"The official poverty statistic comes from a measure that was created in the mid--well, early 1960s. And it was really put together quickly, and it was kind of considered a placeholder, just 'cause the federal government wanted to have some way to measure poverty and basically took a very low-cost food plan and just multiplied it by three and decided that that was what would account for what a family would need just to be at a poverty-level standard of living. So that has been the measure over all this time, so about 50 years now [...] But, this official count has been criticized widely."
Friday, May 31, 2013
Actual US Poverty Twice Official Figure: 1 in 3 Americans Cannot Meet Basic Needs.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
-
"Where is Everybody?" The blog will continue here for announcements, messages and links to more substantive pieces. But those will... -
There are Gold Bugs and there are Bitcoin Bugs. They all oppose fiat money (hate the Fed and other monetary authorities) and follow some s... -
By Sergio Cesaratto (Guest Blogger) “The fact that individual countries no longer have their own currencies and central banks will put n...
I used to believe that Australia was the only OECD country where data on income distribution and poverty were that crappy.
ReplyDeleteI guess, I was mistaken.
In Australia, the ABS, when it actually collects data, _excludes_ in many calculations the lowest income decile. The idea, apparently, being that if you receive those low income levels, you cannot spend as much as you supposedly spend. In other words: people claiming those low incomes are lying.
Have a look here (the last report on income dates from 2011, with data collected during 2010)):
http://aussiemagpie.blogspot.com.au/2011/09/is-it-alive.html
He who controls the media controls the populace.
ReplyDelete