are also less obvious results given the time domain involved. The problems have followed those retiring out of California's market as other regions follow in the same footsteps.

As an example; the greater Seattle / Puget Sound metro area reached a combination of sprawl / urban growth boundary / natural features (mountains, lakes, the sound) at about the same time that the 2008 recession killed what little development was still occurring.

The price of a very cramped, noisy (poor insulation) apartment in the city without even a parking spot to store the vehicle for anything you're doing outside of the city (E.G. visiting family on a weekend, going hiking, etc) was easily at least 3K (offhand, the last time I looked), and similar units in the suburbs quite far out, if available, were about 1.5K per month.

There might be more rural areas, but those were excluded from my search as the last time I looked they failed even the FCC's definition of broadband (25mbit down, 3mbit up). I suspect any areas out that far with good Internet would still have bad prices.

Re: U.S. Suffers Sharpest Rise in Poverty Rate in More Than 50 Years

#86

Post by TimPC »

ihsw wrote: post #14
whateveracct wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now, talks for a massive federal minimum wage increase means further sending people into poverty by destroying the value of what small savings anyone on the bottom might have. are you suggesting the newly-proposed $15 minimum wage will cause inflation so bad it will destroy people's savings?

There is only so much money for businesses to allocate towards labor, it is not infinite. Eg: $15K per month for staffing translates to $3750 per week, which translates to $125 per hour at 30 hours per week on average, which translates to ~10 staff at $12 per hour. At $15 per hour that is reduced to 8 staff. Alternatively the hours for 10 staff would be reduced from 30 hours per week to 24 hours per week. The money d…

It's a lot more complicated. Sometimes staff is set by the budget. Sometimes a business needs a certain amount of staff to function and can't get away with employing less. In a lot of cases, staff is set by the latter, and raising the minimum wage cuts into profit margins. It's potentially inflationary if product prices go up in response to higher costs, but often product prices are very demand sensitive and raising them will result in suboptimal net revenue. There is a reason a lot of studies show that increasing the minimum wage by small amounts has negligible effects on employment: there are many other factors to consider. That being said going from $7 to $15 in the US is an experiment for which there is little to no data, especially for rural effects (since only big cities seem to have tried it). I personally favor not having a minimum wage but only in a society with a UBI so you don't have people needing to make a living off what they earn in the labour market exclusively. In such a society people who's labour contributes negligible value to society can choose to do something other than work if they feel it would be a more valuable use of their time. People who earn a lot in the labour market still face a strong incentive to work. In current society the low-end employers appear to have oligopsony power which results in distorted downward pressure on wages, and many people are forced to take badly paying bad jobs in order to live.

Re: U.S. Suffers Sharpest Rise in Poverty Rate in More Than 50 Years

#87

Post by machiaweliczny »

macspoofing wrote: post #69
machiaweliczny wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah if you arent willing to pay them living wage you probably don't. I'm fine with paying little more than handling it myself. I think amazon Go style shops will get popular. These people probably can transition to different parts of service economy well. Low skill call centers are total waste of human time, that's why most of it is outsourced. UX just can get improved instead.

>Yeah if you arent willing to pay them living wage you probably don't. What if they are willing to work for less because it serves their purpose (like a foot in the door in the industry, or something else that you and I can't even think of). For example, we allow unpaid internships because we see the value of it. What about an internship that pays a little? Isn't that better for all? The problem is you're taking choi…

Yeah, foot in the door to work in McDonalds so you can what? Be manager one day and afford to have family? Foot in the door as cleaning lady to be hired as secretary? Maybe.

Basically min wage should be defined as basic needs for individual. I don't think that many people will chose to go for lower than that for future personal gain.

Anyway that's what democracy is for :)

Re: U.S. Suffers Sharpest Rise in Poverty Rate in More Than 50 Years

#88

Post by mjevans »

bwestergard wrote: post #25
exabrial wrote: post #3

This and a spiraling mental health crisis are predictable outcomes from poor public health policies executed during the pandemic. For unskilled labor jobs like the service industry, lockdowns are devastating which has fueled the inequality fire in 2020. Now, talks for a massive federal minimum wage increase means further sending people into poverty by destroying the value of what small savings anyone on the bottom mi…

"talks for a massive federal minimum wage increase means further sending people into poverty by destroying the value of what small savings anyone on the bottom might have." This statement is only true, and then only formally, if you limit yourself to considering first order effects. The distributive effects of minimum wage policies will alter final consumer demand, which will have an impact on capital structure and d…

My argument is that the __buying power__ should be increased, by forcing the market to have more of what people need. (I.E. more housing so housing actually becomes affordable)

That would also help out the middle class, rather than trying to lift the tide without building more high-ground docks.

Re: U.S. Suffers Sharpest Rise in Poverty Rate in More Than 50 Years

#89

Post by dv_dt »

Eridrus wrote: post #52
bmitc wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think using the word regress seems to imply that it was improving. Wealth inequality in the U.S. has been getting worse at faster rates, even before 2020.

Poverty metrics were improving.

2017/18 levels were just recovering back to 1970s levels before covid and after the 2008 crisis. Extreme poverty has been much higher than the 70's...

https://poverty.ucdavis.edu/faq/what-current-poverty-rate-un...

Post reply on HN