6 ms·

Millions in U.S. Climb Out of Poverty, at Long Last

61 points by jganetsk 10y ago

friendlygrammar 10y ago
This just proves to me that the all the fear mongering that has been surfacing recently is because of the election. A few months ago the average person wouldn't have been talking about interest rates and the fed, you'd think from the discourse today that everybody had a Phd in Economics.
- nugget 10y ago
  I'll just speak for myself here. The economy is definitely ''hot'' but my perception is that the current recovery is incredibly shaky and has been fueled by historically unprecedented central bank interventions. I don't have a PhD in economics but I can read a debt chart and I understand broadly what zero interest rate policies are meant to accomplish. When I read that >50% of all European sovereign debt now has negative yields, some warning lights go off in my head. Unlike in, say, 1998 or 2006, both years I was working full time in tech, when the economy seemed similarly hot but ''felt'' much more stable.
  - witty_username 10y ago
    Why did it feel much more stable?
    - nugget 10y ago
      Again just one person's perspective but it felt like the mal-investment from previous asset bubbles had been allowed to more fully resolve itself. Certainly that was the case with the dot com crash there was real pain felt throughout the system. Whereas this time the housing crash morphed into a kind of economic twilight zone. I have friends who trade on Wall Street who tell me that the market now moves not on economic performance and fundamentals but on perceptions and predictions of Government intervention.
  - hackuser 10y ago
    > 1998 or 2006, both years I was working full time in tech, when the economy seemed similarly hot but ''felt'' much more stable. The economy, in hindsight, was very unstable in 2006. 2008 was the greatest economic collapse since 1929. There was also a problem in 2000.
    - hga 10y ago
      However, in terms of how the economy "felt", it was 2007 when that started biting, with Bear Stearns' travails becoming too prominent to easily ignore. But, yeah, the mortgage market was already shows serious stress in 2016, but presumably nugget wasn't watching it, he says he was watching the malinvestment from the dot.com crash get resolved.
downandout 10y ago
This article is political theater by a historically liberal publication. It's here just in time to push the idea that 8 years of Democratic rule has helped people "climb out of poverty" and that at least 4 more years of it will be even better. However, this is a very favorable interpretation of the data. Incomes are going up in large part due to increases in the minimum wage, which will ultimately cause a rise in prices. The unemployment numbers do not include the 2.2 million "missing workers" that have simply given up on finding a job [1]. Finally, most of the "health insurance" this article refers to carries such high deductibles that the people that have these policies can't afford to use them. So they are paying relatively high monthly premiums for coverage that they'll never be able to use except when they go to the ER, which they could have done before Obamacare and without the monthly hit for the premium. The economy is slowly recovering, but this article is a prime example of putting lipstick on a pig to carry out the left-wing political agenda of getting Hillary Clinton elected. [1] http://www.epi.org/publication/missing-workers/ http://www.epi.org/publication/missing-workers/
- friendlygrammar 10y ago
  >However, this is a very favorable interpretation of the data. Incomes are going up, but so are prices The data doesn't agree with you. http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/consumer-price-index-cpi http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/consumer-price... (make sure to click for the 5 year chart to see how little prices have changed) If you are basing your info off of living in Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley isn't reality. http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2016/08/daily-chart-20 http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2016/08/daily-c... Silicon Valley prices are inflated because of artificial supply constraints. When housing is so expensive that unskilled labor can't even afford to live 90 minutes from the city, wages will rise until they can move a reasonable distance from the city and thus prices will rise to accommodate the wage increase.
  - rm2889 10y ago
    Here's some counter narrative to this article based on data out of gallup http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-09-20/we-havent-seen-great-depression-gallup-ceo-destroys-recovery-lie http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-09-20/we-havent-seen-grea...
ps_xan 10y ago
I'm not from the US, but I did a little maths. $21(8 hours/day)(5 day/week)(4 weeks/month)(12 months/year) gives $40320 per year against $40K/per year annually as mentioned in the second paragraph. Where's the comparison?
- hackuser 10y ago
  Tip: 2,000 hours/year is the standard, and usefully it's simple math (i.e., 2,000 * 21 = 42,000). 2,000 = 8 hrs/day, 5 days/week, 50 weeks/yr
  - ps_xan 10y ago
    TO-mato/tamaeto
- Melk 10y ago
  >but the work was spotty. He wasn't working full-time.
- zuminator 10y ago
  The first paragraph mentions that it was spotty part-time work only available when the Washington Redskins are playing. The Redskins are an American football team. They played a total of 21 games last season, including pre-and-post season, of which only 11 were held at FedEx Field, where Carlos worked, and each game only lasted a few hours plus maybe an extra two hours for pre and post game. So try $21(5 hours day)(1 day/week)(11 weeks/year) and you only get $1,155, not $40,320.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
pipio21 10y ago
Isn't that amazing how much things improve when elections are coming? In my parent's country Spain, they have deferred some statistics two years in order to make it look better for the elections. The US is not better in this regard, you don't like the numbers? change the statistics methodology and you have the numbers you want. Read "shadowstats if you are interested in the details. I have never seen so much unilateral support for democrats on the US media in my life. There are seriously worried over Trump, both on the Republican side and democrats.
Melk 10y ago
We're seeing the same recovery in Europe which is to be expected after a recession (although long overdue). I'm not sure why HN sees it as "left-wing political theater" and "establishment propaganda".
ge96 10y ago
What is "poverty" ? I think I'm lucky to hit 20K but that's on me, an undereducated pleab.
- SyneRyder 10y ago
  Poverty is certainly relative, depending on the cost of living where you live and your own circumstances. 20K is about half the minimum wage in Australia, but it'd be a lot in some Asian countries. Rural US is going to be cheaper than NYC & SF, and so on. Psst: if you want people to be able to contact you (eg if they wanted to ask about your freelance web dev, job offers etc), you might want to add a URL / email / Twitter etc in your HN bio. Also, keep an eye on the HN 'ask' tab at the start of every month, in case you want to post in the "Freelancer? Seeking Freelancer?" threads, or look at the "Who's Hiring? (October 2016)" thread. Never know what opportunities can come your way from those. Welcome to Hacker News!
  - ge96 10y ago
    Thanks a lot for the tips and welcome. I am still figuring out how this site works ex. How to get notified of a response like this one. Yeah although I am using a username. I guess posting my freelance account on UpWork would kind of defeat my anonymity. Oh well... Guess I have to behave.
    - SyneRyder 10y ago
      That's cool! If you'd rather be anonymous, that's totally fine here, plenty of anonymous folks here. I'm not a moderator or anything, just a random HN visitor who saw your first post. You can track replies by clicking on "Threads" at the top - it lists comments you've made and replies to you. Or you can get email notifications via HNReplies.com, a 3rd party service. Two quick links in case you find them helpful in getting past that 20K barrier (then I'll quit nagging, I promise!) Take a look at Breaking The Time Barrier [1], a free PDF from Freshbooks, and also check out the free articles that Brennan Dunn posts / emails on freelancing [2]. [1] https://www.freshbooks.com/ebooks/breaking-the-time-barrier https://www.freshbooks.com/ebooks/breaking-the-time-barrier [2] https://doubleyourfreelancing.com/category/pricing/ https://doubleyourfreelancing.com/category/pricing/

61 points by jganetsk 10y ago

This just proves to me that the all the fear mongering that has been surfacing recently is because of the election. A few months ago the average person wouldn't have been talking about interest rates and the fed, you'd think from the discourse today that everybody had a Phd in Economics.

nugget 10y ago
I'll just speak for myself here. The economy is definitely ''hot'' but my perception is that the current recovery is incredibly shaky and has been fueled by historically unprecedented central bank interventions. I don't have a PhD in economics but I can read a debt chart and I understand broadly what zero interest rate policies are meant to accomplish. When I read that >50% of all European sovereign debt now has negative yields, some warning lights go off in my head. Unlike in, say, 1998 or 2006, both years I was working full time in tech, when the economy seemed similarly hot but ''felt'' much more stable.
- witty_username 10y ago
  Why did it feel much more stable?
  - nugget 10y ago
    Again just one person's perspective but it felt like the mal-investment from previous asset bubbles had been allowed to more fully resolve itself. Certainly that was the case with the dot com crash there was real pain felt throughout the system. Whereas this time the housing crash morphed into a kind of economic twilight zone. I have friends who trade on Wall Street who tell me that the market now moves not on economic performance and fundamentals but on perceptions and predictions of Government intervention.
- hackuser 10y ago
  > 1998 or 2006, both years I was working full time in tech, when the economy seemed similarly hot but ''felt'' much more stable. The economy, in hindsight, was very unstable in 2006. 2008 was the greatest economic collapse since 1929. There was also a problem in 2000.
  - hga 10y ago
    However, in terms of how the economy "felt", it was 2007 when that started biting, with Bear Stearns' travails becoming too prominent to easily ignore. But, yeah, the mortgage market was already shows serious stress in 2016, but presumably nugget wasn't watching it, he says he was watching the malinvestment from the dot.com crash get resolved.

downandout 10y ago

This article is political theater by a historically liberal publication. It's here just in time to push the idea that 8 years of Democratic rule has helped people "climb out of poverty" and that at least 4 more years of it will be even better. However, this is a very favorable interpretation of the data. Incomes are going up in large part due to increases in the minimum wage, which will ultimately cause a rise in prices. The unemployment numbers do not include the 2.2 million "missing workers" that have simply given up on finding a job [1]. Finally, most of the "health insurance" this article refers to carries such high deductibles that the people that have these policies can't afford to use them. So they are paying relatively high monthly premiums for coverage that they'll never be able to use except when they go to the ER, which they could have done before Obamacare and without the monthly hit for the premium. The economy is slowly recovering, but this article is a prime example of putting lipstick on a pig to carry out the left-wing political agenda of getting Hillary Clinton elected. [1] http://www.epi.org/publication/missing-workers/ http://www.epi.org/publication/missing-workers/

friendlygrammar 10y ago
>However, this is a very favorable interpretation of the data. Incomes are going up, but so are prices The data doesn't agree with you. http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/consumer-price-index-cpi http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/consumer-price... (make sure to click for the 5 year chart to see how little prices have changed) If you are basing your info off of living in Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley isn't reality. http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2016/08/daily-chart-20 http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2016/08/daily-c... Silicon Valley prices are inflated because of artificial supply constraints. When housing is so expensive that unskilled labor can't even afford to live 90 minutes from the city, wages will rise until they can move a reasonable distance from the city and thus prices will rise to accommodate the wage increase.
- rm2889 10y ago
  Here's some counter narrative to this article based on data out of gallup http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-09-20/we-havent-seen-great-depression-gallup-ceo-destroys-recovery-lie http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-09-20/we-havent-seen-grea...

ps_xan 10y ago

I'm not from the US, but I did a little maths. $21(8 hours/day)(5 day/week)(4 weeks/month)(12 months/year) gives $40320 per year against $40K/per year annually as mentioned in the second paragraph. Where's the comparison?

hackuser 10y ago
Tip: 2,000 hours/year is the standard, and usefully it's simple math (i.e., 2,000 * 21 = 42,000). 2,000 = 8 hrs/day, 5 days/week, 50 weeks/yr
- ps_xan 10y ago
  TO-mato/tamaeto
Melk 10y ago
>but the work was spotty. He wasn't working full-time.
zuminator 10y ago
The first paragraph mentions that it was spotty part-time work only available when the Washington Redskins are playing. The Redskins are an American football team. They played a total of 21 games last season, including pre-and-post season, of which only 11 were held at FedEx Field, where Carlos worked, and each game only lasted a few hours plus maybe an extra two hours for pre and post game. So try $21(5 hours day)(1 day/week)(11 weeks/year) and you only get $1,155, not $40,320.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

pipio21 10y ago

Isn't that amazing how much things improve when elections are coming? In my parent's country Spain, they have deferred some statistics two years in order to make it look better for the elections. The US is not better in this regard, you don't like the numbers? change the statistics methodology and you have the numbers you want. Read "shadowstats if you are interested in the details. I have never seen so much unilateral support for democrats on the US media in my life. There are seriously worried over Trump, both on the Republican side and democrats.

Melk 10y ago

We're seeing the same recovery in Europe which is to be expected after a recession (although long overdue). I'm not sure why HN sees it as "left-wing political theater" and "establishment propaganda".

ge96 10y ago

What is "poverty" ? I think I'm lucky to hit 20K but that's on me, an undereducated pleab.

SyneRyder 10y ago
Poverty is certainly relative, depending on the cost of living where you live and your own circumstances. 20K is about half the minimum wage in Australia, but it'd be a lot in some Asian countries. Rural US is going to be cheaper than NYC & SF, and so on. Psst: if you want people to be able to contact you (eg if they wanted to ask about your freelance web dev, job offers etc), you might want to add a URL / email / Twitter etc in your HN bio. Also, keep an eye on the HN 'ask' tab at the start of every month, in case you want to post in the "Freelancer? Seeking Freelancer?" threads, or look at the "Who's Hiring? (October 2016)" thread. Never know what opportunities can come your way from those. Welcome to Hacker News!
- ge96 10y ago
  Thanks a lot for the tips and welcome. I am still figuring out how this site works ex. How to get notified of a response like this one. Yeah although I am using a username. I guess posting my freelance account on UpWork would kind of defeat my anonymity. Oh well... Guess I have to behave.
  - SyneRyder 10y ago
    That's cool! If you'd rather be anonymous, that's totally fine here, plenty of anonymous folks here. I'm not a moderator or anything, just a random HN visitor who saw your first post. You can track replies by clicking on "Threads" at the top - it lists comments you've made and replies to you. Or you can get email notifications via HNReplies.com, a 3rd party service. Two quick links in case you find them helpful in getting past that 20K barrier (then I'll quit nagging, I promise!) Take a look at Breaking The Time Barrier [1], a free PDF from Freshbooks, and also check out the free articles that Brennan Dunn posts / emails on freelancing [2]. [1] https://www.freshbooks.com/ebooks/breaking-the-time-barrier https://www.freshbooks.com/ebooks/breaking-the-time-barrier [2] https://doubleyourfreelancing.com/category/pricing/ https://doubleyourfreelancing.com/category/pricing/