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Comment by hellofunk | Hacker News Reader

This suggests that poverty rates do not consider the important factors required to accurately assess if someone is able to afford life. Which surprises me. Why wouldn't cost of living be included in a term that by definition refers to the ability to cover the cost of living?

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There are probably dozens of reasonable ways to compute poverty rates, and you can pick whichever fits your preconceived notions best.

I believe this is because poverty rate is determined on a national scale, whereas this factors in California's particularly high cost of living.

why would that surprise you?

In Nigeria you obviously won't spend as much on rent and food as in Amsterdam when measured in the same currency. It doesn't make any sense not to include the cost of living to some degree. Making that assumption may or may not have been conscious, but questioning why it surprises someone doesn't help the discussion. They were asking why the cost of living is not included by default, not wondering what possessed them to have such a notion.

It's why you should be skeptical of the "X% of people globally have been lifted out of extreme poverty in the past X years" stories.

Don't confuse extreme poverty and poverty.

Extreme poverty is defined as: "a condition characterized by severe deprivation of basic human needs, including food, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, health, shelter, education and information. It depends not only on income but also on access to services."

Generally, I'm skeptical of adjusting for cost of living when you have housing prices as you do in the bay area. You still have options to move away.

> You still have options to move away.

True, but that is not a costless option.

This is the real reason CoL should be factored into the poverty line. If you’re barely (or not even) getting by, where do you get the money to move? Remember that many Americans can’t even meet a $500 emergency expense. Someone who can’t come up with $500 by any means in an emergency is not going to be able to afford to go anywhere.

Yep. & Aside from having cash to overcome unexpected expenses, making changes to reduce your cost of living or improve your financial situation often (not always) takes time, money, resources. E.g. moving house, finding a place to live with a kitchen to reduce food expenses, finding a better job...

  Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
  Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
  Everybody knows the war is over
  Everybody knows the good guys lost
  Everybody knows the fight was fixed
  The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
  That's how it goes
  Everybody knows

- Leonard Cohen

yeah, as long as you don't care leaving the place you grew up in, your family and friends, not to mention having to actually figure out another place to go, find a job, get a new place (including deposit).

Easy.

A lot of people don't seem to realize that the bay area is an actual place with a non-transient population, not just a venue for tech workers to establish themselves.

We don't live in a society that gives you a birthright to the building you're born in. I'm not sure why we should have a birthright to a geographically delineated number of them.

You’re right that people being displaced by gentrification don’t have a birthright to continue living in their neighborhood. The problem is that the people displacing them do have a birthright - the birthright to anyone’s neighborhood, anywhere in the world. Do you also feel like that is a problem, or do you only object to “birthrights” for poor people who depend on their neighborhood for support and sometimes survival?

They don't have a birthright to a place any more than those displaced. Do you honestly think the displacers want, more than anything else, to live in a very expensive apartment in San Francisco? If they have some birthright to "anyone's neighborhood," why aren't they all living in mansions on the beach? The only birthright we agree on is the right to resolve disputes according to the rules of our government. Money provides a way to mediate the situation where two people want the same thing without them having to shoot each other over it. I much prefer the model where the mode of competition is economic benefit rather than "ability to be born in a good position."

> I much prefer the model where the mode of competition is economic benefit rather than "ability to be born in a good position”

Great! I also support economic competition as well as leveling the playing field by limiting the unfair advantages of being born in a good position.

Of course, as you probably know, social mobility is at historic lows in the US. This means people born into wealthy families are most likely to remain wealthy, and people born into poor families are most likely to remain poor. By your own argument, that is a problem because it shifts competition to “ability to be born in a good position”.

Therefore it seems that we agree after all!

Unless of course you’re not being intellectually honest and are using big words like “economic competition” only when it supports your pre-existing ideology.

You've completely changed the subject. I meant position in a literal, not figurative, sense.

Weird accusations of intellectual dishonesty aside, we do agree on economic mobility but that wasn't the topic at hand. Economic mobility doesn't mean "give the most valuable apartments in the United States to the lower class so they can live there because they don't want their lives to change."

Some skepticism is never a bad idea.

Fortunately, third world poverty is rapidly decreasing by whatever measure you choose to look at!

When measured in absolute terms (e.g. % of population that lacks access to sufficient food, electricity, education, running water, etc.) poverty has indeed been decreasing. For instance, I read an Economist article a while back that explained how during the 1960s and 70s a double digit percentage of the US population didn't have plumbing and similar figures for electricity. Today it's in the single digits, near zero.

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