Posted on 01/18/2021 10:21:35 AM PST by nickcarraway
By -6433 That the people who write Salon, or Vox, might not be all and entirely up to date with reality isn’t that much of a surprise. After all, how much reality to you get to encounter living the nice Brooklyn Life?
But we would rather hope that those who write the New York Times have a slightly closer relationship with the truth than the arts graduates who can’t do art. Bryce Covert shows us that there are still things the NYT needs to know though:
I agree with her on one point: It is the American way to champion individualism over collective obligation. In 2019, 34 million Americans officially lived below the poverty line in this country, with many millions more struggling just above it — and that number has only increased since then. We could lift every family out of poverty by sending out regular checks; other countries use taxes to fund benefits that significantly reduce their poverty rates. Poverty, then, is a policy choice.
Near none of that is true.
The American poverty line is a description of who would be in poverty if it weren’t for the help that governments sends those could be poor. It isn’t a listing of those poor after the aid they get – it’s a listing of those who require aid given the standards in use.
This matters for the latter part of the paragraph. Near all other countries measure poverty after the effect of all the money, goods and services that government sends out to people who would be poor without it. The UK measure of poverty includes the effects of housing benefit, working tax credits, money for food and so on. The same is true of every other European poverty measurement. “X millions in poverty” is after the effects of poverty alleviation.
In the US this is not true. “Poverty” is a measure of those who would be in poverty if it weren’t for the aid. Or at least it’s very much closer to that. The US poverty measure, the official one, doesn’t include the effects of Section 8 – housing benefit – or the EITC – working tax credits – or food stamps – freebie food. Al of those benefits in Europe significantly reduce poverty. All those same things in the US also significantly reduce poverty. Except they’re just not counted when poverty is measured.
The US system does not count goods and services delivered in kind, nor any sort of aid through the tax system, as reducing poverty. Which is a pity, as their rent subsidies are in vouchers, not counted, their food ones in food stamps, not counted, their wage subsidies through the tax system as the EITC, – not counted. Then there’s the biggie, health care through Medicaid – not counted.
The US shuffles near a trillion dollars a year to the poor. And in doing so reduces the poverty count by pretty much nothing, on the basis that they don;t count the poverty thereby reduced.
Sure, we don;t expect the grievance studies majors at Salon to grasp this but we did, rather, expect the New York Times to. Didn’t we?
Ping
The way we count poverty statistics when you increase welfare spending you don’t reduce the poverty rate. In fact you will probably increase it as more people see that they can get by without working on the books.
You don’t lift someone out of poverty by giving them stuff. They are still impoverished... even more-so as a result of the charity.
But that's because European income is clustered much more closely around the mean due to government handouts at the low end and high taxes at the upper end.
To move from the bottom 20% to the top 20% in the US is a much greater increase in income, and a journey many Americans make. Last time I read about it, it's also true that of those in the top 5%, many spent at least one year of their lives in the bottom 5%, which is almost unheard of in other countries.
Does anyone have any documentation on this? This is the first I have heard this and can’t find anything searching online.
The poverty rate is 15% everywhere, from the U.S. to Nigeria.
That is because if the rate moves very far from 15%, up or down, the income level defining poverty in that country is changed to bring it back to 15%.
15% is chosen because it is small enough that it doesn’t make the country look horrible, but large enough that politicians can run against it and get credit being seen supposedly doing something about it. (Nothing can be done about it because it is always going to be 15%.)
A measure called “absolute poverty” that is not relative to any national income level is more legitimate. It is currently defined as about $2/day.
What are you talking about? We have NO poverty in the US. That is why all the beaners are being sent here by the Democrats.
Comrade, you are speaking from next weeks talking points. US poverty doesn't disappear until Chairman Biden is installed. Then we have no poverty, no homeless.
Sorry, pal. We have no poverty in the US.
Poor households routinely report spending $2.40 for every $1 of income the Census says they have.
The left claims that one in 25 families with children live in “extreme poverty” on less than $2 per person per day. Government surveys of self-reported spending by families show the actual number is one in 4,469, not one in 25. The typical family allegedly in “extreme poverty” reports spending $25 for every $1 of income the left claims they have.
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