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The poverty line has not scaled with the increase in expenditures associated with modern living, nor increased worker value. The only adjustments made in the la

The poverty line has not scaled with the increase in expenditures associated with modern living, nor increased worker value. The only adjustments made in the last half-century have been for inflation and bare-minimum at that. America is a lot more poor than these statistics let on when compared to the rest of the first world. Furthermore debt is not considered in many such analyses.

chanfest22 6y ago
> America is a lot more poor than these statistics let on when compared to the rest of the first world. Source?
- mc32 6y ago
  Definitely need some support for that claim. I've heard the opposite claim that poor Americans are better off (save healthcare) than poor in other countries. But like the above, that was hearsay and I'm not sure I would believe either claim without some stats to back that up.
  - adventured 6y ago
    You'll see a lot of empty claims that the US has practically no social safety net. That's plainly false. That it's not as good/effective as eg France, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, etc., that much is true. Poor Americans get free healthcare, around just over 1/4 of all Americans receive free healthcare. ~24% of Americans are receiving Medicaid. The US spends more on its social welfare programs, as a share of GDP, than Canada does, and it matches what Australia and Switzerland are spending. The US is close to the OECD middle and a bit behind the UK (OECD figures below): https://i.imgur.com/5GnDdTp.png https://i.imgur.com/5GnDdTp.png And when it comes to improvements in poverty thanks to our vastly expanded social safety net, you can see that very strikingly represented when you drop out those programs from the calculations (childhood poverty shown below, with and without government aid): https://i.imgur.com/hqTS3Ck.png https://i.imgur.com/hqTS3Ck.png https://i.imgur.com/9aEi2sL.png https://i.imgur.com/9aEi2sL.png The same thing shows up in our homelessness improvement figures from the past 20 years. The housing first program implemented by the Bush Administration and sustained by the Obama Administration - aka a government program - was almost solely responsible for the huge decrease in US homelessness. The US social safety net has expanded rather massively in the past 40 years. Structurally the biggest problem the US has when it comes to its social safety net, is it's all haphazard and often poorly administered. The US isn't very good at running social safety nets, it's chaotic and critical parts of it are managed in very different ways state to state. We're not getting enough bang for our buck on that spending, we need to do better. We're spending a lot of money and the results are often not good enough (which we frequently see with government spending in the US). For example, if the US were spending per capita on our healthcare system what the UK is, we could nearly double - maybe up to 40%-45% - the number of people we're covering with free healthcare at minimal additional cost.
    - rayiner 6y ago
      It’s telling that your well sourced and cited post is getting downvoted.
      - altcognito 6y ago
        "well sourced" would be linking to the actual source with the citation, not expecting us to dig out the information. I'm not sure how they got to near 20% of US gdp being spent on social programs. US GDP is 21 trillion, social program spending is under a trillion.
        rayiner 6y ago
        The images say the source is OECD data. The OECD tracks various indicators like this in a comprehensive database: https://data.oecd.org/ https://data.oecd.org/ Social expenditures are here: http://www.oecd.org/els/soc/OECD2016-Social-Expenditure-Update.pdf http://www.oecd.org/els/soc/OECD2016-Social-Expenditure-Upda... As defined by the OECD, social program spending includes social security, Medicare, and education (each of which are $700-900 billion expenses).
    - andi999 6y ago
      Third diagramm: how can it be below 0% before 1970?
      - refurb 6y ago
        That is confusing, but it’s before and after “benefits and taxes”. So I assume back then some families didn’t qualify for benefits (but were above the poverty line), but after accounting for taxes, they slipped below the poverty line.
    - refurb 6y ago
      This is a very accurate summary of the US social safety net. It’s very large, but some European countries spend more. But it’s also a bit of a bureaucratic mess and not that easy to navigate. Not sure why you’re getting downvoted.
- AmericanChopper 6y ago
  There is no source for that, it is not true. The world bank’s preferred metric for material welfare is PPP adjusted consumption (because for instance, food stamps aren’t income), and because poverty measurements are only relative to people within one country, not between multiple countries. When you measure that, the poorest 20% of Americans have a superior level of welfare to the average person in most OECD countries. You can see on table 6.5 in the study linked below that lowest quintile households (by income) consumed an average of $57,049 goods and services per household, which is just under $22k per person. Putting the lowest 20% of the US in the top half of OECD countries for that year. https://www.nber.org/chapters/c12831.pdf https://www.nber.org/chapters/c12831.pdf
- soulofmischief 6y ago
  I think you misread my comment like many others. I made no claim we're doing worse than other developed countries. I just pointed out that these statistics don't capture the entire picture and we're worse off than they let on.
bhupy 6y ago
What? America is like the top 3 in median disposable income in the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_capita_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_c... US wealth per adult is higher than Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_per_adult https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_pe...
- bialpio 6y ago
  Does it take into account purchasing power / cost of living? That seems relevant when comparing across countries and talking about poverty.
  - rayiner 6y ago
    Yes. It’s based on OECD data, which uses PPP dollars. (Purchasing power parity dollars.) The US makes a classic average case versus worst case trade-off. The bottom 20% in the US are poorer than in other Western countries and there is less of a safety net. But in terms of material lifestyle, the median is better off.
    - mjn 6y ago
      I'm not sure I'd say the US has consciously made that tradeoff, though maybe you aren't claiming that. If anything it's likely a side-effect, imo. The median at any snapshot in time is materially better off, but also much more stressed out than people in other wealthy countries about whether they might end up in a very bad economic situation, due to how there is barely any bottom. Subjectively, middle-income Americans don't feel well off and don't feel secure in even what they have. For example, numbers vary based on the specific survey, but about 60-70% of Americans consistently feel high levels of stress about money. I'm not sure that's a course that would've been taken by a 50th-percentile person trying to optimize their own well-being? One reason Scandinavian countries tend to come near the top of those "happiest countries in the world" surveys (though I don't like the term "happy" for it) isn't from any particular joyfulness, but because the typical household subjectively has very low levels of economic fear or stress. Some of the survey questions that go into that score include things like, do you feel economically secure, do you worry about losing your housing, etc. A huge percentage of even middle-class Americans spend a lot of their time worrying about that (including my family), while the majority of middle-income people from say Denmark don't consider it a big risk to worry about.
giantg2 6y ago
So adjusting for inflation, which tracks the relative buying power of the dollar across common goods and services, is not representing the cost of modern living? I know it has some areas that may be under-represented, but in general it tracks the same changes in the power of the dollar across multiple categories. Changing what the inflation metrics track would make it an even poorer standard for comparison/tracking. What would make a better metric?
- learc83 6y ago
  One argument is that increases in necessities like healthcare, and rent are offset by decreases in things like the cost of consumer electronics. So the inflation rate doesn’t give you a good picture of the actual increase in the cost of living.
caturopath 6y ago
People measure many things. For example, you mention that debt isn't considered here; wealth metrics are widely studied, the poverty line just doesn't happen to be a wealth metric, but rather an income measure. I am not sure I fully comprehend the remark "The poverty line has not scaled with the increase in expenditures associated with modern living." It adjusts with inflation, and the inflation metric tries to stay relevant: the CPI basket includes housing, medical treatment and drugs, tuition, TVs, cell phones, etc. I guess the criticism comes down to the idea that somehow a cell phone should somehow adjust from an assumption of 0 from times before cell phones were popular? If we do something like that, it sounds really hard to get things right (CPI is already pretty hard to get right). What would it mean to say that standard of living improvements are outpacing alleviation of poverty? That sort of metric seems something suited for sophisticated research, not a standard government metric. Another important thing to do, one might note, that addresses some of the concern about losing track, is to take a fixed proportion of people - e.g. the bottom quintile of income earners - and study various aspects affecting their lives. This is, as I understand it, really widespread.
DeonPenny 6y ago
Lol americans are much much richer compare to the rest of the world especially the first world. And debt is considered.

chanfest22 6y ago

> America is a lot more poor than these statistics let on when compared to the rest of the first world. Source?

mc32 6y ago
Definitely need some support for that claim. I've heard the opposite claim that poor Americans are better off (save healthcare) than poor in other countries. But like the above, that was hearsay and I'm not sure I would believe either claim without some stats to back that up.
- adventured 6y ago
  You'll see a lot of empty claims that the US has practically no social safety net. That's plainly false. That it's not as good/effective as eg France, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, etc., that much is true. Poor Americans get free healthcare, around just over 1/4 of all Americans receive free healthcare. ~24% of Americans are receiving Medicaid. The US spends more on its social welfare programs, as a share of GDP, than Canada does, and it matches what Australia and Switzerland are spending. The US is close to the OECD middle and a bit behind the UK (OECD figures below): https://i.imgur.com/5GnDdTp.png https://i.imgur.com/5GnDdTp.png And when it comes to improvements in poverty thanks to our vastly expanded social safety net, you can see that very strikingly represented when you drop out those programs from the calculations (childhood poverty shown below, with and without government aid): https://i.imgur.com/hqTS3Ck.png https://i.imgur.com/hqTS3Ck.png https://i.imgur.com/9aEi2sL.png https://i.imgur.com/9aEi2sL.png The same thing shows up in our homelessness improvement figures from the past 20 years. The housing first program implemented by the Bush Administration and sustained by the Obama Administration - aka a government program - was almost solely responsible for the huge decrease in US homelessness. The US social safety net has expanded rather massively in the past 40 years. Structurally the biggest problem the US has when it comes to its social safety net, is it's all haphazard and often poorly administered. The US isn't very good at running social safety nets, it's chaotic and critical parts of it are managed in very different ways state to state. We're not getting enough bang for our buck on that spending, we need to do better. We're spending a lot of money and the results are often not good enough (which we frequently see with government spending in the US). For example, if the US were spending per capita on our healthcare system what the UK is, we could nearly double - maybe up to 40%-45% - the number of people we're covering with free healthcare at minimal additional cost.
  - rayiner 6y ago
    It’s telling that your well sourced and cited post is getting downvoted.
    - altcognito 6y ago
      "well sourced" would be linking to the actual source with the citation, not expecting us to dig out the information. I'm not sure how they got to near 20% of US gdp being spent on social programs. US GDP is 21 trillion, social program spending is under a trillion.
      - rayiner 6y ago
        The images say the source is OECD data. The OECD tracks various indicators like this in a comprehensive database: https://data.oecd.org/ https://data.oecd.org/ Social expenditures are here: http://www.oecd.org/els/soc/OECD2016-Social-Expenditure-Update.pdf http://www.oecd.org/els/soc/OECD2016-Social-Expenditure-Upda... As defined by the OECD, social program spending includes social security, Medicare, and education (each of which are $700-900 billion expenses).
  - andi999 6y ago
    Third diagramm: how can it be below 0% before 1970?
    - refurb 6y ago
      That is confusing, but it’s before and after “benefits and taxes”. So I assume back then some families didn’t qualify for benefits (but were above the poverty line), but after accounting for taxes, they slipped below the poverty line.
  - refurb 6y ago
    This is a very accurate summary of the US social safety net. It’s very large, but some European countries spend more. But it’s also a bit of a bureaucratic mess and not that easy to navigate. Not sure why you’re getting downvoted.
AmericanChopper 6y ago
There is no source for that, it is not true. The world bank’s preferred metric for material welfare is PPP adjusted consumption (because for instance, food stamps aren’t income), and because poverty measurements are only relative to people within one country, not between multiple countries. When you measure that, the poorest 20% of Americans have a superior level of welfare to the average person in most OECD countries. You can see on table 6.5 in the study linked below that lowest quintile households (by income) consumed an average of $57,049 goods and services per household, which is just under $22k per person. Putting the lowest 20% of the US in the top half of OECD countries for that year. https://www.nber.org/chapters/c12831.pdf https://www.nber.org/chapters/c12831.pdf
soulofmischief 6y ago
I think you misread my comment like many others. I made no claim we're doing worse than other developed countries. I just pointed out that these statistics don't capture the entire picture and we're worse off than they let on.

bhupy 6y ago

What? America is like the top 3 in median disposable income in the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_capita_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_c... US wealth per adult is higher than Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_per_adult https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_pe...

bialpio 6y ago
Does it take into account purchasing power / cost of living? That seems relevant when comparing across countries and talking about poverty.
- rayiner 6y ago
  Yes. It’s based on OECD data, which uses PPP dollars. (Purchasing power parity dollars.) The US makes a classic average case versus worst case trade-off. The bottom 20% in the US are poorer than in other Western countries and there is less of a safety net. But in terms of material lifestyle, the median is better off.
  - mjn 6y ago
    I'm not sure I'd say the US has consciously made that tradeoff, though maybe you aren't claiming that. If anything it's likely a side-effect, imo. The median at any snapshot in time is materially better off, but also much more stressed out than people in other wealthy countries about whether they might end up in a very bad economic situation, due to how there is barely any bottom. Subjectively, middle-income Americans don't feel well off and don't feel secure in even what they have. For example, numbers vary based on the specific survey, but about 60-70% of Americans consistently feel high levels of stress about money. I'm not sure that's a course that would've been taken by a 50th-percentile person trying to optimize their own well-being? One reason Scandinavian countries tend to come near the top of those "happiest countries in the world" surveys (though I don't like the term "happy" for it) isn't from any particular joyfulness, but because the typical household subjectively has very low levels of economic fear or stress. Some of the survey questions that go into that score include things like, do you feel economically secure, do you worry about losing your housing, etc. A huge percentage of even middle-class Americans spend a lot of their time worrying about that (including my family), while the majority of middle-income people from say Denmark don't consider it a big risk to worry about.

giantg2 6y ago

So adjusting for inflation, which tracks the relative buying power of the dollar across common goods and services, is not representing the cost of modern living? I know it has some areas that may be under-represented, but in general it tracks the same changes in the power of the dollar across multiple categories. Changing what the inflation metrics track would make it an even poorer standard for comparison/tracking. What would make a better metric?

learc83 6y ago
One argument is that increases in necessities like healthcare, and rent are offset by decreases in things like the cost of consumer electronics. So the inflation rate doesn’t give you a good picture of the actual increase in the cost of living.

caturopath 6y ago

People measure many things. For example, you mention that debt isn't considered here; wealth metrics are widely studied, the poverty line just doesn't happen to be a wealth metric, but rather an income measure. I am not sure I fully comprehend the remark "The poverty line has not scaled with the increase in expenditures associated with modern living." It adjusts with inflation, and the inflation metric tries to stay relevant: the CPI basket includes housing, medical treatment and drugs, tuition, TVs, cell phones, etc. I guess the criticism comes down to the idea that somehow a cell phone should somehow adjust from an assumption of 0 from times before cell phones were popular? If we do something like that, it sounds really hard to get things right (CPI is already pretty hard to get right). What would it mean to say that standard of living improvements are outpacing alleviation of poverty? That sort of metric seems something suited for sophisticated research, not a standard government metric. Another important thing to do, one might note, that addresses some of the concern about losing track, is to take a fixed proportion of people - e.g. the bottom quintile of income earners - and study various aspects affecting their lives. This is, as I understand it, really widespread.

DeonPenny 6y ago

Lol americans are much much richer compare to the rest of the world especially the first world. And debt is considered.