California Highest poverty in the US?

[pcgeek11]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/07/california-highest-rate-of-poverty_n_4233292.html

An alternative method of looking at poverty has found that California has the highest rate of impoverished people in the nation, according to figures released Wednesday by the U.S. government.

The alternate calculation, which factors in taxes, noncash benefits and day-to-day costs such as child care, means that California has nearly 2.8 million more poor people than the official poverty rate shows, with nearly one in four state residents being considered poor.

In addition to housing, the alternate measure also considers expenses for work, medical, clothing and utilities. It also factors in noncash government benefits such as those provided by nutrition assistance programs as well as housing and energy assistance.

While this is not the traditional methods for determining poverty. Reading the article I think it may give a more truthful end result.

 

[Spungo]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/07/california-highest-rate-of-poverty_n_4233292.html
While this is not the traditional methods for determining poverty. Reading the article I think it may give a more truthful end result.

Are you telling me that unaffordable housing makes people poor? Well then, my work here is done.

 

[Anarchist420]

Good post. Someone with 45k income this year in CA would be poor while someone else with 45k income for this year in mississippi or west virginia would be able to live relatively comfortably.

Taxes are regressive since more people than the highest earning 1% pay them.

Anyway, there need to be more deductions, lower marginal rates, and more exemptions for the income tax (only salaries/wages should be taxable and there should be a higher per-filer exemption) with all payroll taxes/benefits being made optional and all spending made discretionary with nothing more than 90% of what it currently is and many things abolished. the corporate tax rate can be reduced to 1/8, the NFA, ACA, SOx, Dodd-Frank, AMT, and all quotas should be repealed, and no tariff should be higher than 10%. excise taxes should be reduced. legal tender needs to be repealed as does all counterfeiting legislation. assets currently owned by the u.s.g. can be decentralized with an equivalent amount of its debt (only to u.s. citizens) decentralized by representation, all debt not owed to u.s. citizens cancelled, and most of the rest of its assets sold to individuals

 

[Slew Foot]

30% of CA is on Medi-cal, nearly 10 million people. Silicon Valley is keeping the entire state afloat, for now.

 

[fskimospy]

30% of CA is on Medi-cal, nearly 10 million people. Silicon Valley is keeping the entire state afloat, for now.

Not really. The big cities are providing most of the wealth, but that's true for most states.

When people think of California they think of the coastal regions, which are by and large very wealthy. They forget that there is a huge inland area too, and it is desperately poor.

 

[glenn1]

Are you telling me that unaffordable housing makes people poor? Well then, my work here is done.

Federal poverty guidelines do not take cost of living into account, it's strictly a function of how much you make vs. a predetermined figure that applies nationally for a given year. Which is one more reason to take with an entire salt shaker anything you see or any political proposal you hear that deals with "poverty."

 

[fskimospy]

Federal poverty guidelines do not take cost of living into account, it's strictly a function of how much you make vs. a predetermined figure that applies nationally for a given year. Which is one more reason to take with an entire salt shaker anything you see or any political proposal you hear that deals with "poverty."

You realize the subject of the article is also a federal calculation of poverty, right?

That being said, I agree that the current calculation used for most things is flawed in that way. This looks to be a step on the way to fixing it.

 

[alcoholbob]

I have friends in the city (SF) making 65k living in a basement and can barely make ends meet and eating ramen noodles all day, and can afford to maybe go on a date once a month. In some states you can support a wife and kids and live comfortably with that salary.

 

[glenn1]

Not really. The big cities are providing most of the wealth, but that's true for most states.

When people think of California they think of the coastal regions, which are by and large very wealthy. They forget that there is a huge inland area too, and it is desperately poor.

I think what you mean to say is that those cities exhibit the worst income inequality. For example Manhattan had a GINI index of 0.596 in 2012. Or to put it another way, if it were its own country it would be the 6th most inequal in the world.

So the better question is why are those of you in cities allowing so many of your fellow citizens to fester like that? Are you going to selfishly keep saying it's a "collective action problem" and not do anything unless you can first get the citizens of other places to contribute their tax dollars to help?

 

[fskimospy]

I think what you mean to say is that those cities exhibit the worst income inequality. For example Manhattan had a GINI index of 0.596 in 2012. Or to put it another way, if it were its own country it would be the 6th most inequal in the world.

So the better question is why are those of you in cities allowing so many of your fellow citizens to fester like that? Are you going to selfishly keep saying it's a "collective action problem" and not do anything unless you can first get the citizens of other places to contribute their tax dollars to help?

Nice try, but you're being dishonest yet again.

GINI coefficient does not measure poverty. It measures income inequality. Those are two totally different things. If you make $1B annually and I only make $500k a year, our income inequality is horrible, yet we are both still rich. Trying to use GINI in this conversation is simply wrong.

Additionally, this alternative measure really exists to show the flaws with the current way of providing benefits. Using this instead would result, most likely, in a loss of benefits for rural households and an increase in benefits for urban ones. Suggesting this as a better measure is in fact exactly the cities looking to take care of their own! Thanks for asking!

Finally, the cities that you so consistently rage against subsidize not only their own citizens but the citizens of suburban and rural areas in many cases.

 

[Attic]

I used to take a 3 stage (each way) public transport route from Santa Monica to Huntington Park for about a year.

Eye opener, the folks didn't feel poorer as I moved away from Santa Monica (on the coast) to Huntington Park (inland) in terms of spirit and hustle and bustle. But the areas further inland looked and felt desperately poor, particularly compared to the coast. A lot of areas it looked crippling poor and shanty/dirty. It felt like different countries, complete with the language barrier that erupted in certain areas on the route.

 

[fskimospy]

I used to take a 3 stage (each way) public transport route from Santa Monica to Huntington Park for about a year.

Eye opener, the folks didn't feel poorer as I moved away from Santa Monica (on the coast) to Huntington Park (inland) in terms of spirit and hustle and bustle. But the areas further inland looked and felt desperately poor, particularly compared to the coast. A lot of areas it looked crippling poor and shanty/dirty. It felt like different countries, complete with the language barrier that erupted in certain areas on the route.

Yeap, if you look at that silly "six Californias" proposition that came up, one of the inland "states" that would be created out of it would be the poorest in the entire nation. Poorer than Mississippi. That's how poor inland California is.

 

[TheSiege]

Not all of California has outrageous home prices...

 

[senseamp]

There is a drunk hobo living on the bench next to gas station where I go biking in the foothills. It's a very rich area, but there he is. He looks sh!tfaced most of the time, and just sits around, sometimes I see him going into the bushes on side of the road. I'd like to think there is hope for him if he sobers up, but he really let himself go. There is another older Chinese guy who walks around with a cart collecting cans. He wears a jacket and actually makes more of an effort to maintain his appearance than an average Silicon Valley engineer. And I never see him just sitting around, he is always sober and serious walking around collecting cans and bottles for recycling in the morning. I don't know what his story is, but I think he could do better based on his work ethic, maybe it's a language and age issue.

 

[fskimospy]

Not all of California has outrageous home prices...

This is true, but the alternative measure here is mostly going to jack up poverty rates in high cost of living areas. Basically, since many government programs are based on federal poverty measures quite a few people in areas that are expensive have similar quality of life to those who qualify for assistance in low cost of living areas but they don't get it.

If you look at the ranking of states by the alternative measure you will see low cost of living states shoot way up; their population IS getting benefits while others in high cost areas live the same and are not.

 

[K1052]

I have friends in the city (SF) making 65k living in a basement and can barely make ends meet and eating ramen noodles all day, and can afford to maybe go on a date once a month. In some states you can support a wife and kids and live comfortably with that salary.

SF is a very unique case where an unholy alliance of old money NIMBYs and social activists have combined forces to fight development in a land constrained city where development is already difficult at best. The predicable result is a cost of living that's rocketed through the ceiling on it's way to the stratosphere. A day of reckoning is coming for the city eventually...either the tech boom will down cycle again or companies/people will increasingly desert to other more affordable cities.

 

[realibrad]

Nice try, but you're being dishonest yet again.

GINI coefficient does not measure poverty. It measures income inequality. Those are two totally different things. If you make $1B annually and I only make $500k a year, our income inequality is horrible, yet we are both still rich. Trying to use GINI in this conversation is simply wrong.

Additionally, this alternative measure really exists to show the flaws with the current way of providing benefits. Using this instead would result, most likely, in a loss of benefits for rural households and an increase in benefits for urban ones. Suggesting this as a better measure is in fact exactly the cities looking to take care of their own! Thanks for asking!

Finally, the cities that you so consistently rage against subsidize not only their own citizens but the citizens of suburban and rural areas in many cases.

So if income inequality is not a problem, how do we know what to measure, and thus who to help?

A person who makes 500k annually cannot afford to live a lifestyle like the billionaire, but we both agree neither need our help. So what should be a minimum lifestyle someone should live?

I'm on board with enough to eat. Medical care is tricky. Do we give the poor treatment that would extend their life for another year, but cost 1mill, or 2 mill ect? How much housing should someone get?

CA has a lot of social programs, and as such has very high taxes. Perhaps its policies are causing part of this problem?

 

[Spungo]

Good post. Someone with 45k income this year in CA would be poor while someone else with 45k income for this year in mississippi or west virginia would be able to live relatively comfortably.

Indeed. In a perfect world, one where communism actually works, housing would be free. Food would be free. Electricity would be free. The perfect world would have the most severe deflation imaginable (because everything would be free). Unfortunately, we don't live in a perfect world. We live in a Keynesian world. Communists strive to make everything free for everyone. Keynesians strive to make a world where the cost of everything approaches infinity. I remember us fighting a war some time around 1861 to stop the Keynesians, and we won that war, but it was a temporary victory. Over the next 150+ years, the Keynesians slowly gained popular support. A man named Paul Krugman became their unofficial leader because he was the only Keynesian capable of using a computer to write a blog. In this blog, he argued that the currency should be destroyed because this would effectively slash wages, and the lower cost of labor would make exports more competitive. Krugman backed this claim with a story from his great great grandfather, who was a slave owner in the south. His great great grandfather found that slashing the wages of his slaves (ie giving them smaller living space and less food) meant he could own more slaves. This was tremendously profitable for the plantation. If it worked on a plantation, why not do it on a national scale, Krugman argued.
Krugman and his followers also argued that the country should have completely open borders. Krugman believed that if people want to voluntarily join the plantation, they should be accepted. The slaves already living on the plantation would be forced to have even smaller living space and even less food, but they should shut the hell up about this being unfair, and stop being racist against the new slaves. According to Krugman, the living conditions of the workers didn't matter at all. The absolute most important thing in the world was the productivity of the plantation and how profitable it was for the slave owners.

Here's an artist's rendering of what Krugman's great great grandfather may have looked like:

 

[piasabird]

The term poor is kind of meaningless. Every neighborhood in every state in every country has a different cost of living. I am poor according to the California standard.

 

[fskimospy]

So if income inequality is not a problem, how do we know what to measure, and thus who to help?

By using other measures as income inequality by itself is simply not informative. Two places with identical GINI coefficients could see one of them where everyone is mired in poverty and another where everyone is fabulously wealthy.

A person who makes 500k annually cannot afford to live a lifestyle like the billionaire, but we both agree neither need our help. So what should be a minimum lifestyle someone should live?

I'm on board with enough to eat. Medical care is tricky. Do we give the poor treatment that would extend their life for another year, but cost 1mill, or 2 mill ect? How much housing should someone get?

I think each person needs to have an opportunity to reach their potential. That means they need enough to eat, that means they need access to medical care, that means they need a roof over their heads, etc. I agree that medical care can be tricky in that you can basically spend an unlimited amount of money on an individual, but a lot of countries have worked on a baseline and theirs seem to be reasonable.

CA has a lot of social programs, and as such has very high taxes. Perhaps its policies are causing part of this problem?

With poverty? Probably not. California's tax comes overwhelmingly from the state income tax, which is highly progressive:
http://www.sco.ca.gov/state_finances_101_state_taxes.html

While California's sales tax rates are also fairly high, it seems quite likely that the poor are pretty strong net recipients under this scheme, moreso than in many lower-tax states.

 

[Moonbeam]

Indeed. In a perfect world, one where communism actually works, housing would be free. Food would be free. Electricity would be free. The perfect world would have the most severe deflation imaginable (because everything would be free). Unfortunately, we don't live in a perfect world. We live in a Keynesian world. Communists strive to make everything free for everyone. Keynesians strive to make a world where the cost of everything approaches infinity. I remember us fighting a war some time around 1861 to stop the Keynesians, and we won that war, but it was a temporary victory. Over the next 150+ years, the Keynesians slowly gained popular support. A man named Paul Krugman became their unofficial leader because he was the only Keynesian capable of using a computer to write a blog. In this blog, he argued that the currency should be destroyed because this would effectively slash wages, and the lower cost of labor would make exports more competitive. Krugman backed this claim with a story from his great great grandfather, who was a slave owner in the south. His great great grandfather found that slashing the wages of his slaves (ie giving them smaller living space and less food) meant he could own more slaves. This was tremendously profitable for the plantation. If it worked on a plantation, why not do it on a national scale, Krugman argued.
Krugman and his followers also argued that the country should have completely open borders. Krugman believed that if people want to voluntarily join the plantation, they should be accepted. The slaves already living on the plantation would be forced to have even smaller living space and even less food, but they should shut the hell up about this being unfair, and stop being racist against the new slaves. According to Krugman, the living conditions of the workers didn't matter at all. The absolute most important thing in the world was the productivity of the plantation and how profitable it was for the slave owners.

Here's an artist's rendering of what Krugman's great great grandfather may have looked like:

Wow, is that amazing. I bet, with an imagination like yours, you could fuck a whole brothel in your fantasy with just one sight of some woman's panties. I just don't get, however, why you'd want to do it in public

 

[Spungo]

Wow, is that amazing. I bet, with an imagination like yours, you could fuck a whole brothel in your fantasy with just one sight of some woman's panties. I just don't get, however, why you'd want to do it in public

I wanted to write that as gigantic short story that has absolutely nothing to do with the thread, but some work came to my desk and I don't have the time anymore

Anyway, poverty is a weird thing to measure. Some people in Africa might be poor by American standards, but they wouldn't feel poor as long as they're happy with the things they have such as a plot of land, good crops, a family, a community, etc. A guy in Africa might think a person living in NYC is poor. You don't own any land, you have no family, your community sucks, and your building has rats? Dude, you're poor by Kenyan standards.
My uncle uses this argument all the time. He considers me poor because I live in a condo in the city. I don't have land, I don't even have a vehicle at this time (by choice), I don't own a boat, I don't own an RV, I don't own a quad, I don't own a snowmobile. I might be poor by his standards, but I'm satisfied with the stuff I have, and I would say my quality of life is very high.

 

[marincounty]

Yeap, if you look at that silly "six Californias" proposition that came up, one of the inland "states" that would be created out of it would be the poorest in the entire nation. Poorer than Mississippi. That's how poor inland California is.

That's the Republican area of California, dependent on govt aid.