The New US Poverty Numbers: Yes, Still Wrong

Census has released their new Supplemental Poverty Measure and I’m afraid that people are still getting the points about US poverty wrong. The SPM does indeed cure some of the problems with the old measures which I discussed here. But it introduces a new and quite glaring error at the same time.

This is what leads such as Felix Salmon into the quite erroneous gambit of directly comparing the two methods of poverty measurement and the number of people who are poor in the US.

Just to recap the argument about the old method (which is still the official method by the way, as it’s embedded in so many laws that to change it would be a terrible rewrite of many of those extant laws).

The standard method used in the US measured, by and large, those people who were in poverty before we helped people in poverty. We didn’t include those things which we do to alleviate poverty, things like the EITC, food stamps, housing vouchers. OK, this new method does include all of these things and is now a measure of who is poor after we’ve helped them rather than a measure of who would be poor if we didn’t help them.

However, there’s a new measurement that is being made. The crux of it is this:

Which is why I never understood why everyone wants to raise minimum wage. Every time minimum wage is raised, the price of bread and everything else rises, too so you're back at square one again. But it's not square one but many squares to the negative side when you consider those hard earned dollars you've managed to scrape into savings just lost their value.

"Poverty" seems to be defined pretty generously in this country.

For example, I'm an E6 in the Navy with more than 8 years of service. My wife is a stay at home mother to our two young sons. We live in a decent 3 br. / 2 ba. single family home with a two-car garage and a large yard. I can afford payments on a 2009 Toyota minivan. We have a couple of nice HDTVs, PS3s, computers, cell phones, cable, internet and on and on. I have an electric guitar collection worth thousands of dollars. My wife and sons never go without. There's plenty of food in the fridge, clothes in the closet and toys in the bedrooms. Our credit card debt is minimal and I have no problem making the monthly payments. We have thousands in our savings account.

Yet, my family qualifies for WIC as well as subsidized utility bills. I'm sure there's other "freebies" we'd qualify for if I looked into it. We choose not to receive WIC and I pay my electric bill in full but we qualify nonetheless. In the eyes of the government, this places my family in the one out of two Americans who are poor.

I certainly don't feel poor but apparently we are. Go figure...

OK, now everybody hold their breath as we wait eagerly for the MSM to air endless stories about the increase in the poor and homeless under this administration. You do remember them doing this in the previous GOP Administrations, right?

It is well known amongst NY Times readers and their alphabet network cohorts that only GOP Administrations are so heartless as to ignore increasing poverty and hunger.

Breathlessly waiting ... [crickets]

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