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America is substantially reducing poverty among children

economist.com

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Re: America is substantially reducing poverty among children

#151

Post by BobbyJo »

rualca wrote: post #85
BobbyJo wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Food and clothing depend on other things (cost of employees, equipment, materials, etc.) When the costs of those things rise, the cost of food and clothing will have to rise.

> Food and clothing depend on other things (cost of employees, equipment, materials, etc.) When the costs of those things rise, the cost of food and clothing will have to rise. Not really. You're pointing to production costs, but production costs just define the price's lower bound, not the price itself. Price depends solely on willingness to pay and pricing strategy, which is higher than the production cost when the…

> Not really. You're pointing to production costs, but production costs just define the price's lower bound, not the price itself.

I was replying to a comment about how intensely competitive these markets are, and how that means margins are driven down. If your business is operating at a very low margin, and costs rise, you will necessarily raise prices, because you are already operating on the price floor.

Low margin businesses are defined by the price floor (the cost) being very close to, if not equal to, the price sold at.

Re: America is substantially reducing poverty among children

#152

Post by BeetleB »

wolverine876 wrote: post #139
BeetleB wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Commenter's aim is to seek knowledge. He is putting forth a hypothesis, and is seeking alternative theories. If he gets viable ones, he'll put less faith in his hypothesis, or may abandon it altogether. If one merely finds flaws in his hypothesis, he'll realize he's wrong, but will be no closer to the truth. Pointing out that he hasn't backed up his theory is reasonable, but it doesn't bring him closer to his goal. A…

Sagan's quote doesn't apply; Sagan also didn't invest time in baseless claims. If you told Sagan you had a theory of chemical composition of Saturn but had no basis, Sagan wouldn't continue the conversation. Sagan would (I imagine) want to hear novel theories based on evidence and solidly reasoned. And if you said you have no basis, but will believe it unless Sagan proved otherwise ... Sagan also didn't write in an a…

> Sagan also didn't invest time in baseless claims.

That shows a great degree of ignorance about Carl Sagan. He did this several times - and one of the people he did this with later became his wife.

> Sagan also didn't write in an age of massive disinformation and misinformation.

Sorry, but I was alive when he was, and I had to deal with a similar level of nonsensical beliefs as I do today. The main difference I see is that there is more awareness about this phenomenon today.

> it's important to do something about it, which includes pointing it out when it's happening.

Sorry, but this is mere post hoc justification for your behavior. I would recommend you read the book "The Righteous Mind" which goes into the psychology behind it.

Re: America is substantially reducing poverty among children

#153

Post by nullspace »

tastyfreeze wrote: post #130
nullspace wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which is driven by a welfare system that punishes married couples with lower payments Is this true? If you're not married, then doesn't only one person get to claim the benefits? Not benefits x2?

Single parents get more money than two parent families. Only one parent gets to apply but the payout is higher for a single parent. The system absolutely incentivizes single parent households.

I think this might apply only if you are married but filing together. Not separately. Not 100 percent sure about this though, so feel free to fact check me. We’ve been doing married filing separately and my wife has been getting the full amounts afaik.

Edit: did some light googling and yeah there was nothing obvious that being single parent is better than being married, financially. So I think the above claims will need some qualification.

Re: America is substantially reducing poverty among children

#154

Post by dang »

AbjectFailure wrote: post #110
wolverine876 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then perhaps the question is, 'what causes the high rate of child poverty in the US, can anyone provide some substantive information?' The claim is baseless and thus not relevant; posting it just spreads a baseless claim, which we have plenty of on the Internet! > In the instances where they DO cite sources (which is rare) If it helps, try higher-quality news. The journalism I read always cites sources; it's a rule o…

Just shut the fuck up, you annoying loser. Jesus Christ.

We've banned this account. You can't break the site guidelines like this, regardless of how annoying another comment is or you feel it is.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Re: America is substantially reducing poverty among children

#155

Post by Billyfryman »

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Re: America is substantially reducing poverty among children

#156

Post by coolgeek »

gwright wrote: post #136
riboflavin123 wrote: post #59

> depending on how it is measured, somewhere between one in six or one in five children counted as poor This is an alarmingly high number. I've been primed by media to blame this on an inverse relationship between income and number-of-children (i.e. poor people have many babies, rich people have few babies). Does anyone have an alternative explanation for the surprisingly high child poverty rate?

It might help to understand a bit more about poverty statistics (at least as they manifest themselves in the US): https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/annals-of-poverty Basically the "poverty rate" that makes it to the headlines is a very misleading metric. On particular flaw is that it excludes the value of many anti-poverty programs, for example the value of food stamps and public housing is not counted! So you coul…

> So you could double cash outlays for those programs and the "poverty rate" wouldn't change.

This is absurd. This is like saying that you can no longer consider yourself a gunshot victim if you've been treated and recovered.

How do you characterize the converse of your scenario? How would the "poverty rate" change if the cash outlays were eliminated? Do we get to blame the politicians that eliminated the outlays for putting people in poverty?

Re: America is substantially reducing poverty among children

#157

Post by gwright »

coolgeek wrote: post #156
gwright wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might help to understand a bit more about poverty statistics (at least as they manifest themselves in the US): https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/annals-of-poverty Basically the "poverty rate" that makes it to the headlines is a very misleading metric. On particular flaw is that it excludes the value of many anti-poverty programs, for example the value of food stamps and public housing is not counted! So you coul…

> So you could double cash outlays for those programs and the "poverty rate" wouldn't change. This is absurd. This is like saying that you can no longer consider yourself a gunshot victim if you've been treated and recovered. How do you characterize the converse of your scenario? How would the "poverty rate" change if the cash outlays were eliminated? Do we get to blame the politicians that eliminated the outlays for…

The problem is that if you are trying to measure the effectiveness of government programs you can't exclude their value in your metric. In a very simple stripped down version:

    * assume 20% of people need public assistance
    * assume that that assistance has been provided via government programs
It is disingenuous to then assert that since 20% of people still need assistance (because you haven't counted the assistance in the metric) and therefore the government programs have not "reduced poverty" and need to be increased.

I do agree that you might observe that 20% of people still need assistance and want to think about ways to make them more self-sufficient, but you can't use that number to obscure the fact that the assistance has indeed been provided.

Re: America is substantially reducing poverty among children

#158

Post by coolgeek »

gwright wrote: post #157
coolgeek wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So you could double cash outlays for those programs and the "poverty rate" wouldn't change. This is absurd. This is like saying that you can no longer consider yourself a gunshot victim if you've been treated and recovered. How do you characterize the converse of your scenario? How would the "poverty rate" change if the cash outlays were eliminated? Do we get to blame the politicians that eliminated the outlays for…

The problem is that if you are trying to measure the effectiveness of government programs you can't exclude their value in your metric. In a very simple stripped down version: * assume 20% of people need public assistance * assume that that assistance has been provided via government programs It is disingenuous to then assert that since 20% of people still need assistance (because you haven't counted the assistance i…

Part of the problem is that "poverty line" is a stand-in for "can (or cannot) afford food and shelter".

Part of the problem is that there are two different statistics that need to be measured

  - the percentage of the population that could not afford food and shelter before assistance
  - the percentage of the population that still could not afford food and shelter even after assistance
Part of the problem is that "poverty line" is an arbitrary demarcation point. (This doesn't even get into the fact that the "poverty line" is a national statistic, but the demarcation point in NYC is very different from that in rural Kansas.)

You seem to be complaining that some percentage of recipients have moved past the arbitrary line, while ignoring that they still can't afford food and shelter.

How is this not a No True Scotsman argument?

The label you apply to a recipient (above/below an arbitrary line) is irrelevant. What matters is whether or not they can survive.

Re: America is substantially reducing poverty among children

#159

Post by knownjorbist »

silver-arrow wrote: post #98
rubyist5eva wrote: post #82

Wait until you start to really feel the effects of inflation. The tone of this article is very pravda-esque.

Agreed. Simply a changing unit of measurement. Wait until this finishes out, you will see decimation of the middle class

Behold, the shrinking American middle class:

https://twitter.com/scottlincicome/status/144006410544490496...

Re: America is substantially reducing poverty among children

#160

Post by encoderer »

com2kid wrote: post #96
encoderer wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Costs cannot be controlled. That’s not how it works. That’s how you get empty shelves. I think some inflation will happen but not dramatically in food and clothing. We do not have many naked and starving people in America. It’s the premium consumer goods that will see higher demand - think dishwashers not Chanel.

> Costs cannot be controlled. That’s not how it works. That’s how you get empty shelves. Many types of food in America are massively subsidized, including dairy[1], beef[2], and corn. Government policies can certainly drive down prices. Direct price controls don't work, but subsidizing production most certainly works. Though an economist would argue that a dollar saved at the market cost tax payers more than a dollar…

Sure but a subsidy is a market support. A price control is a market support. A subsidy is not a price control.
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