I just heard on Diane Rehm’s NPR show that low-income people are those who make less than $40K per year. Such statements make every discussion of the rising levels of poverty in this country extremely suspect.
They also remind me of some spoiled brats I used to know who scoffed at my starting salary of $42K at my current tenure-track job.
Current mood: annoyed.
Clarissa's Blog 
Agreed. Without any further qualifiers (Is it a family? Single person? Urban or rural community?) it is a useless figure, which only serves to discredit the legitimate hard work of people who advocate for the poor and working poor.
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The problem with the progressive discourse in North America is that it operates with hugely inflated terminology while milking it for shock value. Eventually, it becomes ineffective because words use all meaning. And I say it as a Progressive.
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are you suggesting the rising levels of poverty in this country are false and people are too greedy? or are you alluding to the fact that she’s got her number wrong? For one person in any size city, that number is wrong by any measure of poverty.
Yes, and any intelligent conversation ensuing with people thinking 40k is the poverty line for an individual, is deplorable.
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If people use a threshhold for “poverty” that is too high, then is reduces the credibility of the discussions about the problem of poverty. We cannot use those statistics to prove that poverty is a problem if we are not measuring it correctly.
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That’s my point exactly.
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I’m saying that it has become impossible to discuss poverty because all you hear are either vague, apocalyptic proclamations or these kind of strange numbers.
I keep hearing that the poverty is rising and then I see people storm the stores and slaughter each other for stuff that has nothing to do with basic necessities on Black Friday. The Missoni collection sells out before even hitting the stores. So does iPad 2. So then I don’t know what to believe.
I’d love to find some balanced information on the subject but I’m not seeing it anywhere. This is why I have no opinion on the subject of poverty in this country at the moment.
In Canada, thing are clearer to me.
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According to the 2010 “Poverty Threshholds” used by the Census Bureau to generate statistics on the number of US people in poverty:
1 person must have an annual income of $11,139 or below to qualify as “in poverty”
The threshhold only reaches $40,000 for families with eight or more people in them. And that’s only if 7 of those family members are over 18 (the more of the family members who are under 18, the lower the threshhold.)
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Thank you, Kellen. Now this information is reliable and it makes sense.
In the show I listened to, I distinctly heard “A person who makes”. Not a family that has the income of. . .
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Thanks for that context, Kellen :). Some arbitrary number means nothing if there aren’t people attached to it.
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Lowest quartile? quintile? “Low-income” doesn’t necessarily mean “poverty level income”.
By the way, the “spoiled brats” might have been imagining $40K salary in NYC, Boston, SanFran area, with student loans to pay down, ordinary bills to pay, and a baby on the way. There’s a huge difference between a $40K lifestyle in a coastal major metro area and in Cougarsville, FarmState.
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NancyP, please let’s stop fantasizing about the people I happen to know a little better than you do. These are folks from very rich families. The kind of people who’d lose $10,000 at a casino overnight and find that hilarious. (True story.) They had no loans to pay because their trust funds paid for everything. (Also true story.) I spend years in close proximity with these people, so maybe I know what I’m talking about. I spent 5 years of my life around these people who believed that the only reason why I wasn’t traveling in Europe every summer was because I didn’t like traveling.
So yes, spoiled brats.
As for low income, maybe I’m losing my grasp of the English language, but to me, low is low. And $40 is definitely not that, either in New York or in Cougarsville.
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Cost of living in NYC is 92.9% higher than in Peoria according to http://www.salary.com/mysalary.asp –
Absolute poverty line is one thing and puts you in fairly dire straits. It’s a barely making it kind of thing, even sharing housing with others who are working.
Those aren’t the people out shopping.
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“I just heard on Diane Rehm’s NPR show that low-income people are those who make less than $40K per year. Such statements make every discussion of the rising levels of poverty in this country extremely suspect.”
This misleading statement obviously needs qualifiers. But it makes for a provocative post, and I guess that’s what matters here in the blog’o’sphere.
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This wasn’t my provocative statement, in case you haven’t noticed. I heard it on the radio and it confused me. I need to know if I live in dire poverty.
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That’s not how I read your post. And anyone can look up the census stats.
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“I keep hearing that the poverty is rising and then I see people storm the stores and slaughter each other for stuff that has nothing to do with basic necessities on Black Friday.”
here’s a thought; maybe these are not the same people. Maybe some people are struggling, and others are storming the stores.
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The point is that I don’t see the consumerist orgy abating. Do you?
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Yes, I have noticed that you have a tendency to read whatever pleases you into posts.
As for census stats, apparently the radio host did not look them up. Why that happened is what is being discussed here.
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It is not being discussed at all. No one has any idea what the radio host said except one partial line that you quoted.
And your post does not indicate that you were confused and wanted clarification on the facts from your readers. It doesn’t communicate any desire for new knowledge at all.
You seem to have an agenda, based on your many posts about OWS, to portray Americans as spoiled in general and whining about nothing.
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“You seem to have an agenda, based on your many posts about OWS, to portray Americans as spoiled in general and whining about nothing.”
-The only person who keeps suggesting this on my blog is you. This statement makes no sense because only a minuscule portion of Americans is even participating in the protests. But I can see that this weird conclusion about spoiled, whiny Americans is very near and dear to your heart.
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“And your post does not indicate that you were confused and wanted clarification on the facts from your readers. It doesn’t communicate any desire for new knowledge at all.”
– Have you had a chance to notice that the very title of this extremely short post ends in a question mark? When people ask questions, it usually means they are looking for answers.
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“But I can see that this weird conclusion about spoiled, whiny Americans is very near and dear to your heart.”
Funny how you just posted another long complaint about spoiled people. Sounds like you are the one with an issue.
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Children. The post was about children. The word Americans or OSW did not appear in the post.
I’ll let you figure out for yourself why overentitled youngsters annoy me at this point in the semester. Hint: this is the week when I will be entering final grades.
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http://news.yahoo.com/census-shows-1-2-people-poor-low-income-054325860.html
This article has an explanation. “Low income” is between the poverty line and two times the poverty line. It can be as high as $45000 for a family of four or as low as just above the poverty line.
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If $45K is considered low-income in this country, then I’m a lot less worried about its economic future.
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So here are two fundamental attitudes I can’t relate to.
One is the moral world view, wherein there is such a thing as complaining to the universe about one’s lot (or to one’s family and acquaintances about one’s universal lot — they have no metaphysical power, either.) A lot of communication gets dismissed because it is viewed as moralising.
The other attitude that is very remote is the idea that one has the right to breed and that one should do so even if it puts one on the “poverty line”.
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