5 ms·
Inflation Disproportionately Hurts the Poor
- Finnucane 5y agoWe should have policies to make the poor less poor.
- stuaxo 5y agoThese are work really well for business too, unfortunately they are small local businesses, not the kind who have the ear of government.
- DudeInBasement 5y agoChina just lowered the threshold for poverty, bam 300M poverty free. What are you solutions?
- jafo 5y agoI went to the hardware store and asked for a ladder that didn't have a lowest rung. I walked out disappointed.
- Finnucane 5y agoAnd we must make sure that lowest rung is firmly planted in the mud, right?
- Kim_Bruning 5y agoSo (for the sake of this story) I'm a bit taller than average, and still growing! It'd be more efficient if the rungs were adjustable. So I went to the hardware store and got a ladder with adjustable rungs. Then I adjusted the lowest rung up to make it a bit higher.
- jafo 5y agoYou still stepped on the lowest rung first, non? No matter how high it was off the ground, it was still the lowest rung and stepped on first. Wouldn't it be better if the ladder didn't have a lowest rung?
- Kim_Bruning 5y agoI think the metaphor may have broken down. I am curious though, can you tell me your line of thinking?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- randyrand 5y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27575872 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27575872 were you quoted? google search: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22We+should+have+policies+to+make+the+poor+less+poor.%22&ei=sR3QYLaLC9f4-gSLm6PwCA&oq=%22We+should+have+policies+to+make+the+poor+less+poor.%22&gs_lcp=Cgdnd3Mtd2l6EAMyBQghEKABMgUIIRCgATIFCCEQqwI6BwgAEEcQsANQxRlY8CVghSdoAXACeACAAbsCiAGDBpIBBzEuMS4xLjGYAQCgAQGqAQdnd3Mtd2l6yAEIwAEB&sclient=gws-wiz&ved=0ahUKEwj2p8PI-afxAhVXvJ4KHYvNCI4Q4dUDCA8&uact=5 https://www.google.com/search?q=%22We+should+have+policies+t...]
- randyrand 5y agoWelfare disproportionately goes to the poor for these sorts of reasons.
- dsamarin 5y agoSounds cyclical.
- hattar 5y agoThis got me curious. Some quick googling indicates that likely isn’t the case. Apparently the US spends about double on corporate subsidies than the amount it spends on social welfare programs.
- lotsofpulp 5y agoI would group Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid with social welfare programs, which are 60% of federal government expenses. https://www.thebalance.com/u-s-federal-budget-breakdown-3305789 https://www.thebalance.com/u-s-federal-budget-breakdown-3305... The calculations also get tricky because there are lots of state and city level spending that would have to be accounted for, such as things like funding public schools.
- hattar 5y agoI don’t know that I’d count Medicare since it’s not for the poor, it’s for people over 65 regardless of income. Social security also goes to everyone regardless of income. Calling public schools a welfare program disproportionately allocated to the poor seems like a stretch too. Medicaid makes sense though, which is apparently about 10% of the federal budget.
- lotsofpulp 5y agoMedicare requires having paid into it for at least 10 years, and I believe there is some convoluted means testing going on with all the different “Parts” of Medicare and how much one’s premiums and benefits are. Social security is similar, see my other comment.
- Gibbon1 5y agoAlso wsj: Increases in rents are not 'inflation'
- kybernetikos 5y agoUnfortunately I can't read the article because it requires a subscription. The conclusion is surprising to me though - poor people generally spend what they get paid on what they need. I would have assumed that this means that if their pay is increasing at the same rate as their costs, inflation isn't hurting them much at all. If their pay isn't increasing at the same rate as their costs, I'd consider that a phenomenon different to inflation, and blame that. On the other hand, it seems like inflation would hurt people with large quantities of uninvested cash the most.
- CheezeIt 5y agoYep. And even when the cash is invested, it forms a wealth tax whose value is inflation rate multiplied by capital gains tax rate.
- TrinaryWorksToo 5y agoMinuum wage isn't going up. It's a huge problem.
- kybernetikos 5y agoAnalysis that suggests that actually debt getting inflated away is a major factor and results in people in debt being disproportionately helped by inflation: https://www.lynalden.com/inflation/#benefit https://www.lynalden.com/inflation/#benefit
- haspoken 5y agohttps://archive.is/EhxQr https://archive.is/EhxQr