Let the Good Times Roll: 1 Million More Americans in Poverty in 2004

[Vanguard]

How are the mighty fallen!

Conservatives used to argue that their policies would make more people wealthy. Now they are reduced to seriously arguing that making large numbers of people poorer is a Good Thing.

[DanS]

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by Patroklos


Since when does having "less financial means to live a good life" = poor? I have less means to live a good life than Bill Gates, but I am not poor. I am poorer but not impoverished.

The line is arbitrary, well probobly not as I am sure alot of politicing went into choosing that number. But if I move that line to to 25,000 on three kids today, does that instantly make all those millions of people poor overnight when nothing actually changed?

The posts by Che and DanS prove how ridiculous having a poverty lline is, and how ridiculous your dogged defense of it is. $15,000 dollars is different everywhere you go, and $15,000 dollars will also get you far more depending on how you spend it. All due respect Mrs. Tub, but your experiance is not a rule, and is why I think such a line is crap. The circumstances in which you live as a whole make you poor or not, not just some income statistic.

I didn't realize taking a quatified look at individual situations was more callous than lump millions of people and labeling them because of a number. Where is the sugar coating?

I think pretty much this whole post is a great example.

15,000 won't buy you sh1t anywhere.

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by Mrs. Tuberski
Pat You need to define ur defenition of good life. To you what does that entail. A roof over your head food on the table or maybe electricty? I dont know how u see good life. If u think that scrapping wondering were ur next meal will come from or even that hey how long i s this roof going to last on 15000 a year is a good life then i must say ur in need for a wkae up call. Do folks do it yes they do is it hard **** yeah it is do folks like bill gates give a **** prolly not. When any body here can say hey i had to live on this salary and try to raise kids then talk to me about this line, when it is only you and u have a net to fall back on like parents i dont ****ing want to hear it. Poor is poor!! my point has and will remain people dont choose to be this way, do u think if these folks had a choice they would choose to stay this way??

Word

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by Vanguard
How are the mighty fallen!

Conservatives used to argue that their policies would make more people wealthy. Now they are reduced to seriously arguing that making large numbers of people poorer is a Good Thing.

Seriously, the stats (which they have used to show how "great" things are) in this case are overwhelmingly against them.

So the defense line now is, "oh, that doesn't really mean anything, they arent' REALLY poor."

Like I said, sugarcoating and minimizing.

I want to see people in here live on 15,000K. Alot of people have attempted this experiment and have found out how hard it actually is.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by Ted Striker I want to see people in here live on 15,000K. Alot of people have attempted this experiment and have found out how hard it actually is.

I've mentioned this here before but I'll mention it again: at the height of the 2001-2002 lira crisis, one of the most popular tv shows in Turkey was a reality program on which two middle-class couples competed to see who could do the better job of living on the Turkish minimum wage. The US could use a show like that.

[Docfeelgood]

There is more going on behind the curtain than what most of you think.

I will use this example on my self to explain....


I lost my job last week..[don't worry my profession is in medicine]

Now that I am out of work I qualify for puplic assistance.
Housing,food,medical and unemployment pay.

I could NEVER have it this good having a job and a modest income.

If I fake injury I will get more for the rest of my life!!!!!!!

[Urban Ranger]

There is poverty and there is absolute poverty. Poverty doesn't mean you sleep next to a landfill and find food by digging in there. Poverty is relative to a country's living standards and it means the poor cannot enjoy a variety of things that are available to the average person. IOW Saras and Pekka don't know jack.

Originally posted by Pekka
And my penis is 5 inch.. FROM THE GROUND!

Man, you are short.

[Velociryx]

Unless I'm just missing something, the crux of the matter is this:

Today, right now, there are more people living in what the GOVERNMENT ITSELF defines poverty as than there were four years ago.

Doesn't matter if you do or do not agree with the definition.

Doesn't matter if they're better or worse off than the poor folks in Angola, cos we're not IN Angola, and our government's definition of poverty holds no water over there, nor does it matter one whit to the millions who went to bed without food last night.

We're talking about HERE. The US of A, and IN this country, there are more people who are poor than there were four years ago.

As has already been pointed out, this CANNOT be solely attributed to the fact that there are more people living here, because the rate of poverty has increased more rapidly than the rate of population growth.

You can sugar coat it any way you want to, but when you dig down past all the excuses, smoke and mirrors, that is the truth.

The next question that comes to mind is "why?", and again, the answer is obvious, although many neocons don't want to hear it.

The "Why" has everything to do with the policies of the present administration and what they are doing to the business climate in this country.

Hate to break it to you guys, but you've got nowhere to hide now.

You cannot, with a straight face, blame any failings on "those blasted liberals."

You hold majority power in both houses of Congress and you've got a lock on the office of the President.

Nothing passes in this country without NeoCon blessing and approval.

And things are getting worse, especially for folks on, or near the margin.

What does that tell you?



-=Vel=-

[Ted Striker]

Nice work Vel, perfectly articulated.

[Chemical Ollie]

This thread reminds me of the Monty Python joke "We lived in a shoe box on a motorway and ate a showel of cold gravel for breakfast each morning"

[Patroklos]

Pat You need to define ur defenition of good life. To you what does that entail. A roof over your head food on the table or maybe electricty? I dont know how u see good life. If u think that scrapping wondering were ur next meal will come from or even that hey how long i s this roof going to last on 15000 a year is a good life then i must say ur in need for a wkae up call. Do folks do it yes they do is it hard **** yeah it is do folks like bill gates give a **** prolly not. When any body here can say hey i had to live on this salary and try to raise kids then talk to me about this line, when it is only you and u have a net to fall back on like parents i dont ****ing want to hear it. Poor is poor!! my point has and will remain people dont choose to be this way, do u think if these folks had a choice they would choose to stay this way??

Mrs. Tub, you are not making any sense. You talk about the circumstances people live in as making them poor, then you defend Ted who gives two ****s and **** about circumstances, and bases his definition on and arbitrarily picked statistic.

$15,000 a year will get you a hell of alot depending on where you live. An example. The military computes the cost of living in every part of the United States. They do this because they want their employees to basically get paid the same relative to each other wherever you go. BAH (Basic Allowance for Housing) is an allowance designed to pay for your housing, with the rest of your base pay going to everything else. Mine here in Norfolk is $1009 dollars a month. However if I lived in NYC, I would be getting $1807. Now they change my BAH whenever I move, but my base pay doesn't, so that in Norfolk my dollar goes almost twice as far as it does in NYC. Examples of what $1009 dollars means in other places:

Detroit = $1046
Atlanta = $961
Jacksonville = $693!
New Orleans = $794
San Diego = $1370
Boston = $1661
St Louis = $842
San Fransico = $1973!
Houston = $1001

Despite all your other BS Ted, there is no disputing that your nation wide non ajusted poverty line is a joke of a way to determine poverty. And no offense Mrs. Tub, but your housing dollar alone goes three times as far in Jacksonville than San Francisco. The poor where you live, by definition of the damn method being used, are not the same as the poor anywhere else in America. Teds position is not yours.

The current measure of poverty does not care for this. Not only does it say that someone living in Jacksonville is poor even though his money goes further, it also classifies poeple in NYC as NOT poor because of their overall income even though they have to pay three times the housing costs!

You measure is stupid Ted, no matter how you look at it.

And why do you give people when they are trashing your position, or do you not realize this.?

[MosesPresley]

$15K after state and federal taxes and ss that is $11250. Now there is less than $937.50 per month for rent, food, gas etc.

$600.00 efficiency apartment rent. Minimum. I'm being generous here. This is for a lovely 10 x 15 room with a tiny bathroom.
$170.00 food minimum. A lovely diet of beans and occasionally some chicken or pork. This is for one person only.
$100.00 electricity.
$90.00 gas minimum
$91.00 car insurance

$1051.00 for $937.50 take home. I still haven't paid my telephone, cable or had any entertainment. I haven't even drank a beer.

I guess I better skip chicken and toilet paper.

You're right $15K is almost like living in heaven.

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by Patroklos


Mrs. Tub, you are not making any sense. You talk about the circumstances people live in as making them poor, then you defend Ted who gives two ****s and **** about circumstances, and bases his definition on and arbitrarily picked statistic.

$15,000 a year will get you a hell of alot depending on where you live. An example. The military computes the cost of living in every part of the United States. They do this because they want their employees to basically get paid the same relative to each other wherever you go. BAH (Basic Allowance for Housing) is an allowance designed to pay for your housing, with the rest of your base pay going to everything else. Mine here in Norfolk is $1009 dollars a month. However if I lived in NYC, I would be getting $1807. Now they change my BAH whenever I move, but my base pay doesn't, so that in Norfolk my dollar goes almost twice as far as it does in NYC. Examples of what $1009 dollars means in other places:

Detroit = $1046
Atlanta = $961
Jacksonville = $693!
New Orleans = $794
San Diego = $1370
Boston = $1661
St Louis = $842
San Fransico = $1973!
Houston = $1001

Despite all your other BS Ted, there is no disputing that your nation wide non ajusted poverty line is a joke of a way to determine poverty. And no offense Mrs. Tub, but your housing dollar alone goes three times as far in Jacksonville than San Francisco. The poor where you live, by definition of the damn method being used, are not the same as the poor anywhere else in America. Teds position is not yours.

The current measure of poverty does not care for this. Not only does it say that someone living in Jacksonville is poor even though his money goes further, it also classifies poeple in NYC as NOT poor because of their overall income even though they have to pay three times the housing costs!

You measure is stupid Ted, no matter how you look at it.

And why do you give people when they are trashing your position, or do you not realize this.?

That's nice, but we aren't talking about the military.

Thanks

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by MosesPresley
$15K after state and federal taxes and ss that is $11250. Now there is less than $937.50 per month for rent, food, gas etc.

$600.00 efficiency apartment rent. Minimum. I'm being generous here. This is for a lovely 10 x 15 room with a tiny bathroom.
$170.00 food minimum. A lovely diet of beans and occasionally some chicken or pork. This is for one person only.
$100.00 electricity.
$90.00 gas minimum
$91.00 car insurance

$1051.00 for $937.50 take home. I still haven't paid my telephone, cable or had any entertainment. I haven't even drank a beer.

I guess I better skip chicken and toilet paper.

You're right $15K is almost like living in heaven.

YUP

EVEN with regional cost of living adjustments factored in, 15K a year just sucks across the board no matter WHERE you live.