One in Seven Americans are [sic] Poor.

[obfuscator]

I can agree with that, but what else would you call it? "Ameripoor?" "Afripoor"? It might be a gray term but anyone with a few ounces of sense that the good Lord gave 'em can see the difference.

 

Then again, common sense is becoming harder and harder to find these days, I suppose.

I agree...but it just doesn't seem right to me to have someone making a dollar a week living in a shack and someone with cable tv in the same class in that manner.

[Range_This11]

If you can afford cable tv, internet, multiple televisions, a computer, and gaming consoles, then you aren't poor. You may be not very well off - which certainly merits assistance in itself.

 

But calling people like that "poor" does a disservice to the real poor people in the world, of which there are many.

While that is true, we aren't talking about the rest of the world's poverty issues and I think every one of us here is aware that there are billions of people in this world that experience a type of poverty that we will never be able to relate to.

 

We have to keep in mind the context of America. What is the cost of living? What are our cultural values? What are our societal values? What is the value of our currency? While comparing incomes and living conditions across the globe can provide some staggering results, I don't exactly think that it's fair to demonize the American poor. It is immensely difficult to go against the cultural goal of this country, and that is lavish prosperity.

 

Like magekillr said, television sets can be purchased at ridiculously low prices; the same goes for personal computers as well. Now I don't think that a family that is going hungry but has cable television is doing the right thing, but say their cable/internet bill is around $70/mo. Those of us who are buying groceries on a regular basis know that $70/mo is not very much for, say, groceries--especially for an entire family. Like I said, not smart, but not let's not demonize these people.

 

I'm not demonizing. But I find it hard to have pity on people who use the government for necessities while spending on luxuries. Basic appliances are not luxuries - but multiple televisions, cable, internet, gaming consoles - those are luxuries.

 

Hell, I'm not even poor (though not exactly rich) and we don't have cable, or gaming consoles, or multiple televisions just because there is a better, more practical use for the money than that.

No, no, no I wasn't saying you were demonizing. I'm just saying in general because I have a feeling that's what this thread will turn into.

[Ginger_Warrior]

It's pretty obvious that "poor" in this thread refers to relative poverty, not absolute poverty. This thread seems to be based entirely on semantics.

 

My opinion at calling people "poor", having come from a low-income working class backgrounf myself? Just call a spade a spade--you create more an issue and you distract attention away from the real problems that cause poverty by using euphemisms that needn't exist.

[magekillr]

Here we go. Matt Taibbi is on point, as usual:

 

All of this is a testament to the amazing (and rapidly expanding) cultural divide that exists in this country, where the poor and the rich seldom cross paths at all, and the rich, in particular, simply have no concept what being broke and poor really means. It is true that if you make $300,000 in America, you won't feel like you're so very rich once you get finished paying your taxes, your mortgage, your medical bills and so on.

 

For this reason, a lot of people who make that kind of money believe they are the modern middle class: house in the burbs, a car, a kid in college, a trip to Europe once a year, what's the big deal? They'd be right, were it not for the relative comparison -- for the fact that out there, in that thin little ithsmus between the Upper East Side and Beverly Hills, things are so [bleep]ed that public school teachers and garbagemen making $60k with benefits are being targeted with pitchfork-bearing mobs as paragons of greed and excess. Wealth, in places outside Manhattan, southern California, northern Virginia and a few other locales, is rapidly becoming defined as belonging to anyone who has any form of job security at all. Any kind of retirement plan, or better-than-minimum health coverage, is also increasingly looked at as an upper-class affectation.

 

That the Tea Party and their Republican allies in congress have so successfully made government workers with their New Deal benefits out to be the kulak class of modern America says a lot about the unique brand of two-way class blindness we have in this country. It's not just that the rich don't know the poor exist, and genuinely think a half a million a year is "not a lot of money," as one "compensation consultant" told the New York Times after the crash.

 

It also works the other way -- the poor have no idea what real rich people are like. They apparently never see them, which is why the political champions of middle America are at this very minute campaigning in congress to extract more revenue from elderly retirees and broke-ass students while simultaneously fighting to preserve a slew of tax loopholes for the rich, including the carried-interest tax break that allows hedge fund billionaires to pay about half the tax rate of most Americans.

 

Greed, Excess and America's Gaping Class Divide

[sees_all1]

You know what's hilarious about this discussion? I constantly see people telling me that people who make $250,000 a year aren't "rich," and coincidentally they're the same people who tell me that people at the poverty line aren't "poor." You know, because people making $250,000 per year are "middle class," even though the average median household income is $50,000 per year.

 

I don't think that's a coincidence.

Do you or any of your leftist buddies have any idea how taxes on a sole proprietorship works? If you did, you'd understand why $250,000 a year isn't rich, and why raising their taxes will affect 72% of all businesses in the U.S.

http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2010/tables/10s0728.pdf

[Giordano]

You know what's hilarious about this discussion? I constantly see people telling me that people who make $250,000 a year aren't "rich," and coincidentally they're the same people who tell me that people at the poverty line aren't "poor." You know, because people making $250,000 per year are "middle class," even though the average median household income is $50,000 per year.

 

I don't think that's a coincidence.

Do you or any of your leftist buddies have any idea how taxes on a sole proprietorship works? If you did, you'd understand why $250,000 a year isn't rich, and why raising their taxes will affect 72% of all businesses in the U.S.

http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2010/tables/10s0728.pdf

Yet Magekillr never assumed all $250k earners were small business owners.

 

Now, be careful here Sees. Small businesses do not need tax increases, but don't get small business confused with multi-million dollar corporations. They're the ones who really need to be regulated, since, taxing them higher would only [bleep] over the low-wage employees purposely.

[sees_all1]

You know what's hilarious about this discussion? I constantly see people telling me that people who make $250,000 a year aren't "rich," and coincidentally they're the same people who tell me that people at the poverty line aren't "poor." You know, because people making $250,000 per year are "middle class," even though the average median household income is $50,000 per year.

 

I don't think that's a coincidence.

Do you or any of your leftist buddies have any idea how taxes on a sole proprietorship works? If you did, you'd understand why $250,000 a year isn't rich, and why raising their taxes will affect 72% of all businesses in the U.S.

http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2010/tables/10s0728.pdf

Yet Magekillr never assumed all $250k earners were small business owners.

 

Now, be careful here Sees. Small businesses do not need tax increases, but don't get small business confused with multi-million dollar corporations. They're the ones who really need to be regulated, since, taxing them higher would only [bleep] over the low-wage employees purposely.

MOST people in that category ARE small business owners.

I start my own business by making and selling widgets. I value widgets at $5,000 each, and in a year I make 50 widgets. If I sell none of those 50 widgets and they sit in my warehouse at the end of the year, I'm still taxed at the $250,000 per year rate because my inventory value changed by that much, even if I don't have a dollar to my name.

[Giordano]

You know what's hilarious about this discussion? I constantly see people telling me that people who make $250,000 a year aren't "rich," and coincidentally they're the same people who tell me that people at the poverty line aren't "poor." You know, because people making $250,000 per year are "middle class," even though the average median household income is $50,000 per year.

 

I don't think that's a coincidence.

Do you or any of your leftist buddies have any idea how taxes on a sole proprietorship works? If you did, you'd understand why $250,000 a year isn't rich, and why raising their taxes will affect 72% of all businesses in the U.S.

http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2010/tables/10s0728.pdf

Yet Magekillr never assumed all $250k earners were small business owners.

 

Now, be careful here Sees. Small businesses do not need tax increases, but don't get small business confused with multi-million dollar corporations. They're the ones who really need to be regulated, since, taxing them higher would only [bleep] over the low-wage employees purposely.

MOST people in that category ARE small business owners.

I start my own business by making and selling widgets. I value widgets at $5,000 each, and in a year I make 50 widgets. If I sell none of those 50 widgets and they sit in my warehouse at the end of the year, I'm still taxed at the $250,000 per year rate because my inventory value changed by that much, even if I don't have a dollar to my name.

I know. Such a pity, I wish that wasn't the case.

 

Starting at 40k earning puts you in what I call the Middle Class Gap, meaning, you don't receive the tax benefits, charity loans, reduced mortgages, etc, because you're rich enough not to be entitled to them but you're not rich enough to support yourself without them. It's a tactic aimed to keep the poor from advancing, in essence.

 

So this goes on for a few hundred thousand dollars earning, especially if (in your case) you're a small business owner.

[magekillr]

You know what's hilarious about this discussion? I constantly see people telling me that people who make $250,000 a year aren't "rich," and coincidentally they're the same people who tell me that people at the poverty line aren't "poor." You know, because people making $250,000 per year are "middle class," even though the average median household income is $50,000 per year.

 

I don't think that's a coincidence.

Do you or any of your leftist buddies have any idea how taxes on a sole proprietorship works? If you did, you'd understand why $250,000 a year isn't rich, and why raising their taxes will affect 72% of all businesses in the U.S.

http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2010/tables/10s0728.pdf

 

$250,000 per year isn't rich, but $18,550 isn't poor. Got it. Thanks.

 

I see you didn't include the word "small" in there, which is a good thing considering most US corporations don't pay any corporate tax. So good, they should be "affected".

 

[hide][/hide]

[sees_all1]

$250,000 per year isn't rich, but $18,550 isn't poor. Got it. Thanks.

 

I see you didn't include the word "small" in there, which is a good thing considering most US corporations don't pay any corporate tax. So good, they should be "affected".

 

[hide][/hide]

72% of all businesses in America are sole proprietorships, not corporations. Raising personal income taxes directly affects these businesses, as its cutting directly into their bottom line.

[Noxx]

Weird. 2 Days ago i saw something on Aljazeera about 500,000 people being at risk of dying due to the worst drought ever somewhere in Kenya or Somalia. And here the Americans go and and call people who earn $25k/year "poor".

Afripoor and Ameripoor (sorry for stealing this Kim) are clearly 2 different things :\

[jasignhagj]

$250,000 per year isn't rich, but $18,550 isn't poor. Got it. Thanks.

 

I see you didn't include the word "small" in there, which is a good thing considering most US corporations don't pay any corporate tax. So good, they should be "affected".

 

[hide][/hide]

72% of all businesses in America are sole proprietorships, not corporations. Raising personal income taxes directly affects these businesses, as its cutting directly into their bottom line.

Yes, but not 72% of the profits are from small businesses.

[Flyingjj]

I don't want to say that my family is poor, but we're dang close to it. Yes, we have "luxuries" like a personal computer and cable TV. In US society, however, these items become less and less of luxuries. Like how I need my personal computer so that I can type up my school assignments on time without being confined to the 9-5 hours of the public library, considering I'm in school for most of those hours. Or how I had to watch the nightly news and specialty news programs for my government class.

 

I will in no way say that America's poor compare at all to poor elsewhere in the world, but as has been previously stated, there is a level of poor that should not happen in a country with so much money. I like the world should be such that everyone has food, shelter, a personal computer and cable tv. Does that make me a bad person? That I think everyone should have the same quality of resources available to them? Yes, "poor" people don't need cable tv or a personal computer or a cell phone, but when they already are struggling to make ends meet, luxuries are something that allow them to escape a little in their free time, and, in the case of at least cell phones and computers, allow them to interact with the world without being at an inherent disadvantage.

[kamykazee]

I skipped over the second page, but 'poor' i think is an ever-evolving concept. It's all a matter of the enviroment we live in. Tv's we're seen as luxury perhaps 50 years ago, but now even some who are classified as poor have them. In other news, average wage in my country is 300$/month and prices are only about 20% smaller, with some products being very close in price to those in developed nations. Ohai poverty compared to US.

[Zierro]

So wait. You're not considered "poor" if you have a hand-me-down computer and hand-me-down television? Lol, I bet you just had your second square meal of the day after saying that. What a fat country I live in.

 

But I find it hard to have pity on people who use the government for necessities while spending on luxuries.

 

I agree with you there.

[magekillr]

So wait. You're not considered "poor" if you have a hand-me-down computer and hand-me-down television? Lol, I bet you just had your second square meal of the day after saying that. What a fat country I live in.

 

But I find it hard to have pity on people who use the government for necessities while spending on luxuries.

 

I agree with you there.

 

Yes, what a "fat" country you live in:

 

The struggle to eat: As Congress wrangles over spending cuts, surging numbers of Americans are relying on the government just to put food on the table

 

Take food stamps, a programme designed to ensure that poor Americans have enough to eat, which is seen by many Republicans as unsustainable and by many Democrats as untouchable. Participation has soared since the recession began (see chart). By April it had reached almost 45m, or one in seven Americans. The cost, naturally, has soared too, from $35 billion in 2008 to $65 billion last year. And the Department of Agriculture, which administers the scheme, reckons only two-thirds of those who are eligible have signed up.

 

Republican leaders in the House of Representatives want to rein in the programme’s runaway growth. In their budget outline for next year they proposed cutting the amount of money to be spent on food stamps by roughly a fifth from 2015. Moreover, instead of being a federal entitlement, available to all Americans who meet the eligibility criteria irrespective of the cost, the programme would become a “block grant” to the states, which would receive a fixed amount to spend each year, irrespective of demand. The House has also voted to cut a separate health-and-nutrition scheme for poor pregnant women, infants and children, known as WIC, by 11%. (The Senate, controlled by the Democrats, is unlikely to approve either measure.)

 

Advocates for the poor consider such cuts unconscionable. Food stamps, they argue, are far from lavish. Only those with incomes of 130% of the poverty level or less are eligible for them. The amount each person receives depends on their income, assets and family size, but the average benefit is $133 a month and the maximum, for an individual with no income at all, is $200. Those sums are due to fall soon, when a temporary boost expires. Even the current package is meagre. Melissa Nieves, a recipient in New York, says she compares costs at five different supermarkets, assiduously collects coupons, eats mainly cheap, starchy foods, and still runs out of money a week or ten days before the end of the month.

 

It is also hard to argue that food-stamp recipients are undeserving. About half of them are children, and another 8% are elderly. Only 14% of food-stamp households have incomes above the poverty line; 41% have incomes of half that level or less, and 18% have no income at all. The average participating family has only $101 in savings or valuables. Less than a tenth of recipients also receive cash payments from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families programme (TANF), the reformed version of welfare; roughly a third get at least some income from wages.

 

Spending on food stamps has risen so quickly because, unusually, almost all the needy are automatically and indefinitely eligible for them. Unemployment benefits last for a maximum of 99 weeks at the moment, and that is due to fall to six months from next year. No one knows exactly how many people have exhausted their allotment, as the government does not attempt to count them. But almost half of the 14m unemployed have been out of a job for six months or more, and so would no longer qualify for benefits under the rules that will apply from January 1st.

 

Medicaid, America’s main health-care scheme for the poor, does not cover childless adults in most states, no matter how destitute they are. Housing assistance is not an entitlement, and only a small fraction of those who qualify for it actually receive it. The food-stamp programme has a rule limiting able-bodied, childless adults to three months on food stamps every three years—but it is suspended at times of high unemployment, leaving only recent immigrants and those convicted of drug offences to go hungry.

 

This is why sees_all and the Heritage Foundation want the definition of "poor" changed, and why the semantics matter. 130% of the poverty line: if the poverty line changes, less people qualify, which makes the program easier to cut, which makes it easier to give tax cuts to rich people.

 

But let's have Adam Smith, the author of The Wealth of Nations explain what it means to be "poor":

 

These things only qualify as “luxuries” if you assume a world where the poor are poor because of bad choices, and if you believe that poverty demands destitution (i.e. poor people aren’t allowed to feel pleasure). If you’re not starving in the streets, then as far as Heritage is concerned, you’re not really poor. Of course, in the world as it exists, poverty is most often the result of systemic factors – poor educational opportunities, depressed economies, institutionalized discrimination – and events that are beyond the control of most people: medical emergencies, job losses, and the various collection of difficulties that come with not having money.

 

Even if that weren’t the case, however, it’s still true that poverty is more than simple material deprivation. Adam Smith explains this best in The Wealth of Nations:

 

By necessaries I understand not only the commodities which are indispensably necessary for the support of life, but what ever the customs of the country renders it indecent for creditable people, even the lowest order, to be without. A linen shirt, for example, is, strictly speaking, not a necessary of life. The Greeks and Romans lived, I suppose, very comfortably, though they had no linen. But in the present times, through the greater part of Europe, a creditable day-laborer would be ashamed to appear in public without a linen shirt, the want of which would be supposed to denote that disgraceful degree of poverty which, it is presumed, nobody can well fall into, without extreme bad conduct. Custom, in the same manner, has rendered leather shoes a necessary of life in England.

 

Even when poverty is a matter of relative deprivation, it’s still poverty, since a large part of poverty is navigating the shame of being poor. That a low-income parent springs for nice clothing for his child doesn’t mean that he’s irresponsible; it means that he wants his child to avoid the shame that comes with having poor-quality clothes. Likewise, a poor family might not need an XBox, but owning one allows them to avoid feelings of inadequacy when confronted with guests who aren’t poor.

 

There's More to Poverty Than Just Money

[sees_all1]

This is why sees_all and the Heritage Foundation want the definition of "poor" changed, and why the semantics matter. 130% of the poverty line: if the poverty line changes, less people qualify, which makes the program easier to cut, which makes it easier to give tax cuts to rich people.

60% of the 1 in 7 "poor" people are paying for cable or satellite t.v. each month.

I'm sorry, but if you "can't afford" basic necessities like food but you can afford pay for cable each month, you shouldn't be receiving food stamps.

[obfuscator]

This is why sees_all and the Heritage Foundation want the definition of "poor" changed, and why the semantics matter. 130% of the poverty line: if the poverty line changes, less people qualify, which makes the program easier to cut, which makes it easier to give tax cuts to rich people.

60% of the 1 in 7 "poor" people are paying for cable or satellite t.v. each month.

I'm sorry, but if you "can't afford" basic necessities like food but you can afford pay for cable each month, you shouldn't be receiving food stamps.

 

I agree with this completely.

 

I'm in favour of aggressive anti-poverty social programs and always have been - but the government does not exist to give people a free ride.

[Guy]

This is why sees_all and the Heritage Foundation want the definition of "poor" changed, and why the semantics matter. 130% of the poverty line: if the poverty line changes, less people qualify, which makes the program easier to cut, which makes it easier to give tax cuts to rich people.

60% of the 1 in 7 "poor" people are paying for cable or satellite t.v. each month.

I'm sorry, but if you "can't afford" basic necessities like food but you can afford pay for cable each month, you shouldn't be receiving food stamps.

 

I agree with this completely.

 

I'm in favour of aggressive anti-poverty social programs and always have been - but the government does not exist to give people a free ride.

I agree with sees_all too. To your point about the government giving people a free ride obsfucator (nice new name?) I think it's also an issue this side of the pond and it irritates me massively, not least because little seems to be done to stop it.

[obfuscator]

I agree with sees_all too. To your point about the government giving people a free ride obsfucator (nice new name?) I think it's also an issue this side of the pond and it irritates me massively, not least because little seems to be done to stop it.

 

Yeah. And I mean, I'm not one of those people who says "all poor people are poor of their own doing, let them be" - but not everyone deserves help. If they deserve it, by all means they should receive food stamps and more. But if they're paying for luxuries and letting the government pay for their food; no - they don't deserve anything.

[Giordano]

Taxing and welfare is not the solution here. As I said before, super-corporations need to be forced to use domestic labor. It's ridiculous how they can abuse, bribe, and sue their way out of taxes and use USA's military and finacial protection, yet not use their people.

 

I might sound like a commie, but the goal is the same as any Tea Party member wants: a stronger economic America.

[Veiva]

This discussion reminds me why I rarely care to read off-topic.

 

In any case, as magekillr has been saying, poor is relative to other factors, such as the wealth of a country. Yes, there is an absolute poor baseline: no money at all, living on the street/in a shack, no food, no water, nothing. Yet...this is not a "Western" problem. There are relatively few people in such living conditions in the United States, Canada, the UK, and so on. What will it take for you to say that there is a problem with wealth distribution in the West? To have a majority of people living as if in the "absolute baseline definition of poor?"

 

I have, unlike I'm sure many middle-class individuals here, lived a life in a very poverty-stricken neighborhood. There were those trying to make a living in all kinds of ways around me: gangs, drug dealers, etc. The only "extra" my family had was television up until the last year I lived in the said neighborhood, at which point we got a computer and dial-up. And by television I don't mean DVR, etc. I mean hooking the TV up to the cable. Since I was simply a child then (not even a teenager at this point; I had no concept of money!), I cannot even begin tell you the struggle my mom had to face every day worrying about food, paying for our house (which was literally falling apart), and all the other little necessities. We went years and years without a car, we went nearly 10 months without hot water at one point. There were four people needing to be fed: my mom, my two siblings, and me.

 

Now, after telling you this heart-warming story, I will admit my family was better off than a large portion of the world. However, by American standards, I was not better off than most Americans. Yes, there were individuals with worse conditions, heck even next door. But must you degrade one person's suffering with another person's? Is that what this society has come to? "There are people with worse living conditions out there!" Does that help me, or the other individuals living in the Western standard of poverty, to survive? No it does not. Must you help the worst off before you help your fellow man? Must you donate to a country you'll never visit, just to say you helped, and ignore the homeless man on the street near you who is in just as terrible conditions?

 

So basically, to cut to the chase, I would simply like to say that you can sit on your comfy chair, and so can I, and claim that if you have television you're not poor. In my case, I can claim that you're poor. But that does not solve the problem of wealth distribution. I am not saying we should become communist buddies. Far from it. What I am saying is we should employ the lesser of two evils. Since the fellow man does not wish to help the fellow man, the government is the only suitable answer. Still, it's only a short term fix. I am under the impression that it will take a disastrous event for the West, particularly the United States, to see that short term fixes are not going to work when it comes to aid for those who need aid. Even then, I am not so sure it would help.

[sees_all1]

In any case, as magekillr has been saying, poor is relative to other factors, such as the wealth of a country. Yes, there is an absolute poor baseline: no money at all, living on the street/in a shack, no food, no water, nothing. Yet...this is not a "Western" problem. There are relatively few people in such living conditions in the United States, Canada, the UK, and so on. What will it take for you to say that there is a problem with wealth distribution in the West? To have a majority of people living as if in the "absolute baseline definition of poor?"

 

To be very blunt, your story and the point you make irritates me (an implicit fallacy of composition), and is exactly the reason the definition of poverty needs to be changed in the U.S.

 

1 in 7 Americans are poor by our definition. Here is a heart-wrenching example of someone who is poor (happens to be the poorest person in America). Therefore, we need to do more for all people classified as "poor" by our definition, including the ones that happen to be well off.

[Ginger_Warrior]

I'd warn very cautiously against making corporations use domestic labour. Protectionism is not something that should be encouraged while many more Americans are working overseas, and many people in the US are employed by foreign-owned companies.

 

Not to mention that it doesn't particularly solve the underlying problems of poverty. Namely, education and access to basic healthcare.

[Veiva]

In any case, as magekillr has been saying, poor is relative to other factors, such as the wealth of a country. Yes, there is an absolute poor baseline: no money at all, living on the street/in a shack, no food, no water, nothing. Yet...this is not a "Western" problem. There are relatively few people in such living conditions in the United States, Canada, the UK, and so on. What will it take for you to say that there is a problem with wealth distribution in the West? To have a majority of people living as if in the "absolute baseline definition of poor?"

 

To be very blunt, your story and the point you make irritates me (an implicit fallacy of composition), and is exactly the reason the definition of poverty needs to be changed in the U.S.

 

1 in 7 Americans are poor by our definition. Here is a heart-wrenching example of someone who is poor (happens to be the poorest person in America). Therefore, we need to do more for all people classified as "poor" by our definition, including the ones that happen to be well off.

 

I don't quite understand your statement. Are you saying my family should not have been classified as poor? Or are you saying that others who are classified as poor should not be?

 

All I was arguing against is people who think poor is absolute. That's all.