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I did use strong language. The statistic as used is extremely misleading. So far I haven't seen anyone discredit that conclusion. Pointing out that it is an off

I did use strong language. The statistic as used is extremely misleading. So far I haven't seen anyone discredit that conclusion. Pointing out that it is an official statistics isn't a rationale in favor of its use in this way. It happens to be just one of the measures of poverty published by the US government. There are lots of other poverty statistics that could have been used and so I can only assume the use was intentionally misleading.

shkkmo 9y ago
You could have come in here and made a constructive comment about the number and the associate methodology of measuring poverty. Instead you made unfounded and unwarranted attacks on the author and made zero constructive contributions to the conversation. If you want to make people more aware of better measures of poverty, you should have come in here with a critique of the measurement without the vitriol and ideally with examples of better measures that can be used.
- gwright 9y ago
  You are right, I could have done that and probably should have done that. I have a certain amount of frustration that resulted in me venting rather than contributing. The misuse of the official US poverty stat is not something new. It has been floating around for a while and has been criticized quite a bit -- yet it is still used to put forth misleading arguments out of ignorance most often but not always. Here is a link on this very issue from 2011: https://www.heritage.org/poverty-and-inequality/report/understanding-poverty-the-united-states-surprising-facts-about?_ga=2.139130678.443965254.1519341692-1519354153.1479182938 https://www.heritage.org/poverty-and-inequality/report/under... It is one thing for a misleading statistic to be repeated in tweets, online discussions, comment streams and so on. It is a completely different thing for the misleading stat to be coming from an "authority". They should know better.

shkkmo 9y ago

You could have come in here and made a constructive comment about the number and the associate methodology of measuring poverty. Instead you made unfounded and unwarranted attacks on the author and made zero constructive contributions to the conversation. If you want to make people more aware of better measures of poverty, you should have come in here with a critique of the measurement without the vitriol and ideally with examples of better measures that can be used.

gwright 9y ago
You are right, I could have done that and probably should have done that. I have a certain amount of frustration that resulted in me venting rather than contributing. The misuse of the official US poverty stat is not something new. It has been floating around for a while and has been criticized quite a bit -- yet it is still used to put forth misleading arguments out of ignorance most often but not always. Here is a link on this very issue from 2011: https://www.heritage.org/poverty-and-inequality/report/understanding-poverty-the-united-states-surprising-facts-about?_ga=2.139130678.443965254.1519341692-1519354153.1479182938 https://www.heritage.org/poverty-and-inequality/report/under... It is one thing for a misleading statistic to be repeated in tweets, online discussions, comment streams and so on. It is a completely different thing for the misleading stat to be coming from an "authority". They should know better.