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

[Mrs. Tuberski]

Originally posted by molly bloom



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.

First
If it was self explanatory i wouldnt have asked now would I have. Second you need a litle info on my job as a nurse in the o.r. I do not now fill out forms. I assist the surgeon while the surgery is going on. I set up the field, i gather the supplies and instruments, all of this is manual labor. Not to mention almost at times standing on your head and twisting and bending to help the dr get proper retraction so he can see where he is working. at 2 hours or more at a time. If that is not bad enough trying having to hop on an or table and start chest compressions when you have a patient that codes while you are straddling this dying patient for half an hour till you are able to switch off with another person. Mentally exhaustive jobs are just as hard as physical ones. Your just exhausting a different muscle.

[Mrs. Tuberski]

Patrokolos the only thing i gather that your arguin is the fact that the goverments line drawn to decide poverty is useless. Each state has its own line drawn as well its not only a nationally issue. But you also say that it is possible to raise kids on 15000 a year. Which i have stated earlier it is not remotely possible. by my definiton poor is when you face more income going out then coming in. I fyou want to talk stats when you go and apply for food stamps these offices use you gross income not ur net which makes no sense since you dont actually see that money at all. Your net is what you actually take home and are able to use to raise your family. Arguing whether this line is accurate or not, is not the issue, the issue is and has been that more folks are living in poverty. They are not making ends meet. That is the issue that i have been standing by.

[Mrs. Tuberski]

I must also add that a few years ago there was a list of the folks living below this poverty line and these folks consisted of military families, the eldery that didnt not have the means to save enough money for when they couldnt work anymore and single parents usually woman with multiple children with an absent father.

[Vanguard]

Setting a single national poverty line is a perfectly good way to find the number of people who are impoverished in a country. Adjusting for cost of living just introduces as many problems as it solves.

Consider an extreme example of factoring in cost of living to poverty calculations. Suppose you make no money at all in a year. You live in a cave, eating bugs. Are you poor?

No! Your housing costs are zero! Your food costs are nothing! Entertainment (listening to crickets) is free! You aren't poor, you are rich because of your low cost of living. Congratulations.

This same problem applies, to a greater or less extent, to any attempt to adjust for local costs of living. The simple fact of the matter is that the amount people may save by living in cheap areas of the country really isn't enough at this level of income to make any real difference to poverty.

Seriously, how much do you save on housing by living in a trailer in Jacksonville? 1500 bucks a year? Wow. Better set up a trust fund. Save that for ten years and you'll have enough to make a down payment on a car.

[DanS]

Now you're just being silly.

[Vanguard]

I'm exaggerating a bit.

But exactly how good is your lifestyle going to get on 15k a year, no matter how much less you pay for housing and food? Clearly it will only go up a little, if at all. Your disposable income, for a year is very unlikely to be much more that a couple of thousand dollars. Where in the country will that buy you a middle class lifestyle? Where in the country will you be able to even afford a reliable car?

I can't think of any place.

And it is important to remember that this is not the average lifestyle of people below the poverty line. This is the upper limit. You have pointed to a family that may or may not be below the poverty line at 38k for 9 people. What about the families of 6 living on 12k a year? Are you prepared to admit that they are actually impoverished? If you don't draw the line where the government does, then where do you? Why do you draw it there?

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by Patroklos
But you have still failed to recognize the opposite, which is a logical conclusion. That makes you disingenous

Nope, I've recognized it, and it negates the people above the line.

So, the two combined = a wash.

Therefore, we return right back to the place we started, the poverty line, which remains consistent, and the reason why it's so instructive.

Funny how that works.

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by Vanguard
I'm exaggerating a bit.

But exactly how good is your lifestyle going to get on 15k a year, no matter how much less you pay for housing and food? Clearly it will only go up a little, if at all. Your disposible income, for a year is very unlikely to be much more that a couple of thousand dollars. Where in the country will that buy you a middle class lifestyle? Where in the country will you be able to even afford a reliable car?

I can't think of any place.

And it is important to remember that this is not the average lifestyle of people below the poverty line. This is the upper limit. You have pointed to a family that may or may not be below the poverty line at 38k for 9 people. What about the families of 6 living on 12k a year? Are you prepared to admit that they are actually impoverished? If you don't draw the line where the government does, then where do you? Why do you draw it there?

[Patroklos]

Consider an extreme example of factoring in cost of living to poverty calculations. Suppose you make no money at all in a year. You live in a cave, eating bugs. Are you poor?

In that case the current poverty line is useless, as it falls into the same problems as the adjusted one. Very bad example.

Setting a single national poverty line is a perfectly good way to find the number of people who are impoverished in a country

Is is not the best way, but could be made marginally useful with simply a few parameters added in, like area housing costs. Of in Shawns case, what percent of your income do you spend on no elective health care. If they can be this thourogh for taxes, why not this? Considering so much money goes into programs related to poverty, I would think it was worth it.

Talk about people falling through the cracks, Shawn did, and it was because of this cold meaningless number.

Why would anyone be opposed to a more accurate poverty statistic?

I must also add that a few years ago there was a list of the folks living below this poverty line and these folks consisted of military families

Military families are never included in calculating the poverty line, another flaw.I can't see why not including 5 million people in the poverty line calculation might be important

BTW, the military are not the only people not included, there are a host of other groups comprising millions of others, from the OP source

by my definiton poor is when you face more income going out then coming in.

And how does the arbitrary 15,000 figure tell you this? Once again, circumstances matter, such as spending more than what you make. Of course that parameter would be useless by itself just like the 15,000 dollar income figure. I know millionares spending more than they can make, a good example of why such limited measurements are useless.

Interestingly enough my next door neighboor (well my parents now) makes less than 15,000 a year as a widower on a pension. She does however own her house free and clear, as well as your 94 Caddy, and is in reasonably good health. Her husband set her up well, (ex Navy, good man) and now she lives a very comfortable life. Is she poor, living in a upper middle class neighborhood?

According to Ted, yes.

Seriously, how much do you save on housing by living in a trailer in Jacksonville? 1500 bucks a year? Wow. Better set up a trust fund. Save that for ten years and you'll have enough to make a down payment on a car.

According the the housing market, if you move from San Fran to Jacksonville you save $1000 a MONTH for comprable lodging. There is a reason military people hate moving to Jacksonville, because if they have found a deal in an area with higher BAH they bank the difference.

This same problem applies, to a greater or less extent, to any attempt to adjust for local costs of living. The simple fact of the matter is that the amount people may save by living in cheap areas of the country really isn't enough at this level of income to make any real difference to poverty.

If probobly would not matter to a great many people, though it would matter alot to a great many people too. Then again, why would cost of living be the only parameter added, see Shawns case? Where was Teds compasionate poverty line then? Not helping a poor family barely scraping by apparently.

[quote]So, the two combined = a wash.[quote]

Go ahead and tell that to the people wrongly above the line not getting any help (an sure Shawn appreciates your understanding of his situation), and I am sure the people needlessly below it appreciate your generocity.

[Patroklos]

Where in the country will that buy you a middle class lifestyle?

Since when was not being middle class mean being poor?

[Vanguard]

In that case the current poverty line is useless, as it falls into the same problems as the adjusted one. Very bad example.

No it isn't. The current poverty line is a simple, reasonably good marker of when the major problems of poverty start to increase dramatically. Personally I think the biggest problem with the various poverty thresholds is the extremely low line set for single person families (which is not 15k, btw; it is considerably lower than that). This seems to me an absurdly low figure and single people of much higher incomes probably suffer from major consequences of poverty.

Indexing for housing cost would help in this instance. But it would be much simpler to just set the line higher.

Is is not the best way, but could be made marginally useful with simply a few parameters added in, like area housing costs. Of in Shawns case, what percent of your income do you spend on no elective health care. If they can be this thourogh for taxes, why not this? Considering so much money goes into programs related to poverty, I would think it was worth it.

Don't get me wrong. I'm all in favor of highly detailed econometric data. There are a great number of economic statistics that are compiled in an exceeding simplistic manner, which frequently makes them useless for calculation or decision making.

This is not one of those cases though. Impoverishment is not a quantum phenomenon subject to exact enumeration. It does not, for instance, happen at exactly $15000 a year. I freely admit that the poverty threshold set by the government is abitrary.

But factoring in cost of living doesn't make it any less arbitrary. Poverty also does not happen at exactly $16000 for people who have to pay $1000 dollars more a year in rent. Realistically, poverty is the point where lack of income causes a graph of bad things happening to you to curve sharply upward.

But there is no practical way to define where this point is for individuals. The margin of error will always be too large.

Does the fact that there is a large margin of error mean that poverty does not exist? No. Of course not.

Does the fact that there is a large margin of error mean that you can't define poverty? No. It just means that the line that works for most people will be as good a definition as any other (practically achievable) line. And simpler.

Talk about people falling through the cracks, Shawn did, and it was because of this cold meaningless number.

Shawn's problem, as I understand it, is health care costs. Tinkering with the poverty line statistic is not going to solve the problem of health care costs in the United States. Go single-payer already. We should have done it fifty f---ing years ago.

Why would anyone be opposed to a more accurate poverty statistic?

How about because it is not more accurate? And it is more expensive.

But more importantly, the only real reason people complain about the accuracy of the poverty line is as a rhetorical ploy. Conservatives politicians make this argument to attempt to bash the poor so they can gut anti-poverty programs. Or, in the current instance, criticism is done to distract attention from the fact that poverty is going up very quickly with no end in sight. This is not valid economic reasoning.

Military families are never included in calculating the poverty line, another flaw.I can't see why not including 5 million people in the poverty line calculation might be important

BTW, the military are not the only people not included, there are a host of other groups comprising millions of others, from the OP source

Military families are included. Military personal in "barracks" are not. Neither are prisoners or students in dormitories. In America there are indeed large populations of all these groups (LOL, prisoners are probably the largest group).

But clearly the normal rules of poverty do not apply to these populations. So they aren't included in the statistic. It's the only thing that makes sense really. If you did include them you would just be making the poverty statistic "less accurate".

According the the housing market, if you move from San Fran to Jacksonville you save $1000 a MONTH for comprable lodging. There is a reason military people hate moving to Jacksonville, because if they have found a deal in an area with higher BAH they bank the difference.

Clearly nobody below the poverty line is going to save $1000 a month on rent. It would mean that would be spending their entire income on rent when they lived in Frisco.

Well, okay, almost nobody. I suppose that it is just barely possible that a 9 person family making 39k a year might be able to do this, paying, say, $1600 a month in SF and dropping down to $600 in Jacksonville. This would mean that they are paying 50% of their income towards housing, which is well above average. But I suppose it is.... possible.

But even in this absurdly marginal case, the most extreme example possible of benefiting from a lower cost of living, what does this actually mean to the family in question?

On the face of it, it is a pretty major benefit. As a whole, they save $12000 a year, nearly a third of their total income. A sizable sum, even by middle class standards.

But remember that this $12000 figure must be spread among nine people, seven of whom are growing children. This is just $1300 a year per person, a figure which can easily be spent on any of the many demands of childhood, such as----- dental care, medicine, school supplies, clothes.

But even if you ignore that completely, what can this family buy for $12k a year? The most likely candidate would be a big-ass mini-van. But do you seriously believe that a 9-person family living in Jacksonville being able, if they are very lucky, to buy a mini-van means they are not impoverished?


Editing Note: My definition of poverty as "Realistically the point where the curve of bad things goes up" is a nice illustration, but wrong. Poverty is a relative lack of money. Period. I'll leave the post as is though.

[Mrs. Tuberski]

Interestingly enough my next door neighboor (well my parents now) makes less than 15,000 a year as a widower on a pension. She does however own her house free and clear, as well as your 94 Caddy, and is in reasonably good health. Her husband set her up well, (ex Navy, good man) and now she lives a very comfortable life. Is she poor, living in a upper middle class neighborhood?

According to Ted, yes.

Once again as shawn said this is apples and oranges. she is one person with a house paid off. and a car paid off. How freaking often does that happen. The lady is taken care of but once again she is one person on 15000 a year she has no kids and no bills ur example is ludricous. the line states for 3 people what part of that arent you getting??????
This is one woman the poverty line described was for a family of 3. And if u do research the majority living in poverty are military families.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Mrs. Tuberski

Interestingly enough my next door neighboor (well my parents now) makes less than 15,000 a year as a widower on a pension. She does however own her house free and clear, as well as your 94 Caddy, and is in reasonably good health. Her husband set her up well, (ex Navy, good man) and now she lives a very comfortable life. Is she poor, living in a upper middle class neighborhood?

According to Ted, yes.

Once again as shawn said this is apples and oranges. she is one person with a house paid off. and a car paid off. How freaking often does that happen.

More and more often as you clmib the ladder of age, and more and more often as the boomers retire into 'poverty'.

I would think.

The lady is taken care of but once again she is one person on 15000 a year she has no kids and no bills ur example is ludricous. the line states for 3 people what part of that arent you getting??????
This is one woman the poverty line described was for a family of 3. And if u do research the majority living in poverty are military families.

The majority of the poor are military families? I did not know that. Can you share your research?

[Mrs. Tuberski]

Originally posted by notyoueither


More and more often as you clmib the ladder of age, and more and more often as the boomers retire into 'poverty'.

I would think.



The majority of the poor are military families? I did not know that. Can you share your research?

I will dig through my notes and get back to you. One example i can give is i have a bro in law in the navy he has a wife and two kids. ready to retire in 3 years, he is making less then my husband that has been on his job for 5 years. And to be honest the job descriptions are almost the same. and my bro in law has been inthe military for almost 20 years and still makes less a year the tubers

[notyoueither]

Less than Tubers is poverty?