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Vanguard
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Monster Island
Apr 1999
time: 05:37
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All these arguments about how cheap it is to live in certain parts of the country are completely beside the point. Five years ago there were some people below the poverty line who lived in "cheap" areas of the country and some people below poverty line who lived in "expensive" areas of the country.
Now, five years later, the exact same circumstances apply; Some people below the poverty line live in cheap areas and some people below the poverty line live in expensive areas. Unless you have evidence that millions of people are moving from expensive states to cheap states, then all these arguments mean exactly nothing.
The poverty line is, indeed, a somewhat arbitrary distinction. But it is arbitrary both ways. You may be able to survive on 15k a year in New Mexico. But 18k a year in California is going is to make you very, very poor indeed.
So it is no argument to say that some people can live well below the poverty line. I'm sure they can. This does not mean that the number is wrong. This income figure does not equal poverty for everyone. But it seems to work pretty well to describe poverty for a large majority of those below it. I don't see how you can ask much more from a national demographic descriptor.
quote:
It was 4 years in a row last business cycle too. This dog won't hunt.
We went over this earlier in the thread. Didn't you read it? The reason it happens is because at this point in the business cycle, our economy doesn't bring people out of poverty at a high rate. This is no different than what was happening at this point in the last business cycle (during Clinton's tenure). |
This is wrong.
As I'm sure you are aware, the "previous business cycle", or to use the clearer term, the previous recession took place from mid-1990 until mid-1991, in George H.W. Bush's term. Poverty did indeed increase until 1993, when it fell sharply. This is, at most three years of rising poverty, which then fell dramatically under Clinton.
Under George W. Bush, however, poverty began rising in 2001. And it has continued to do so for more than four full years since and at a very high rate of increase. The poverty rate is now even higher than it was in the dark days of the Reagan administration.
Worse, there is no sign of a change. There is no reason to think that poverty dropped this year and, given inflation, every reason to think that it increased. We are very likely starting a new recession right now. So there is every likelihood that poverty rates will continue to increase, for perhaps years to come. This is not the result of a business cycle. If it were, then poverty rates would cycle, just like other indicators. Since it isn't cycling, it isn't part of the business cycle.
Last edited by Vanguard on 15-09-2005 at 06:00
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shawnmmcc
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Like Mrs. Tuberski, let me put a face on poverty. Being poor is, even after insurance, having medical bills so large your father yells at your mother at the end of each month because she is "spending too much on food." even though she cooks. You help her cook because her hands are so scarred, so you know how hard she is working. Plus she is already back at work as a nurse, trying to help cover all those medical bills, even though her hands are still a mess.
And when you go to school, you eat the bologna sandwich where the meat has turned grey so your dad won't yell at your mother. Your mom can get marked down Bologna cheaper than peanut butter. I did that for two years, until my mother found out about it. To this day if I smell meat that is not quite spoiled (spoiled is worse), I get dry heaves. Try living with that so-called safety-net in the USA. FYI, four times my mother's family had to intervene to keep us from losing our house. Yes, there are people worse off in the third world. Please find me an industrialized country where the poor do as badly as the US. Hell, Pekka, Finland treats it's convicts better than the US treats its poor. And for the US posters talking so glibly about poverty and it's not so bad - have you done volunteer work with the groups who try to help poor children? Have you spent your precious time to see what their lives are really like. F*cking God Damn hypocrits for those of you who don't - and for those of you who do, God Bless You.
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Ted Striker
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United States of America
Jan 1970
time: 21:37
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quote:
Originally posted by shawnmmcc
Like Mrs. Tuberski, let me put a face on poverty. Being poor is, even after insurance, having medical bills so large your father yells at your mother at the end of each month because she is "spending too much on food." even though she cooks. You help her cook because her hands are so scarred, so you know how hard she is working. Plus she is already back at work as a nurse, trying to help cover all those medical bills, even though her hands are still a mess.
And when you go to school, you eat the bologna sandwich where the meat has turned grey so your dad won't yell at your mother. Your mom can get marked down Bologna cheaper than peanut butter. I did that for two years, until my mother found out about it. To this day if I smell meat that is not quite spoiled (spoiled is worse), I get dry heaves. Try living with that so-called safety-net in the USA. FYI, four times my mother's family had to intervene to keep us from losing our house. Yes, there are people worse off in the third world. Please find me an industrialized country where the poor do as badly as the US. Hell, Pekka, Finland treats it's convicts better than the US treats its poor. And for the US posters talking so glibly about poverty and it's not so bad - have you done volunteer work with the groups who try to help poor children? Have you spent your precious time to see what their lives are really like. F*cking God Damn hypocrits for those of you who don't - and for those of you who do, God Bless You. |
Sorry you had to go through all that shawn. 
It's situations like that that make me mad. Your family was obviously working hard to get out of your situation but the safety net wasn't doing it's job.
Then on top of that you have idiots who are preaching about how it's not such a bad situation, and if you just worked hard enough, you could just get out of it.
It's pretty damn disgusting, because I have never met anyone who has had this attitude who has actually HAD to live go through a tough time in their life.
Once someone has been through a tough time, or seen someone else go through it, that, "just suck it up and work hard theory," goes right out the window. It's nothing more than an empty theory preached from a pulpit of complete comfort.
On top of that you have children, who have no say so in the situation. A malnourished kid often has developmental problems that doesn't give him or her the same chance to succeed as the other kids. They often have to play catchup when their life situation gets stabalized. They don't need their parents to "work harder and get out of the situation," they need help NOW. And that's the whole purpose of the safety net. An adult may be better able to absorb a year or two when they are down and out, but for the child, living in poverty has exponential effects on their development. God bless those kids that get through it and recover back to what's considered, "normal."
Last edited by Ted Striker on 15-09-2005 at 13:27
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shawnmmcc
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It took four years. My dad's company, National Lead (which was a fortune 500 company that no longer exists due to the crap I am about to describe - employee's knew they were jerks and good ones left) knew that he had to have the insurance, so he spent four years with minimal pay raises because they knew he couldn't leave. At a time period when Chemical Engineers were in demand and getting good money.
Four years later a local power utility was desperate for skilled engineers, and was willing to hire him while paying Blue Cross some kind of fee to cover my sister's surgeries and my mother's Krohns disease - I would guess some kind of pre-existing condition coverage. A pretty hefty fee, but they really needed him. He designed the control system for I think it was the second running LNG plant in the US.
Things were still tight, but we started getting ahead, until my mother's Krohns started the downward spiral four years later. It beggared our family again. She took eight years to die, and with a six figure salary it took my dad two additional years to pay off his debts. Chronic fatal disease if expensive.
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molly bloom
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Lundenwic
Oct 2001
time: 15:37
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quote:
Originally posted by Mrs. Tuberski
Molly I will need you to explain what exactly you mean by white collar clerical. |
I thought it was self-explanatory- there are jobs (yes, even low paid jobs) that are classed as being white collar, clerical jobs, which while being occasionally mentally exhausting or mind-numbingly banal, do not involve strenuous physical effort, even for short bursts.
I know there are parts of nurses' jobs that require what seems like the endless filling out of forms, but I know nurses also have to do physically demanding work, such as lifting patients.
I'm not sure if you haven't managed to get your wires crossed, somehow- I'm not belittling health care workers who do manual work as a necessary part of their employment.
I believe what Ehrenreich was doing in her book was reminding people of the sheer physical effort involved in work that is 'invisible' to a great many people- the work of some of the staff in Walmart and other department stores, for instance, or in the nursing home she worked in, where job descriptions can be so (purposefully) vague that they give no hint of the demanding nature of the work.
Her point I think is not simply the hard work and effort involved, but the working conditions, the relatively small amount of income derived from the long hours, and the inability of the working poor to be able to save money- necessary for those downpaymemts, security deposits, first and last months' rent, and so on.
Last edited by molly bloom on 15-09-2005 at 14:54
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Patroklos
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Back home in good ole Norfolk VA
Dec 2001
time: 05:37
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quote:
don't see how you can ask much more from a national demographic descriptor. |
You can calculate the figure for regions using cost of living, and then add them for a total statistic. This would take about 2 hours of work from a cubicle monkey to accomplish.
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Unless you have evidence that millions of people are moving from expensive states to cheap states, then all these arguments mean exactly nothing. |
The migration of workers and buisnesses south is a very well recorded and commented on trend, and has been going on for 2 decades now.
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Also as che pointed out areas of lower living standard also have fewer jobs. |
You mean places with lower taxes, cheap materials, and where jobs are constantly relocating too?
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You forgot that in areas where the living standard is lower the pay is also lower. It evens out. |
The majority of people included in the census, like 95% of them, did not relocate this year. Which means that if they were not below the poverty line last year, they pay was not readjusted for cost of living this year as it was already there. Basics gentlemen!
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And when you go to school, you eat the bologna sandwich where the meat has turned grey so your dad won't yell at your mother. Your mom can get marked down Bologna cheaper than peanut butter. I did that for two years, until my mother found out about it. To this day if I smell meat that is not quite spoiled (spoiled is worse), I get dry heaves. |
So you were poor, by the very litmus test I use. I don't envy your former position. What does that have to do with using a faulty model to calculate nation wide poverty statistics?
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And for the US posters talking so glibly about poverty and it's not so bad - have you done volunteer work with the groups who try to help poor children? Have you spent your precious time to see what their lives are really like. |
Yes. What does this have to do with drastic cost of living differences around the country?
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Then on top of that you have idiots who are preaching about how it's not such a bad situation, and if you just worked hard enough, you could just get out of it. |
Is that not exactly what he did?
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Once someone has been through a tough time, or seen someone else go through it, that, "just suck it up and work hard theory," goes right out the window. |
Are you kidding. Most people have the "I did it, what is your problem?" mentality. If you think you know more formally poor people that dragged themselves out of their situation through hard work alone you should remember what I do. In fact I would bet everyone who got out of poverty has done it through hard work alone. The current saftey net is diluted beyond all use, and when it does work is only enough to keep you going, not lift you up.
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to hire him while paying Blue Cross some kind of fee to cover my sister's surgeries and my mother's Krohns disease - I would guess some kind of pre-existing condition coverage. |
This Shawn, is exactly why Teds line is ridiculous. I bet according to the defininition of the line your family was not in poverty. But the costs of your greater than normal health bills made you that way. The poverty line does not care about this, you made 15,000 dollars or whatever the level is for your family size, and that is it.
Cold, heartless, and worst of all inacurate.
The HHS did consider you poor though Shawn, because they have a real poverty indicator.
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Mao
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Apolyton
Jun 1999
time: 00:37
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Wait...shawn, your father was a chemical engineer and your mother was a nurse and you *still* went through this? Wow...I do mostly work with immigrants, and some of their conditions aren't as bad as those you describe, even though they have no language skills...and few marketing skills in general. But your parents were both white collar professionals...wow.
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shawnmmcc
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Let me try this again - my sister was burned. At age three going on four. 65% of her body, second through fourth degree burns. There was so much scar tissue that had badly contracted she was little more than a quadraplegic for almost two years, and they had to do things like reconstruct her throat/front of her neck because of all the tissue damage - muscle as well as skin. She had almost all the protobreast tissue burned out.
You could see the bones in my mother's hands. She rolled them in melted, burning synthetics bubbling into my sister's skin. She had her hands in dressings for close to three months. Now throw in the eighty surgeries my sister had (and trust me at 80% of hospital costs and a mnimum of three surgeries a year even back then it was crippling.) Now add in the fact my father was a junior engineer, primed to be promoted to senior (he was in thirties), and you get part of the problem (they didn't promote him, they didn't need to - they were his insurance and had him by the short hairs).
Plus my mothers Crohns was already kicking in, we just didn't know it yet because it was misdiagnosed. So we are starting up that medical hill too. Hell, the IRS started auditing us the year our medical bills exceeded our income - the only way we survived that year were my mother's parents and what little savings we had made I suspect. I was the poorest kid in our neighborhood, which was the one advantage I had over most poor kids - my neighborhood was mostly safe, we only had one family of thugs in it which can happen anywhere.
This is why during my Federal Service I have always paid the premium for 100% coverage of hospital fees. Most people have no conception how quickly those can utterly wipe you out. And Patroklos, I will bet you all those children living just over the poverty line, and not meeting your criteria but living the kind of life that Ted, Mrs. Tuberski, or I would categorize as poor would just love your pontificating. Ted is not being disingenuous, he is being passionate. And if I have to choose between your sterile statements on it, when people like MosesPresley and Vel have triied to show you where you are off base, and Ted's passion which, even if he is wrong does no harm to children, I will choose Ted. Your views, on the otherhand, by shifting that poverty line to how you know it should be shifted, would, if you were wrong, condemn hundreds if not thousands of children to fall between your cracks. Think about that. And eat a bologna sandwich where the meat has turned grey while you think about it.
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Patroklos
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Back home in good ole Norfolk VA
Dec 2001
time: 05:37
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quote:
This is why during my Federal Service I have always paid the premium for 100% coverage of hospital fees. Most people have no conception how quickly those can utterly wipe you out. And Patroklos, I will bet you all those children living just over the poverty line, and not meeting your criteria but living the kind of life that Ted, Mrs. Tuberski, or I would categorize as poor would just love your pontificating. Ted is not being disingenuous, he is being passionate. And if I have to choose between your sterile statements on it, when people like MosesPresley and Vel have triied to show you where you are off base, and Ted's passion which, even if he is wrong does no harm to children, I will choose Ted. Your views, on the otherhand, by shifting that poverty line to how you know it should be shifted, would, if you were wrong, condemn hundreds if not thousands of children to fall between your cracks. Think about that. And eat a bologna sandwich where the meat has turned grey while you think about it. |
Shawn, are you actually reading what Ted is saying? According to Ted, you are not poor, your father and your mother together probobly earned more that the poverty line (you have not said either way) so according the the government and Ted you are not poor. Because of a number.
So which is more cold to you Shawn?
You were poor and disadvangated because:
a) your family made 15,000 in wages.
or
b) of the circumstances in which you lived (Sister and mothers medical problems) including your income?
If you choose the first you agree with Ted and were not poor, if you chose B you agree with me and were.
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by shifting that poverty line |
Who ever said anything about shifting the poverty line? My position is that everyones actual living circumstances makes them poor, and could easily assessed by adding modifiers other than you income, just like how the figure out your taxes by things other than your income.
Me pointing out why Teds "poverty line" is retarted is not me supporting some other incarnation of it.
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shawnmmcc
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Patroklos - really read Vel's post, and Ted's too. You are mixing Apples and Oranges. As a Macroeconomic indicator, it is quite useful. However, if you are arguing on an individual basis - then you are correct. That is the problem in the argument, Vel and Ted and the others are perfectly correct in arguing the Macro aspect. But on the personal level, you are correct.
You have also gotten into a dead end that I am notorious for with my friends. Orphan ideas. The true welfare liberal (do they even still exist or are they a strawman) won't like your case by case analysis, while the conservative isn't going to want to see the numbers go up - which they will with the urbanization of America and population concentration in those expensive areas. Which of course leads right back to my response to Mrs. Tuberski early on - how do you not reward the small number of abusers of government assistance, while not penalizing the majority of those who really are trying? I believe that has been argued for centuries.
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15-09-2005 02:08
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