

The poor don't work because they are economically rational - yummyfajitas
http://crazybear.posterous.com/why-the-poor-dont-work

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gphil
If you actually follow the link to the data
(ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/ce/standard/2009/income.txt) you can
see clearly that the $0-5k group spends more than twice as much as all of the
other income groups on education, suggesting that there is a much larger
proportion of students in this group. Clearly, students shouldn't
automatically be considered "poor" just because they do not have income.

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yummyfajitas
Interesting - I didn't notice that when I wrote this.

That $1k or so extra that the bottom group spends on education might account
for why spending actually goes down as you go from $0-5k to $5-10k.

As for excluding students from poverty numbers, unfortunately I don't think
anyone does this. You are correct that they should do this, however.

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pge
The analysis here assumes (explicitly) that everyone would rather not work
than work. While that is an easy assumption to make, I tend to believe that
all things being equal, most people prefer to be productive than unproductive.
JK Galbraith took that thesis to its logical conclusion, suggesting paying
people who don't work (some very minimal stipend) in order to prevent the
social cost of poverty. He assumed that the percentage of people that chose to
freeload would be negligibly small in the grand scheme of things. I would like
to believe this is true, though executing on such a social experiment would be
a little tricky.

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carbocation
This article compares non-workers to people who work and have very low
incomes. It describes a situation where non-workers spend more money than low-
income workers.

I'm confused here: where are the non-workers getting this money that they
spend?

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truthtechnician
Parents. Savings. Welfare. Thrift.

The article's point is that for many poor people getting a shitty job that
only pays enough for rent and food is pointless when you can get rent or food
from your parents, or from welfare, or by thrift alone.

~~~
carbocation
You can't spend via thrift. Welfare, yes. Parents' gifts would be income if
properly accounted for. It seems unlikely that these people have savings
sufficient to support such expenditures.

My point is that these people have income equivalents that are being elided in
this discussion, to its detriment.

