The Poorest 20% of Americans Are Richer on Average Than Most Nations
justfacts.com
justfacts.com
America's poverty situation and cultural challenges are extremely complex. Nobody chooses to be poor. Plenty of poor people - I'm sure not every single one of them - aren't able to change their situation despite plenty of hustle. Welfare alone isn't the solution. But making reductionist blog posts on the internet in an attempt to justify your own urge to write people off as morally bankrupt solely based on their finances isn't helping anyone at all.
The article includes links to world bank data and OECD that support the article's assertions. They aren't in MLA or APA formats, so you won't see them listed out at the bottom however.
> But making reductionist blog posts on the internet in an attempt to justify your own urge to write people off as morally bankrupt solely based on their finances
The author's intent is to highlight the errors in a NYT video. He's not attacking poor people.
I may have made a leap with that statement, but if you look under "Why Is the U.S. So Much Richer?", he practically lists out the entire Republican platform as corollaries from this one point. Given his unabashed political agenda and the overall point he's trying to make here, it's not a huge jump to assume that he sees the problem of poverty in America as overstated, self-inflicted, and generally not worth making a coordinated public effort to solve beyond proselytizing his personal lifestyle choices including reversing "changing attitudes toward sex [and] marital fidelity" (???).
And what constitutes to riches when you make no income? Does the burger you eat out of the trash mean you're better off than someone who can only stuff dirt in their mouth? Yes, but which nations are actually full of poor doing that? And is the available food waste for consumption really a good and valid indicator of relative poverty?
In the interest of pre-empting one obvious way to interpret that quote, this has a lot to do with the way that social welfare programs tend to be structured, and not necessarily a lot to do with laziness.
To take one concrete anecdote, many years ago a bartender at a neighborhood bar I used to frequent had to quit because she got a promotion at her day job. She didn't want to. She was actually kind of pissed off about it. The problem was, the pay raise pushed her combined income just above the cutoff point for eligibility for the state's Medicaid program, but still got her nowhere near what it would have taken to get health care on the private market. So, in order to advance her career while also retaining access to health care, she had to quit her side gig.
Plug in some numbers for yourself with this Obamacare calculator. If you are, for example, a married couple, both 55 years old, you lose many of thousands of dollars of benefits from an additional $1 of income when your income crosses 400% of the poverty line.
To put some real numbers on the table: if this couple made $65800 of income, they get a $1098 per month subsidy. If they made $65900 of income, they get a $0 subsidy.
Any solution to this has to be cooperative between federal/state/local authorities, but given that welfare programs are one of the most politically charged topics in the US, there's little chance that this cooperation will happen.
There was no choice. She couldn't afford to pay for healthcare with the new job. What would you have done?
1) Don't take the pay rise (career stagnation)
2) Keep health care and advance her career (abusing the system, technically, yes)
3) Keep both jobs and advance her career (lose health care)
You don't need to be an expert on game theory to realise what the best decision to make in this situation is. I agree with you in principle that it shouldn't be right to do this, but the system is, well.. shit. What else could she have done?
She's choosing to get healthcare, a reasonable choice, 100% legally. The other poster made it clear she could not afford the jump from medicare to the open market.
If you're worried about the policies I suggest you take a closer look as to who wants to limit how those systems work... time and again it's NOT people pushing "socialist policies".
I have trouble throwing down questions of ethics on someone who wants to be healthy and live.
15 years ago, we just did without health coverage, but we were young and healthy. Not everyone is as blessed.
All 3 of my kids are on it. My salary is just under the limit for a household of 5.
I would love to make more money, but it would have to be a raise of about 20% to cover the difference in premium for my kids to be on my private insurance plan. I'm thankful for the program. Without it, I was forking over 20% of my salary to the health insurance company. It seems stupid to allow myself to fall in that margin, no?
There's a whole separate discussion to be had about what taxes should pay for, but I don't think it's abusing the system. I think there's no question the bartender would work full time at a job that paid enough to pay for all of the living expenses and the healthcare, but that's not one of her options. Her options, according to the anecdote, were to work X hours for X money, or to work X + Y hours for X money.
It's as if assistance programs were designed to maintain a permanent underclass of dependents.
The problem isn't solved by spreading poverty and dysfunction around rather than concentrating it - it just makes it everyone's (read: your) problem.
It all stems from why should I subsidize my neighbors rent?
Something's very wrong when making more money makes you poorer and less healthy.
Yes, what's wrong is cut-off thresholds (or just phaseouts that, when totalled across programs, exceed $1 lost benefits for each $1 of additional income.) It's one of the things motivating UBI, since then all the phaseout happens in one place, by way of progressive marginal tax rates.
It's the same argument to raise minimum wage that'll apply to increasing UBI. I don't see it being the correct avenue to have long-standing progress.
UBI is addressing the root of the issue I pointed to, with healthcare specifically, though, for the same avoiding thresholding reason that UBI serves for aid generally, public baseline healthcare should be universal and not income qualified.
If you make 20k a year, and the cutoff for benefits is 22k, the second you make $22,001 you lose all benefits and are left to fend for yourself.
There should be a better sliding scale to assist those who do want to better themselves without de-incentivizing them to do better because of the fear of losing everything.
Don't many of the other countries offer some kind of "free" medical service for everyone? Should they add this to the average income of those countries?
Anecdote time. Here in Argentina we have:
* Free hospitals and free ambulances for emergencies, and even some standard procedures. The quality and waiting time may vary. It's free for everyone. Should they count this as "income"?
* Also we get a compulsory 5% discount of the salary for additional healthcare that is controlled by the working union, this includes dental care. The quality and waiting time may vary. I'm not sure if they would count this 5% as income.
* Also you can pay a private medical plan or pay to a medic for a consultation. The quality and waiting time may vary, but it's usually faster and you have more options to pick a good medic hopefully.
It is a common misunderstanding that if you’re poor you get Medicaid. Eg. In Florida no matter how poor your are you don’t qualify unless you’re disabled, have children, or are pregnant. In other states there are hard income limits which are incredibly low, and earns a dollar more, you don’t qualify. You go from having free Medicaid to needing to pay $1000 per month in premiums which obviously you still can’t afford.
Edit: actually looks like it’s the same thing in Texas, if you’re poor you don’t qualify. You have to have kids or be disabled. These are all the states that refused the federal funding for Medicaid expansion I guess.
There are 4.4 million people on Medicaid in Florida. That's about 21% of the population, which matches up with the national Medicaid figure of 22% of the US population.
Medicaid isn't necessarily free healthcare:
“States can impose copayments, coinsurance, deductibles, and other similar charges on most Medicaid-covered benefits, both inpatient and outpatient services, and the amounts that can be charged vary with income. All out of pocket charges are based on the individual state’s payment for that service.”
https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid/cost-sharing/out-of-pocket...
You certainly could include that in the total government benefits category (including it into income is questionable and probably unnecessary), which is regularly done for example when tabulating individual conditions & resources that segments have access to. That picture gives you a combination of income, entitlements, welfare, etc.
The US jumps off the page in this case however, as the US spends 10x or more per capita on healthcare versus Argentina.
For example it would not make sense in the unusual US system, to ignore that the bottom ~25% get free healthcare (which is an extremely expensive social transfer). You would want to consider their healthcare picture when looking at their total condition. If you don't look at the comprehensive, then you would miss that the US welfare state has vastly expanded and improved over the last 20, 30, 50 years. That is, ignoring these details is only effective if you are dealing with an entirely stagnant system (not likely).
I don't think anybody would argue that eg Russia pensions should be ignored when looking at any comprehensive view of their condition as a people. It's a fundamental part of their system, their social contract, and their well-being nationally.
I grew up very poor in the US. We never paid for anything healthcare related, and still have poor relatives receiving excellent free healthcare today.
If you don't have children? No coverage unless you're in a very specific category (disabled, covered by medicare, etc)... no matter how poor and destitute you are.
https://www.healthinsurance.org/mississippi-medicaid/
Missouri: no medicaid if you aren't disabled or have children (and you're below 381/mo for a family of 3): https://www.healthinsurance.org/missouri-medicaid/
Same in TN: https://www.healthinsurance.org/tennessee-medicaid/
Same in TX: https://www.healthinsurance.org/texas-medicaid/
Seriously, go through the states that haven't accepted the ACA expansion: https://www.healthinsurance.org/medicaid/
These poor people are not getting Medicaid.
I should add, all of my experience is decades before the ACA Medicaid expansion.
This is simply not true. Maybe it was for you growing up where you lived, but I can assure you it isn't today in any part of the country I am familiar with. Our poor friends most certainly do not receive "free medical care at the same clinics middle class people use."
No, they don't. Many states name their Medicaid-participating program with a local name that does not include “Medicaid”—California’s is “Medi-Cal”, Oregon’s is “Oregon Health Plan”—but none of them have a general, broad coverage health insurance program for the poor that is not the state Medicaid plan (except to the extent that their CHIP program is separate from their Medicaid program, but that is usually not the case, and CHIP is, in any case, a similar federal program to Medicaid, but newer.)
> I should add, all of my experience is decades before the ACA Medicaid expansion.
At a minimum, your generalization of your experience across the country and across times and to the whole body of the poor and not those in specific circumstances, and the understanding of the administrative context which enabled your experience, is incorrect, but it's quite possible that the reported experience itself rather than the generalizations based on it (that is, that you had decent, free healthcare while being poor in the US) is correct, especially as a child.
No, they don't. Poor people in the US have access to emergency care from the same hospital ERs other people use. They do not, as a rule, have access to general healthcare from the same clinics middle class people use; some of them may have Medicaid managed care plans that cover clinics otherwise used by the middle class, and some clinics that also have a middle class clientele may take fee-for-service Medicaid, but neither of those is generally the case. And some of the poor being discussed will not have access to Medicaid, anyway (not all states participate in expansion, and not all the poor are covered, especially in non-expansion states.)
I would find it a lot more fair to not counting all those benefits in my analysis, if I'd want to get rid of them.
"Just 40 percent of Americans are able to cover an unexpected $1,000 expense, such as an emergency room visit or car repair, with their savings, according to a survey from personal finance website Bankrate."
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/23/most-americans-dont-have-the...
"The high consumption of America’s “poor” doesn’t mean they live better than average people in the nations they outpace, like Spain, Denmark, Japan, Greece, and New Zealand. This is because people’s quality of life also depends on their communities and personal choices, like the local politicians they elect, the violent crimes they commit, and the spending decisions they make."
America doesn't really have a reputation for wise spending habits and relaxed working habits.
It's impossible to take the content on this site seriously. if you look at the Daily section you'll find the usual curriculum of stock right-wing interests and talking points - transparent climate change denial, attacks on the earnings of federal government workers, attacks on the EPA, stock anti-gun control talking points, stock anti-abortion talking points, and so on.
It's absolutely disingenuous to pretend this is an objective fact-based site when in fact it's just another right-wing blog with a political angle to sell.
For comparison here are official USDA figures and French ENFAM figures on food security.
https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/fo...
> Apes, on the contrary, can grasp in this way with the hind-foot as well as the fore-foot, and were therefore regarded as four-handed. Many tribes, however, among the lower races of men, especially many negro tribes, use the foot in the same way as the hand.
Can you explain to me why they'd include such a "fact"?
To be fair, the actual "fact" they claim is that an evolutionary biologist in the 1800s said that, but 1800s evolutionary biologists said many things, so why include that statement specifically as a fact? Especially as I'm sure if I asked them, they'd claim not to endorse such views. But if they don't endorse those views, why bring that fact to the forefront, instead of some other?
I don't think they would call anyone the "lower races" though. That was a quote from an 1800's biologist. They (the site editors) probably do believe that people of African descent are a bit stupider than other folks. Not sure whether they (the site editors) would believe it is genetic or cultural. It's not like anyone is surprised that an 1800's colonialist would use such language.
The statistics they present, on the whole, are still a useful bit of information to read. A lot of the information they have on gun control was both surprising and trustworthy. Just make sure they're not your only source- it would not be balanced. They are a bit malicious in their selection bias. They might be a gateway drug to the alt-right, but they also present a lot of information that other media specifically avoids because it is inflammatory and bad for business.
I mean.... The article literally acknowledges that an average Spanish person has a higher standard of life, than the bottom 20% of household income families in US. But somehow the same people manage to be wealthier?!?!?!
Also - the name Just Facts is factually untrue, because the author spends more than half of the article on opinions.
- Oh, I always forget that those statistics are computed differently in US. In US this is family income, while most other places it's personal income.
Flagged.
It's basically a useless statistic that you can read the way you want - does a burger-flipper in McD in US make more burgers? does the price of healthy food have an impact? is USD valued excessively? does this value show the importance of American global military power? do Americans save too little? are the taxes too high elsewhere?
I mean - this is a pointless statistic and poverty is relative to the local community. $1 will not buy you a burger in NYC, but will get you one somewhere else....
"Your source for reliable research"
"A resource for independent thinkers"
Starts off with a made up study that links to itself. Can't get published in any journal, and no peer review. Proclaims the article meets "academic standards"... spends half the article railing against the NY Times. That's something you see all the time in research papers -- rants against a newspaper. /s
This site sets off my fake news alarm. If you want to write an article, write an article. Don't make up a fake research paper. If you're going to lie about this, what else are you lying about. You know who needs a fake research paper to lend their writing credibility? Fake news. I don't trust a single word on the page.
At a very basic level, if my quality of life is shitty because I have to work too much and I wind up buying dinner more because I can't afford the time to cook, that's counted as "wealth" in this calculation. I could be misinterpreting it, but I don't see how.
If you forced everyone to pay for each Thank you and Please, your GDP would skyrocket!
I'm an American former military wife and Americans have trouble figuring out how to compare the value of a military compensation package to a civilian one because the two are structured so differently. It's so bad, people in the military sometimes think that they would be better off leaving the military for a better paid job, but those who actually do that tend to report money is tighter and quality of life worse as a civilian. You don't get much cash pay in the military, but flashing your ID gets you access to a ton of stuff for "free" that all costs money if you leave the military system and try to access similar services.
So that's within the same country with the same currency, same federal tax system, etc. Trying to compare across countries is far harder.
Decades ago, I saw a study (now completely out of date) that asked questions like "how many meals per day do you get?" It found that less than 1/2% of Americans were poor by the expectations of India.
Many materially poor nations have more stay-at-home moms, stronger social fabric and family ties and other things of value that enhance quality of life and are generally overlooked in studies of this sort.
In some sense, I don't care how America compares to other countries. I just know we do a poor job of taking care of our people in certain metrics. We need to stop quibbling about whether or not it's worse than a third world country and focus on resolving some of these issues.
We need to fix our busted housing supply system that cranks out oversized homes that are a mismatch for our current demographic and creates nothing but a thing I call "suburban hell." We need to fix our healthcare issues.
We no doubt could stand to work on other things, but those two are so bad they are chronically in the headlines.
I thought there were some relevant points on improving ways we measure poverty but consumption seems to be a less than ideal metric to me at face value because consumption can be propped up by bad debt. A consumption to debt ratio may be more appropriate.
From the NY Times article this article critiques: 'A prime example is their claim that “America is the richest country” in the OECD, “but we’re also the poorest, with a whopping 18% poverty rate—closer to Mexico than Western Europe.”'
The scale of poverty in Mexico is much higher than in the U.S. And higher still in central America. This "3rd World U.S." narrative is often repeated, but as the author shows it has no basis in reality.
* - Basic needs expand with progress. But things like food, shelter, clothes and education are pretty ingrained now.
Right. The Reality is that the US is at the very bottom of developed (OECD) countries, and is often more comparable to developing countries than developed ones.
>Why would immigrants influx into the United States with no hope of improving their economic situation?
You are correct that people want to influx into the US from very poor undeveloped countries (3rd world). You'll find that hundreds of millions of people living in developed (OECD) countries have no interest in living in the US.
If you want meaningful and useful comparisons, compare the US to developed (OECD) countries. There is nothing to be gained from comparing a major league team to a team of beginners.
I think Silicon Valley would clearly show that’s false.
I'm saying the extreme majority of people who want to immigrate to the US are from developing/undeveloped countries, and likely a very large percentage of people who actually make it are also from developing/undeveloped countries.
But there is also the technical and professional factors, most of the big tech firms are US based, and even if these are international companies, a large chunk of their man power and all key decision making is US based.
That being said, working for a (formerly) French company that was acquired by a large US tech company, I saw very few people taking the opportunity to relocate in the US when we were acquired, maybe 3 or 4 at most on a work force of ~100. And personally I don't see myself migrating to the US.
I'm not sure consumption is the best metric.
Countries in East Europe can have lower quality of life, mostly depends on your income.
About 3x as many Europeans immigrate to the US than the other way around.[1] These numbers only look at Western Europe, if you added the whole continent it would be a much larger gap. It would be 2 million more if you add Eastern Europe.
[1]https://mises.org/wire/3-times-many-europeans-move-us-other-...
2. The US is great for people in upper income brackets who can actually manage to migrate, not so much for the lower income people who can't.
Between Russia and Ukraine there are 190 million people. The bottom half of those people are living in third world conditions. Russia is Europe's largest nation.
In the villages of Western Russia, you've got a lack of access to even basic medical supplies. Doctors are earning $200-$300 per month, they're aging out of the system, and they can't find nurses period -
"Putin’s Health-Care Cuts Spark Protests in Russian Heartland"
"The country has 100 billionaires, and yet more than a third of Russians can’t afford to buy two pairs of shoes a year."
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-05-07/putin-s-h...
The material looks like it's focused on facts and well-cited, but this rapidly started to feel like a "Merchants of Doubt" kind of product. Feel free to look at the Global Temperature Changes section and make your own assessment - but this feels like politics before (distorted) facts to me, and I'd expect the rest of the site to be similar.
"The upshot is laid bare by the fact that this OECD measure assigns a higher poverty rate to the U.S. (17.8%) than to Mexico (16.6%). Yet, World Bank data shows that 35% of Mexico’s population lives on less than $5.50 per day, as compared to only 2% of people in the United States."
The article is full of loaded words, which already makes me distrust it, and then I find these kinds of silly comparisons...
If you wish to point out apples - the cheapest retail apples I can buy in NY is $3.21/kg, while retail price for apples in Germany is $1.94/kg. The apple PPP index is, anecdotally, 1.65. The formal PPP index for Germany is 1.08, as in $1 buys you 8% more in Germany... that is factually untrue at the lower end of the income.
But then the whole swathe of conclusions are pure ignorance.
If I were to compare my $20 purchasing power in rural Pennsylvania vs the the same $20 in London, I would get more in London. It's really not the same. There are a lot of services that compound to create a lot of cost for people, that don't exist in many other places.
And then there's the failure to recognize the status of USD, that makes this comparison wholly irrelevant. Donald Trump starts a trade war and the result is 5% rise in value of USD against multiple currencies.
Except that's never true.
1) If your views make you more inclined to report on / investigate along certain ideological lines, you'll wind up reporting vastly more "facts" that fit your views, even if you're only reporting "facts".
2) Other news media outlets will cherry-pick your facts, even if you don't.
3) Unconscious bias is a fucking thing, guys.
This is not neutrality.
https://www.justfacts.com/abortion.asp
The entire article is dedicated to repeating typical pro-life talking points. For example, a timeline of when the fetus' heart starts beating, "debunking" cherry-picked statements from Planned Parenthood, and testimonials from people born prematurely.
There's a giant section on the benefits of fracking, but the environmental impact section is limited to "generally" not being a problem. They use that word "generally" like 10 times, and they don't bother to report the facts that in many cases it has been a direct and obvious problem. That's not neutrality.