And the Winner IS. . . . .

Kevans said:

Just a thought or two from "The Heritage Foundation".

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2011/09/Understanding-Poverty-in-the-United-States-Surprising-Facts-About-Americas-Poor

From the article,

The following are facts about persons defined as “poor” by the Census Bureau as taken from various government reports:

• <LI nodeIndex="1">80 percent of poor households have air conditioning. In 1970, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning. <LI nodeIndex="2">92 percent of poor households have a microwave. <LI nodeIndex="3">Nearly three-fourths have a car or truck, and 31 percent have two or more cars or trucks. <LI nodeIndex="4">Nearly two-thirds have cable or satellite TV. <LI nodeIndex="5">Two-thirds have at least one DVD player, and 70 percent have a VCR. <LI nodeIndex="6">Half have a personal computer, and one in seven have two or more computers. <LI nodeIndex="7">More than half of poor families with children have a video game system, such as an Xbox or PlayStation. <LI nodeIndex="8">43 percent have Internet access. <LI nodeIndex="9">One-third have a wide-screen plasma or LCD TV.
• One-fourth have a digital video recorder system, such as a TiVo.

I am an aviation industry professional, and I don't have some of the stuff these poor have....

Regards,
Kevin

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My ex husband. He's an Air Traffic Controller. Makes loads of money. Spends it all and had none to pay our mortgage or utilities or credit cards.

Teinz said:

Perhaps they´re up to their necks in debt, so technically they don´t own anything...

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Again, my ex-husband.

Kevans said:

Actually what I am trying to say is that poor here, is incredibly well off any where else. When our man Carter was President, I got laid off eight times in three years, worked one job for three months on the hope I would get paid,(Never did by the way) and ate one meal every other day so my kids could eat every day. Been there and done that.

Eventually I joined the Army and gained the skills that I use in the aviation industry now, I just took thirty years to get comfortable.

While I was in the Army I was deployed to places where the adults would fight over our garbage, and death by starvation was a weekly occurrence in the local population.

The poor - rich divide can be set where ever you want, but going to sleep hungry is mine.

Are things good here? Not really, but they are a lot worse in the favales and poblaciones south of the equator.

Regards,
Kevin

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Are you suggesting that the US should do nothing about poverty, just ignore it or actively deny its existence, until our streets are full of starved corpses and people are fighting over garbage in full view of those who have enough to be classified as rich? Will you accept no benchmark but starvation to call someone poor?

According to those bleeding hearts over at ConAgra, some 17 million American children face hunger every day. With that comes a host of health and developmental problems that have lifelong detrimental effects. Is that close enough to starvation for you, or would you like to see those kids dying first. After all, kids in Africa are even hungrier.

Oh, by the way, if you were going hungry so you could feed your kids, guess what -- you were poor. Really, seriously poor. Pretending now that you never had to have that unpleasant label attached to you because your family was so self-sufficient, etc., isn't going to change the facts. Your family was poor, just like the families in this year's statistics.

muravyets said:

Are you suggesting that the US should do nothing about poverty, just ignore it or actively deny its existence, until our streets are full of starved corpses and people are fighting over garbage in full view of those who have enough to be classified as rich? Will you accept no benchmark but starvation to call someone poor?

According to those bleeding hearts over at ConAgra, some 17 million American children face hunger every day. With that comes a host of health and developmental problems that have lifelong detrimental effects. Is that close enough to starvation for you, or would you like to see those kids dying first. After all, kids in Africa are even hungrier.

Oh, by the way, if you were going hungry so you could feed your kids, guess what -- you were poor. Really, seriously poor. Pretending now that you never had to have that unpleasant label attached to you because your family was so self-sufficient, etc., isn't going to change the facts. Your family was poor, just like the families in this year's statistics.

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So what's to be done?

When LBJ started his famous War on Poverty, the poverty rate was around 13%. Until the Fed destroyed the housing market a couple years ago, it was still running around 13%, after almost 50 years of open warfare against it.

That's not a fluke. As another example, pot & cocaine use in the US is about what it was 40 years ago when Nixon declared his war.

Has primary education gotten more effective and less expensive since FedGov noticed education in 1953 and moved it up to cabinet level?

So what's the solution? It's obviously not yet another government transfer or boogieman program.

muravyets said:

Are you suggesting that the US should do nothing about poverty...

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There's a big clue in that first sentence. US <> government.

Don said:

As another example, pot & cocaine use in the US is about what it was 40 years ago when Nixon declared his war.

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Kind of off topic, but our friend in Canada grows weed. He sells some, smokes a lot. But he said things are so bad up there that no one's even buying the pot.

That's bad.

I may have to review the way I parse my words here... Grin



At what point did I imply I was never poor? There is the whole "Been there done that thing..." The point is that yes I was poor, and now I am not. The greater point is the poverty here in this country is much more endurable than is some of the other pits the world contains. A half percent of the population hungry, is orders of magnitude better than three percent >dead< from hunger. (Personal observation from when I was deployed.)

Yes indeed we have problems, but at my most destitute, I had a roof, power, and clean water. Tell me about poverty when you have been mobbed by hundreds of children demanding your food, and you have to decide if you can shoot to stay alive. (We didn't shoot, my companion and I threw our pocket change across the plaza, and made our escape while they were distracted.) There are truly horrible conditions outside of our culture, If some one hasn't been there it almost impossible to internalize it. Ask any vet that has been to Afghanistan. Human life there is one of the cheapest things on the market.

Our poor can't walk a mile in the sandals of the third world poor, because the third worlders have no feet.

Sadly,
Kevin

muravyets said:

<Snipage>
Oh, by the way, if you were going hungry so you could feed your kids, guess what -- you were poor. Really, seriously poor. Pretending now that you never had to have that unpleasant label attached to you because your family was so self-sufficient, etc., isn't going to change the facts. Your family was poor, just like the families in this year's statistics.

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Kevans said:

I may have to review the way I parse my words here... Grin



At what point did I imply I was never poor? There is the whole "Been there done that thing..." The point is that yes I was poor, and now I am not. The greater point is the poverty here in this country is much more endurable than is some of the other pits the world contains. A half percent of the population hungry, is orders of magnitude better than three percent >dead< from hunger. (Personal observation from when I was deployed.)

Yes indeed we have problems, but at my most destitute, I had a roof, power, and clean water. Tell me about poverty when you have been mobbed by hundreds of children demanding your food, and you have to decide if you can shoot to stay alive. (We didn't shoot, my companion and I threw our pocket change across the plaza, and made our escape while they were distracted.) There are truly horrible conditions outside of our culture, If some one hasn't been there it almost impossible to internalize it. Ask any vet that has been to Afghanistan. Human life there is one of the cheapest things on the market.

Our poor can't walk a mile in the sandals of the third world poor, because the third worlders have no feet.

Sadly,
Kevin

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The suggestion that the word "poor" would not apply to you was implicit in your statement that you would place the dividing line between "rich" and "poor" as the point where people are scrabbling for garbage to eat or else dying of starvation. If that is where you place the line, and anyone below that line is poor and anyone above it is rich, then unless you were starving so your kids could eat the garbage you had fought for, then by your own standard, you could not have been called poor.

So yes, perhaps you do need to parse your wording all little more carefully. Or maybe you need to be a little more realistic about the conditions in your own country and cop less of the cold-blooded attitude that no one is in trouble if they're not in drought-plagued Africa levels of trouble -- which, frankly, is just another way of telling hungry, desperate Americans to sit down and shut up, in my opinion.

I notice you have no response to the overview of childhood hunger in America compiled and posted by ConAgra that I linked to except, possibly, to dismiss it because the hungry kids aren't dead yet. So was I right then when I wondered if you think we should do nothing about poverty until we have a sufficient number of emaciated corpses lining the streets of American cities? Will 3% of the American population dead from hunger be sufficient to satisfy the requirement? Also, since the remainder will not be dead yet, does that mean we still won't have to do anything about them and calling them poor would be wrong, compared to poverty elsewhere? I mean, after all, if the lives of our poor aren't as cheap as the poor in Afghanistan, then what do we have to complain about, right?

Impoverished - lowest 2.5%-5%
Poor - lowest 20%

Remember our terms here.

Impoverished means starvation is a critical issue with extreme difficulties for beginning a business or obtaining the opportunity to hang around circles where opportunity for well-paying work can arise.

Poor means starvation is an issue, as well as reduced capacity to begin a business or hang around in the circles where opportunity for well-paying work can arise.

I find it ironic that the same people who claim 22,000 a year is not really poor also believe that 250,000 a year, 12 times as much, is not really rich.

Whether or not one is poor and the other rich is pretty subjective.

But surely not everyone making $250K a year is a "millionaire or billionaire," right?

rugcat said:

I find it ironic that the same people who claim 22,000 a year is not really poor also believe that 250,000 a year, 12 times as much, is not really rich.

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A lot of this depends on the area.

$22k/year here in the DC/Northern VA area doesn't give you enough for rent and food.

$250k/year here is enough to live comfortably, but if you have a mortgage, car loans, etc, it's not enough to be considered rich.

robeiae said:

Whether or not one is poor and the other rich is pretty subjective.

But surely not everyone making $250K a year is a "millionaire or billionaire," right?

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Perhaps not. (And let's not forget that we're talking over 250 K as "rich.") Although if I had ever made 200K a year, I'd be a freaking multi=millionaire today.

But the rational is that 250K is solidly middle class. With today's housing prices, private schools, college, etc., expenses are such that it's just enough to live a comfortable life, with little left over.

But it's hard to argue at the same time that 22,000 a year is perfectly adequate and doesn't qualify as "poor." Kind of hard to have it both ways.

rugcat said:

Perhaps not. (And let's not forget that we're talking over 250 K as "rich.") Although if I had ever made 200K a year, I'd be a freaking multi=millionaire today.

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Well, not everyone making 200/250K a year has been making that amount for the past twenty years. Or the past ten years. Or the past five years. And some people that hit that threshold might be in sales, making commissions/bonuses. They may hit it once or twice, but never again. Look back at the housing boom. There were plenty of people that jumped in to real estate, made some big money for a few years, and are now lucky if they're still in the game, just scraping by.

Of course in sales, sometimes those types of earnings come with other costs/expenses that can have a heavy impact on their net income.

Then, there are folks like lawyers and doctors who might still be paying off substantial loans for their education.

So, the reality is that someone that reports an income of 200/250K in one year may be living a solidly (upper) middle class life, may not be draped in expensive clothes and the like, may not have household servants, and may still feel the need to clip coupons.

None of this means they're in the same boat as someone making $22,000 a year, of course. But the realities of demographics, life stages, and the like can still make it difficult to say one is clearly "poor" while the other is clearly "rich."

When I worked a hourly-wage job after I dropped out of college, I was living below the poverty line, no doubt. But I lived in an apartment that I shared with two friends, I had no real expenses beyond the basics, and could do most of the things I wanted to do, could go out to eat, to the movies, and buy unnecessary luxuries. At the same time, my boss--who was twenty years older, had an ex-wife, a kid, and a house--was pretty constrained in what he could and could not do. He had to watch what he spent far more carefully, since there were serious consequences if he lacked the money to pay some of his expenses. And I know he was pulling in over $100,000 a year (close to $200,000, with bonuses) and this was back in the late '80's.

robeiae said:

None of this means they're in the same boat as someone making $22,000 a year, of course. But the realities of demographics, life stages, and the like can still make it difficult to say one is clearly "poor" while the other is clearly "rich."

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Well sure, any time you draw an arbitrary line, you can show how it doesn't apply in all cases.

We can all much agree that a family who makes 2000 a year is poor. And a man or woman who makes a million a year is rich. But the millionaire might have 2 million in dept. The poor family might be living off the grid, mostly through a barter system by choice.

I wouldn't say a 250K family is rich, myself. I would call them well off, but that's just a matter of terminology.

But I would say a 22,000 family is poor. I mean, if I didn't have coverage through my day job and had to pay my own health insurance, it would cost me 15,600 a year. Just for myself.

Clearly that would not be possible, and in my case, without proper and expensive healthcare it I would not live very long. So what would I do? Rely on a government program for the poor, I'd guess. Because that's what being poor really is -- unable to afford the basics, however you define them.

When I worked a hourly-wage job after I dropped out of college, I was living below the poverty line, no doubt.

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Well, me too, But it was by choice -- I was young, single, in good health, white, and educated. I never for a moment complained about being poor, because I understood that my situation was temporary and under my control.

So much of the discussion of poverty these days, and not just on AW, is a "yeah, but" discussion. "A lot of people are poor." "Yeah, but..." A lot of children are hungry." "Yeah, but..." "People are out of work." "Yeah, but..." A great deal of the conversation seems to be an effort to explain away the problem, as if pointing out some exceptions and some true but irrelevant comparisons will just make the whole thing disappear, and we can all go back to discussing more pleasant things.

Yes, thousands are starving in Somalia. And? Yes, what some would call rich, others would call comfortable, and still others might even consider poor. And?

Aside from any moral compunction to help "the least of these," there is the practical aspect to consider. If things continue to get worse, and if people have no hope and no help, the hopelessness and the anger will fester until the fabric of our society will begin to fray. Let it fester long enough, and those folks who are now comfortable may find themselves distinctly uncomfortable. Not a danger yet, but it could happen. And then we'll look around and find that the poor are climbing over the walls while we're still arguing over whether they're really poor or not.

Kevans said:

Actually what I am trying to say is that poor here, is incredibly well off any where else. When our man Carter was President, I got laid off eight times in three years, worked one job for three months on the hope I would get paid,(Never did by the way) and ate one meal every other day so my kids could eat every day. Been there and done that.

Eventually I joined the Army and gained the skills that I use in the aviation industry now, I just took thirty years to get comfortable.

While I was in the Army I was deployed to places where the adults would fight over our garbage, and death by starvation was a weekly occurrence in the local population.

The poor - rich divide can be set where ever you want, but going to sleep hungry is mine.

Are things good here? Not really, but they are a lot worse in the favales and poblaciones south of the equator.

Regards,
Kevin

Click to expand...

Totally agree. I don't want to come across as some sort of evangalist, but the definition of poverty in the US - or anywhere in the western world to varying degrees for that matter - is the definition of Heaven for the majority of people in the world. I'm ashamed to admit that some years ago I visited Mumbai (Or Bombay as it was called then), in India, a country of a billion odd people, for a stopover on a flight back from Hong Kong to London. I'd planned on doing some tourism, but what I saw on the journey from the airport to the hotel made me decide to stay in the hotel. It wasn't like what I saw was threatening, more like it was heartbreaking, seeing real poverty on such a scale that you can't begin to comprehend. To be blunt, I decided that I didn't want to confront it. Then it struck me that over a billion people were living in similar conditions in China and, likewise in Africa. To my mind, that's poverty.

So what is the point? That the so-called poor in this country are actually living in heaven but just don't know it? I've been in some countries where anyone with the equivalent of an American income of $20,000 a year and the equivalent live style would be considered rich. Does that mean our rich should dump most of their money and conform to the rich in, say, North Korea?

I think most of us are intelligent enough to realize that the standard of living in this country is miles above that in many third world countries. So? Does that mean we don't have any poor people, since they don't match the level of poor in Mogadishu? We have not only the sub-class that has been hungry and unhoused for years, we have people who were middle class three years ago, lost jobs through no fault of their own, lost homes through no fault of their own, and are now living lives of desperation. I guess we just need to tell them, "Buck up, fellow, just look how much better off you are than those folks in a homemade tent in that refugee area in Africa." I'm sure that'll make them straighten up and stop bitching.

Jeez, talk about class warfare!

Actually, I approve of that plan. If we're to measure the US by the standards of the third world, then let our rich divest themselves down a bit. They've got a long way down to go and still be rich by the standards of Africa, Central America, India, etc.

And if that's no good, then let's hear no more of this "you're not poor till you're Africa poor" nonsense.