

Nearly 1 in 6 Americans in poverty - chailatte
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Nearly-1-in-6-Americans-in-apf-1861149683.html?x=0

======
hvs
Poverty is a complex issue that requires more than just knee jerk solutions
and tossing money at it. I don't know the answer, and I'm not positive that
there is an "answer". But I _can_ tell you that people like me have a tendency
to tune out when we read things like:

 _The poor include Nekisha Brooks, 28, of Fort Washington, Md., who lost her
job as a customer service representative for AT &T several months ago in a
round of layoffs. Raising five young children, she is now on food stamps and
partly leaning on friends and family for help._

I know this is just one anecdote, and it is unfortunate that she clearly wants
to work and is having trouble finding even semi-skilled labor... but _five_
kids? Seriously?

~~~
hugh3
This reminds me of a conversation I was having recently with some engaged
friends of mine, who are in their early 30s and were worried about whether
they were really financially ready to have children yet. Of course they were
extremely middle-class and presumably have a combined income _well_ into the
six-figure range, but they were still worried about whether they could
financially support one kid. And then you've got stuff like _this_.

Whenever they interview a poor person for one of these sorts of articles, it
always seems to be someone who has managed to make some really bad life
decisions.

This should make us happy -- it indicates that if you can avoid the following
bad lifestyle decisions:

1\. Gambling

2\. Drugs

3\. Excessive alcohol

4\. Becoming a single mother

5\. Dropping out of high school

then your chances of being poor in America are really extremely low.

~~~
makecheck
Not sure about #4. Single parenthood can sometimes be a choice (e.g. mother
with donor), but it's much more likely not to be (e.g. unwilling divorce,
death of a partner, teenagers who aren't ready).

~~~
hugh3
Well, the vast majority of cases are caused by failure to use (sufficient)
contraception by unmarried couples, which is a bad lifestyle decision. And
even for divorce the vast majority of cases are caused by marrying an
inappropriate person -- another poor lifestyle decision.

------
makecheck
There are some straightforward solutions to many of these problems that have
been made more complex (unnecessarily) because they cross precious lines of
ideology and religion, among other things.

For example, there are homosexual couples in the world who want children. Many
are wealthy enough to adopt more than one child. In any sane debate it should
be unquestionable that a child is better off being child #1 in a middle-class
family, with better opportunities for economic and social stability than they
would have as child #5 in a poor household. But there are people who would
shout until they're blue in the face to prevent this from happening, simply
because the parents are gay.

Another extremely unpopular but practical solution is contraceptives and even
abortion. Why are parents shamed into birthing a child that they cannot afford
to raise, in a world whose population is greater than at any point in history?
Unquestionably if the average size of families decreased, incomes would be
less strained and poverty levels would have a fighting chance to go down as
well.

A third unpopular solution is grouped housing. For some reason it's been
hammered into everyone's heads that they should have a house and a yard and a
dog, and that a single family should live in it. But the reality is that a
large structure could hold 2 families or more, if people were willing to live
like that. It would not only decrease costs, but it would improve nutrition:
it's much more practical to cook a decent meal for many people than for a few
people (it's easier to acquire good food in quantities that won't go to waste,
etc.).

~~~
WalterSear
You missed the fourth.

[http://www.truth-out.org/goodbye-all-reflections-gop-
operati...](http://www.truth-out.org/goodbye-all-reflections-gop-operative-
who-left-cult/1314907779)

Jebus, Rich-white-guys-who-look-and-talk-like-dad bankrupting the country, a
social safety net. Pick two.

------
sp332
The "poverty line" is arbitrarily set to get the proper number of people into
various government programs. It has no objective meaning. This news just means
that the poverty level has been chosen badly.

Edit: source
[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Poverty_in_th...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States)

~~~
curt
Exactly, the "poor" in the United States have it better than the middle class
in Europe. This is from an article today,

"...the typical household considered "poor" by census officials has a car and
air conditioning. For entertainment, the household has cable or satellite TV,
two color televisions, a DVD player and a VCR. If children (especially boys)
are in the home, they have a video game system such as Xbox or PlayStation. In
the kitchen, the household has the ordinary conveniences: refrigerator, oven,
stove, microwave.

Half the poor now have a personal computer. A third have a widescreen TV
(plasma or LCD); a quarter have a digital video recorder such as TiVo."

~~~
x03
Well, of course, as one would expect the poor to take out hugely unfair debt
agreements to load up their small houses in bad neighbourds with all the
electronic gear they can muster for as much entertainment as they can barely
afford to have.

They do not, unlike the (European and American) middle class take foreign
holidays, drive foreign cars, take trips to the movies, go to theme parks, go
on school trips, shop at nice places, eat healithly, etc...just because they
have a bunch of cheap electronics crap stuffed inside their homes it does not
make them rich.

Seriously, what do you think life is like for the European middle class? In
rich Europe, it's extremely comfortable.

~~~
anamax
> They do not, unlike the (European and American) middle class take foreign
> holidays, drive foreign cars, take trips to the movies, go to theme parks,
> go on school trips, shop at nice places, eat healithly, etc...just because
> they have a bunch of cheap electronics crap stuffed inside their homes it
> does not make them rich.

Actually, they do, apart possibly from take foreign holidays, and even that's
a suspect difference. Remember, they that they live in the US, so visiting
Texas from CA, which they do, is comparable to visiting Italy from the UK.

------
x03
While "1 in 6" appeals as a lot, the actual statistic of 15.1% poor people
seems significantly less harmful -- as, ipso facto, the vast majortity of all
American people (84.9%) are not poor.

Isn't this the way the model essentially works out in our system? There is a
small "working class" at the bottom, then a giant bump in the middle for the
middle class, and a tiny spot at the top for the 1% of wealthy -- wealthy, not
merely rich -- individuals.

I wouldn't simply try to brush off poverty, as surely every effort must be
made to ensure social mobility among the classes (both up and down), but in a
country as large as America having 45 or so million poor people isn't only to
be expected, but actually relatively necessary for our economic model --
which, on the whole, works quite well for most people.

~~~
sp332
I think the problem recently is that the bump in the middle is getting
relatively smaller, as rich people seem to be getting richer while the poor
and middle-class get poorer.

~~~
hugh3
Is that true, or just oft-repeated political rhetoric? (Telling the middle
class that they're being ripped off is, of course, a time-honoured political
ploy.)

I'm sitting in the middle of the income curve right now, and it looks fine
around here. In terms of income distribution the main effect of the recession
has been to destroy wealth at the _top_ end of the scale, since these are the
folks who owned all the assets which are now performing poorly.

