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

111–120 of 252 posts

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

#111

Post by science4sail »

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 that the greater question here is if human well-being is affected more by absolute wealth or by relative wealth.

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

#112

Post by AlexandrB »

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…

Unfortunately the amount of power in society is largely fixed, and income inequality combined with rulings like Citizens United lets that power be captured by the very few. I suppose it's nice that this kind of modern serfdom lets people live relatively "well", but if people sense they have no control over their government you're headed for trouble.

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

#113

Post by whateveracct »

kyuudou wrote: post #100
whateveracct wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I don't see how minimum wage could be inflationary, but if it were it certainly wouldn't be enough to "wipe out savings" - that requires hyperinflation. Inflation is a boogeyman. I heard a friend of mine not wanting any sort of covid stimulus checks because it would make his and his family's savings depreciate.

Huh? Inflation is very real. The dollars I saved from 20 years ago buy a lot less across the consumer spectrum. Prices don't go up, the money's purchasing power goes down. That is not a "boogeyman", it's theft by the inflation tax.

yes it's very real, but it is used as a black-and-white "any and all inflation is bad" thing like in my example, especially when discussed on its own instead of holistically combined with things like economic growth and interest rates and other things.

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

#114

Post by avrionov »

pradn wrote: post #26

The poverty rate is an awful metric. It simply counts the number of people who earn below a certain income. So people dipping $1 below the line are counted the same as those dipping $10,000 below the line. So, poverty-rate alleviation measures can be implemented simply by focusing on the top end of those under the limit - of course, this doesn't help much. What we should really worry about is the poverty gap - the am…

Here are the responses of the top economists on the effect of the minimum wage increase:

https://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/15-minimum-wage/

They seem quite divided on both questions.

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

#115

Post by dragonwriter »

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 don't know why we always go back to income inequality

Because it's pretty well established that outside of the most abject poverty, relative deprivation is a more significant factor driving experienced disutility than absolute material condition, contrary to the naive assumptions many people make that increasing individual absolute material condition increases individual utility independent of external context.

There are, of course, people who don't believe it works that way, people who don't want it to work that way, and people who don't want other people to believe it works that way because such belief threatens their own advantaged position.

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

#116

Post by machiaweliczny »

splistud wrote: post #105
machiaweliczny wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Because democracy is about society and not free will (it's about deciding what's better for majority) and yes, I do belive that limiting him that choice(not really him but his employer) is beneficial for society. It similar case to giving free access to alcohol, hard drugs, junk food etc. Someone has to pay this cost of nonoptimal choices.

EDIT: example: you don't provide living wage so some/more ppl will chose to steal. This might destroy their family, so social worker is needed, you also need more police, judges, prisons etc. All of them are employed, happily contributing to GDP. Success! Is it better world? I don't think so. It's much cheaper if with offering living wage. (as global optimisation, company owners and individuals do local optimisations)

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

#117

Post by Sevii »

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…

Seattle prices have dropped with the pandemic. Even pre-covid I was paying roughly 2k for a studio with parking. Now that same apartment would be 200-300 a month cheaper.

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

#118

Post by lumost »

wpasc wrote: post #70
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?

If you define poverty as income related to costs of living and obtaining necessities for living, it should be entirely decoupled from income inequality. If the poorest 20% of americans had their incomes triple over night without a corresponding increase of the costs of living and Bezos becomes a trillionare, poverty would have decrease with income inequality worsening. If the richest Americans all saw 75% of their we…

I think that definition is susceptible to defining the "necessities for living" in ways that underestimate poverty. How do you define what's the standard of living? As of 2021 I'd imagine that several necessities for interacting with society such as internet access and potentially even mobile access would not be universally viewed as required to be above the poverty line. Similarly while home ownership is probably not required to be above poverty line, is stable access to housing required? What about having sufficient savings to survive/social support to survive the loss of a paycheck without missing rent?

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

#119

Post by adolph »

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…

The phrase “market failure” often implies that left to their own devices people can’t find a way to satisfice wants and needs through the normal process of selling, buying and owning. My impression of California housing (and likely Seattle too) is that there are other factors at play and that the “market” isn’t the thing causing the “failure.”

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

#120

Post by dv_dt »

pradn wrote: post #26

The poverty rate is an awful metric. It simply counts the number of people who earn below a certain income. So people dipping $1 below the line are counted the same as those dipping $10,000 below the line. So, poverty-rate alleviation measures can be implemented simply by focusing on the top end of those under the limit - of course, this doesn't help much. What we should really worry about is the poverty gap - the am…

The rate of people below 50% of the poverty line hasn't been doing well in recent decades either.

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

Post reply on HN