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

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

#101

Post by Splendor »

tharne wrote: post #92
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.

I don't know why we always go back to income inequality, it's not a useful metric. What matters is how many people are living good, prosperous lives. You can have have income equality simply by keeping everyone equally poor, or you can have prosperous societies where some people have a lot more than others, but everyone is doing well. Income inequality is only meaningful if the amount if wealth and prosperity in a so…

I think you're trying to say that it's not a useful metric by itself. Which may be true. But we're able to observe multiple metrics luckily. And we know that not everyone is doing well. So naturally we're going to look to other metrics for more information.

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

#102

Post by rtkwe »

nickpp wrote: post #32
newsclues wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because food and shelter cost nearly 100% of people’s incomes. If the cost of living is equal or greater than your income, saving is impossible.

Both those variables (cost of living and income) are far from fixed. Cost of living can be reduced by removing unnecessary expenses or selecting cheaper options while income can be increased by working more or improving oneself. But you need to want to have those savings. Most of the people I know living day to day spend beyond their means (like buying the BMW instead of the reliable Honda) or waste their time watchi…

There's a lot of traps when you're living pay check to pay check and suggesting people cut more ignores that there are solid floors on how cheaply you can live and minimum wage is below or just barely above that in a lot of places. Traps include not being able to buy bulk cheap items because they cost more than you can afford or not being able to buy longer lasting items because they cost more than you can save.

Consider just transportation for a minute. The options are fairly simple; walk, bike, public transit or a car. [0] The first two take a while and are very weather dependent so if you live in some parts of the country they're not really options year round and even where they are they take time out of other activities like childcare and cooking (and cooking is one place you can save money but doing so often takes time the one or two shitty low wage jobs don't give you). Public transit is a mess in the US outside of a few cities. For cars cheap means older and by extension more maintenance costs from regular break downs, buying a slightly better more reliable but more expensive car is difficult because you always need a car and the one you have keeps breaking down or other things you similarly had to buy a cheaper but less resilient version of keeps breaking.

[0] For where I live those would take 3.25 hrs, 50 minutes, ~1.5 hr, and 20 minutes respectively.

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

#103

Post by lumost »

eloff wrote: post #84
hrjfkgkgk wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

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

Typically that would be viewed as high inequality. If the ruling class of .1% controls 99.9% of the wealth then the "average wealth" and the "median wealth" will be extremely different aka wealth inequality.

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

#104

Post by splistud »

unpolloloco wrote: post #65
machiaweliczny wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minimum wage just forces some ppl to do more productive stuff. It will take away some jobs but you probably dont want such jobs in developed country. It's just better to allow more part-time work IMO. I would like some opinion of Dutch ppl on their part time work law, which seems interesting to me.

You want those jobs, but you don't want people to make careers out of those jobs. Someone in high school should be working those jobs, someone supporting a family or trying to build a career shouldn't be! Not sure how to solve this issue though... Age-based minimum wage? Something else?

Yes, something else. A reasonable education system, a reasonable regulatory framework that let's business success (we have both of these things), and repairing the hole in the bucket that is causing wages at the bottom to be stagnant - illegal immigration. But the majority of power on both sides of 'the aisle' don't want to tackle this for selfish reasons.

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

#105

Post by splistud »

machiaweliczny wrote: post #87
macspoofing wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 :)

If you're comfortable with democracy, why not also be comfortable with other people making their own employment choices, rather than assuming you know better or that they don't have a choice?

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

#106

Post by tharne »

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…

This is really well-stated. The goal should be reducing poverty, not inequality. China for example has drastically reduced the number of people living in poverty while also seeing massive increases in income inequality. Few people would make the case that the average person in China is doing worse than that they would have been 30 years ago, despite the fact that there is clearly more "income inequality".

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

#107

Post by macspoofing »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #97
macspoofing wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK .. so when price of flowers goes up prior to Valentine's day, that's inflation?

> when price of flowers goes up prior to Valentine's day, that's inflation? No. Inflation is a "a general rise in the price level in an economy over a period of time" [1]. A single product pricing up is not a "general rise," and a temporary spike before Valentine's Day isn't "over a period of time." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation

OK! Fair enough!

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

#108

Post by tharne »

elliekelly wrote: post #98
vagrantJin wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the bureaucratic way you put this like it means anything. Especially since poverty is arbitrarily defined.

If we define the federal poverty threshold as having an annual income of less than $1 poverty metrics will improve drastically. Heck, we might even be able to solve it!

It seems like the left is already doing that, just in the opposite direction. Poverty has continued to decrease in the U.S. so we longer talk about it much, instead we focus on "income inequality" because it serves a particular political philosophy. If "income inequality" is a major issue regardless of how well people are doing, then there will always be a reason to intervene in the economy and redistribute wealth, since any society with any sort of market economy will always see an uneven distribution of wealth.

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

#109

Post by macspoofing »

rtkwe wrote: post #102
nickpp wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both those variables (cost of living and income) are far from fixed. Cost of living can be reduced by removing unnecessary expenses or selecting cheaper options while income can be increased by working more or improving oneself. But you need to want to have those savings. Most of the people I know living day to day spend beyond their means (like buying the BMW instead of the reliable Honda) or waste their time watchi…

There's a lot of traps when you're living pay check to pay check and suggesting people cut more ignores that there are solid floors on how cheaply you can live and minimum wage is below or just barely above that in a lot of places. Traps include not being able to buy bulk cheap items because they cost more than you can afford or not being able to buy longer lasting items because they cost more than you can save. Cons…

Of course there are 'floors' to prices. Of course there are regional differences in cost of living. Of course. Of course. But that's not the argument here. Are you really trying to argue that in America it is not possible to live below your means? Really? Really really?

I mean... There are billions of dollars in remittances being sent by immigrants (of all income levels) working legally and illegally back to their families in their home countries. How are immigrants able to save? And yes, it should be an obvious statement that people, even poor people, in poor countries, find ways to save as well.

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

#110

Post by orangecat »

mjevans wrote: post #85
unpolloloco wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Sea…

California, from every source I've seen, has a major, systemic, generations long market failure.

Failure, yes. Market, no. Local governments will point guns at you if you try to build more housing.

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