Posted on 09/29/2025 8:29:11 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Someone was doing something like that in a recent thread, comparing median income with cost of living. California has a very high median income, but when you adjust for COL, it doesn’t look so great.
Real intelligent point.
Versus AI đ
“”””A good look at San Francisco and LA belies that. Oh we spend a lot, but the poor don’t see much of it and would blow the dough if they did. A lot of “middle class” people here are in vehicles.”””””
No it doesn’t, it is a good state to be welfare poor in because of all the programs and allowances for various living expenses, and the aggressive nature of the program workers to give them to the poor, even the homeless flock to California because it is easier to be homeless there.
You've obviously never been homeless. It's easier to be homeless here because of the weather.
You lived on the streets in California?
Homeless flock to California for more than weather, for one thing it is an extremely friendly to homeless state and with tons of help groups and state aid, and to get back to the poor, the state is good for them not because it will make them not poor, no state does that, California helps the poor with lots of programs and with generous payouts in those programs, even utilities, and the state doesn’t resist people applying, it is very helpful to them and welcoming them to those programs, unlike some states.
Oakland 1973.
Long before modern California, more than a half century ago, when Ronald Reagan was the governor.
CA in ‘73 was awesome tho. I visited my grandmother then. 747 westbound from BOS (just like the song). When we landed in SF it was a summertime sunshower. My grandmother remarked how exceptional it was.
You remember that Hippo Burger place? It was very trendy then.
Oakland wasn't a nice place, even then. Went three days without eating once. All the coffee I could drink was 10 cents. I ended up living on a 27' Chinese junk in Jack London Square the next year. It wasn't a lot better, but at least it was dry and behind a gate. I started refinishing boats for money, but sleeping in the fumes was nasty. A few blocks away, the neighborhood got a good bit rough, with lots of hookers in the doorways.
Never took a dime of government money until I got to college and they surely got it all back and more as a result of that.
Yes, the chart is silly looking. Creativity gone wild. The absolute numbers are not worth much either. The % of population by state is much more relevant and of course we see that Oklahoma is right there in the top group of whatever bottom there can be to anything.
That is all way off topic since we were talking about the poor, not the homeless, I did my street living in California during the 60s, although I touched on it again in the mid 70s, being good with girls meant it didn’t last long, car living in California in the 70s while depending on arm wrestling and pool to keep me in beer and bar food, I think a little of that in the early 80s, some of that again in the 90s, my years as a drifter meant many times without an address in many different states, but those I mentioned above were in California.
The ranking obviously should be by percentage of population in poverty.
The last chart shows that. It's not what I expected.
How is poverty determined? What level of income? Does that level of income take into account the relative cost of living in a particular area? For example, it costs a great deal more to live in LA than it does to live in a small town in southeast Ohio.
One of the poorest areas in the US is the Pine Ridge Indian reservation in South Dakota. The residents there are considered to be oâwards of the governmentâ and provided with free education including college at land grant universities, free medical and dental care, ample housing assistance and other direct government subsidies. Other than a tribal casino there are few employment opportunities and many residents live off welfare benefits. Sadly drug and alcohol abuse are endemic and many children are born with fetal alcohol syndrome. A perfect welfare state has yielded poverty on a third world level.
One finds out what poverty means when all your tools are stolen. They had taken years to accumulate, starting from nothing with only hand labor to feed myself and buy gas for the car. The family helped a little, but I had to drop out of school.
Manual labor is exhausting. It doesn’t leave much left for studying calculus or physics.
Looks hokey to me...
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