Living paycheck to paycheck is not the same thing as being in poverty
You think someone in SF earning six figures should be considered poor?
> Single-person households making under $105,000 a year are classified as “low income” in three Bay Area counties by California’s Department of Housing and Community Development.
https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/under-100k-low-income-s...
If we look at $105k in San Francisco, minus federal, state, and local taxes, you're looking at roughly $6,400/month take home pay. If you make a budget out of that, you get $3,000 for rent, $800 for groceries, $250 for transit, $250 for medical, $150 for Internet, $600 for entertainment, $900 to retirement, and then finally $400 towards an emergency fund. If you do not have all those things in your monthly, you are poor. Now, there are certainly people who have less than that, and we could argue the semantics of being destitute, vs simply poor as colloquially defined terms, but the brackets that California’s Department of Housing and Community Development has are: acutely low, extremely low, very low, low, and moderate income.
We can use https://saul.pw/mag/wealth/ and say that even with a $105k/yr salary in SF, you're sitting at ↑3 or ↑4 or so, instead of using the emotionally loaded term poor if it would contribute to having a more thoughtful and substantive discussion.
if life in a place is expensive, and jobs in the same area do not pay enough to cover those expenses, then a person with that job in that area is poor.
I would love to see a sample of a handful of cases of these 100k earners who we should consider poor and in need of assistance to make ends meet.
- East Bay (El Cerrito, Richmond, Concord, Walnut Creek, Martinez)
- North Bay (Petaluma, Novato, Vallejo, Santa Rosa)
Within 90mins:
- South Bay (Milpitas, South San Jose, Morgan Hill, Gilroy)
This one throwaway is basically holding up your entire argument. This is just an assumption, and one you won't be able to substantiate.
Yes, depending on their family size.
But that is very different from ‘food insecure’ after receiving federal/state benefits and I do not believe that is a thing that really happens.