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Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2016

census.gov

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Re: Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2016

#91

Post by alexasmyths »

dragonwriter wrote: post #43
alexasmyths wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" which means things like CPI are taken in to account." Yes - but we should all be weary of this. CPI is measured in funky ways, and it's tough one. Problems with measures: + Both housing and Oil prices are usually left out of the numbers they use (included in others). There are reasons for doing this, but it's bazonkers crazy to think of 'consumer prices' as not including their #1 item (housing) and a huge variable…

> Yes - but we should all be weary of this. From context, I suspect, though I'm not certain, that you mean “wary” (cautious), not “weary” (tired).

Meant 'wary' - thanks.

Re: Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2016

#92

Post by ArialAnemone »

SapphireSun wrote: post #73
Consultant32452 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you have a very privileged view of what work is like. Most people will not have a career, they'll have a series of jobs. Most people do not have a broad range of opportunities to choose from which will offer them economic security. Enjoyment of the work is a factor, but it's so far behind economic security that I'm not sure it should be mentioned in conversations with young people when giving them advice abou…

I place the burden of bare economic security on society rather than the individual. It's really reactionary to say that someone that aspires to a healthy lifestyle is asking for too much. In this incredibly wealthy country, we can afford that. Many would argue, myself included, that the failure of aspirational thinking is producing the current crisis.

The failure of aspirational thinking was by its own doing. Aspirational thinking doesn't arise in a world where apes look at screens showing the screens where apes...

I just see a lot of addicted people who are given a garbage culture and conform to it. Society gives them garbage food, garbage values, garbage media, garbage circadian rhythm, etc.

Aspirational thinking doesn't thrive in such conditions. What is there truly to aspire to? Especially when these Hollywood types shovel garbage out and lower the value of our cognitive frames.

The beautiful God has been killed and replaced with crap. Now there was an aspiration! How do you replace that with terminology that any blue collar worker recognizes as coming from some inhuman psychopath's mouth? You don't. Nowadays, we're sophisticated enough to shrug off such thoughts and worries.

Re: Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2016

#93

Post by lotharbot »

linkregister wrote: post #79
lotharbot wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"core" CPI includes housing. This is funky for another reason: people don't live in similar housing to what people lived in in the past. If you look at census data (American Housing Survey) from 40-50 years ago, you find the average American home was under 1500 square feet, 2-3 bedrooms, 1-2 bathrooms, no AC, no laundry machines, and so on. In fact, the average American home in the 1970s was smaller and had less amen…

Are larger houses materially improving anyone’s lives? Over a certain amount of space, increases experience diminishing returns. Meanwhile, the important things, such as percentage of income directed toward expenses and debt payment, and amount of leisure, may not have improved. More households are composed of both prime-age adults working than 30 years ago. Are expenses simply rising to match this rate of increased…

> "Over a certain amount of space, increases experience diminishing returns"

Indeed. And yet, that's what we buy. Or, that's what's being built and therefore that's what we can buy. I don't know whether buyers or builders/zoning are to blame, I just know that when we try to measure inflation, it's really hard to divide monetary inflation from lifestyle inflation -- how much is "money is worth less", and how much of it is "you're buying something better"?

Re: Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2016

#94

Post by lotharbot »

maxxxxx wrote: post #61
lotharbot wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"core" CPI includes housing. This is funky for another reason: people don't live in similar housing to what people lived in in the past. If you look at census data (American Housing Survey) from 40-50 years ago, you find the average American home was under 1500 square feet, 2-3 bedrooms, 1-2 bathrooms, no AC, no laundry machines, and so on. In fact, the average American home in the 1970s was smaller and had less amen…

If only we could buy 1000 square foot houses in expensive areas. They don't get built anymore.

yeah, building and zoning are certainly relevant considerations. I'm not saying "this is all the fault of consumers". More like "when we measure inflation, we conflate monetary and lifestyle inflation, and our preferred policy ideas might not reflect that."

Re: Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2016

#95

Post by tootie »

0xbear wrote: post #17
tootie wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We pay off our debt constantly.

We just pay it off with borrowed money.

The federal government had $3.3T in revenue and all our debt is denoted in our own currency. That's how we're able to borrow.

Re: Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2016

#96

Post by thatcat »

astura wrote: post #89
thatcat wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>(CPI) does decrease Does CPI decrease artificially based on subsidies to the indexed goods? For example with milk or any food with corn syrup, where the actual cost of production isn't reflected in the market price.

The quote was "this number does decrease." "This number" refers to median income. Income tends to decrease in a recession.

Thanks, I misunderstood.

Re: Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2016

#97

Post by lotharbot »

jdavis703 wrote: post #67
taysic wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol the house you described would go over a million in the Bay Area and it was built before the 70s too. No heating or ac gets installed too. So I wonder how that gets accounted for in inflation?

Most houses don't have dishwashers, washing machines or clothes dryers as far as I can tell either.

from the 2015 data set via https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/ahs.html :

out of 118.29 million housing units, 80.8m (68%) have dishwashers, 97.6m (82%) have washing machines, and 95.7m (81%) have dryers. For the grandparent: 105m (89%) have AC, and 112m (94%) have a furnace or heat pump or water/steam heat or built-in electric heat of some sort. All of those numbers would qualify as "most".

Looking at the oldest stats I can find for each of those categories:

1970 -- out of ~75.3 million housing units, 35.3m (47%) have AC, and 62.6m (83%) have a furnace or heat pump or water/steam heat or built-in electric heat of some sort.

1985 -- out of 99.9 million units, 42m (42% heh) had dishwashers, 67m (67%) had washing machines, and 58m (58%) had clothes dryers.

So 26% more homes have dishwashers, 15% more have washing machines, 23% more have dryers, 42% more have AC, and 11% more have better heating systems compared to the earliest data I was able to find. Point being, there's been a significant increase in the availability of many important in-house amenities over the last 50 years. Not that everyone has every amenity, but a lot more people have them, and that definitely affects the way we should interpret stats relating to housing costs.

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