Why do we have Poverty in America

kbd512 · 2020-10-09 18:23:21

SpaceNut,

Now Democrats care about how much something costs the American tax payers?

That's a riot- in the humorous sense of the word, not the sense where blm and antifa goons burn down a local grocery store owned by a black person and then former VP Biden's campaign bails them out of jail.

Pelosi and her Democrats voted to give trillions of our tax dollars to big businesses.

It's all just political theater for the theatrically-minded.

SpaceNut · 2020-10-10 13:39:24

If you are still unemployed then the luck of having $300 unemployment payment is over in many states
There are jobs but they are low paying, part time with no benefits which while they give an income it takes away from the tasks of reporting for the aid from the agencies and these employers do not care if you need time off to go to them....

SpaceNut · 2020-10-17 08:58:51

We can agree that the virus has had an impact but after that there is others... 8 Million Americans Slipped Into Poverty Amid Coronavirus Pandemic, according to a Columbia University study.

The US government classifies a family of four as poor if they live in a typical city and their annual income falls below $28,170, according to the New York Times. Each research team, however, differed in how they tracked poverty over time. The Chicago-Notre Dame research counted the most recent 12 months of income, whereas Columbia analyzed each month’s income separately.
The CARES Act, which included a one-time $1,200 payment for adults and $500 per child, and expanded unemployment benefits, initially kept more than 18 million people from poverty, according to the Columbia researchers. However, by September the number of people who were staying out of poverty due to the safety net dropped by about 4 million.
Only 30% of those eligible for stimulus checks received them, as people who are too poor to file taxes had to apply and didn’t receive them automatically,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U … verty_rate

the $28,170 must be a state number as the federal number is different...

that is 542 a week or 13.50 an hr before taxes and benefits are taken out....
which means 2 people working at minimum wage are at that same level of poverty

https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/minimum-wage/state
https://aspe.hhs.gov/2020-poverty-guidelines

SpaceNut · 2020-10-26 16:02:50

The schools which have gone back into staying at home due to virus out breaks have gone back to the earlier in the year online educational system.

Some schools and even the towns or cities have set up education hot spots.

A New Mexico 9-year-old walked to his school to use internet hotspot so he could do his virtual classwork

Sine his mother, whose jobs were affected by the pandemic, could not afford it.

tahanson43206 · 2020-10-26 17:59:42

For SpaceNut re topic ...

I decided to ask Google if there is any place on Earth where there is no poverty in the population ...

Google is not yet smart enough to answer ** that ** question, but it did find an article from 2014 about global poverty ...

Is a world without poverty possible?
12 Dec 2014 by Magdy Martínez-Solimán, Director, Bureau for Policy and Programme Support

https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/ho … sible.html

The gist of the answer seems to be that if everyone treated each other decently, poverty would disappear over time.

However, it seems pretty clear (to me at least) that asking human beings to wear masks to protect vulnerable people is asking too much.

Asking people to treat each other decently is orders of magnitude more difficult.

(th)

SpaceNut · 2020-10-27 17:34:38

https://www.govtech.com/network/Texas-S … ernet.html

https://www.wraltechwire.com/2020/10/27 … port-says/

Calliban · 2020-11-02 12:40:59

Part of the reason that the US and other countries are suffering from declining prosperity is the declining EROI (and rising extraction cost) of the fossil fuel energy sources that power the industrial economy. EROI has now declined to the point where even China's less complex economy is no longer increasing the prosperity of its citizens. It is in fact unlikely that China's net prosperity will ever substantially exceed that of the US, because its energy base is declining too fast. The average US citizen has been getting poorer since about the turn of the century.
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpres … k-clarity/

None of this is very hard to understand. Yet somehow our politicians fail to understand it. The economy is a thermodynamic machine. What we call the economy is the manufacture and sale of goods and services, all of which result in some way or another from the action of energy on matter. If the quality of those energy resources is declining, then more energy must be used to support the extraction process, with less remaining to make the goods that we want. Fossil fuel EROI is declining; renewable energy EROI is too low to be useful in mitigating the problem and nuclear power has been strangled by a combination of red tape and decline of the manufacturing capabilities needed to build new powerplants. So we are in for a long and difficult decline.

Last edited by Calliban (2020-11-02 12:41:16)

SpaceNut · 2020-11-02 19:36:44

A business model for use on why poverty for people that do not create or employ others does not work to describe the issue for why a person is not making enough for working....A person does not sell anything and what they do is request services not create them.
.
The first 20 years of life is paid by your parents, while the next 45 are the earning of funds for the future for when you no longer are working in which during that time most have a family in which they repeat what they received when they were young, hoping to last 30 to 40 in retirement mode of which these are to be golden years.

Its that equation that no longer works which makes many to be in poverty....

SpaceNut · 2020-11-11 13:49:17

Copied as it relates to why we stay poor

kbd512 wrote:

SpaceNut,
America has crony capitalism and welfare, neither of which greatly benefit the middle class workers who pay the largest percentage of their incomes into that system- because the unemployed and working poor pay little to nothing at all in most cases. By total dollar count, the wealthiest Americans pay the most, but neither the one-percenters nor the middle class sees much in the way of benefits from increased taxation. My income doesn't go up whenever Democrats want more of my tax dollars to pay for their latest wealth redistribution scheme. If it did, then I simply wouldn't care. We're clearly funneling money to a certain group of people, but by funding their "lifestyle choices", rather than encouraging them to seek gainful employment by demanding remuneration in the form of labor from those who can work, the net result is that we bring down the standard of living for everyone else to provide that funding. If Democrats or their socialists waistcoat riders ever fix that aspect of their zero-sum thinking, then we have something to discuss and work out. Until then, I'm never voting for anyone who supports policies that produce the end result of lowering the standard of living for more people. To me, it's that simple.

The big push for a national $15 hr rate while it will put some out of business others will still flourish as they will off load paying half of the employees insurance costs back to the employee. They will stop contributing to the future 401 K matching funds ect...

It will make it for those getting a larger wage be more possible for the want or desired list to get filled for the first time....
In states in which we are at that figure already a slowing of growth or no change at all is what might be seen.

Here is the current wage values for each state

I probably have posted about the income to get an average home in many states and what it takes.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/realest … d=msedgdhp

New Hampshire: $51,720
Monthly mortgage payment: $1,293
Monthly income needed: $4,310

160 hours a month makes the hourly wage just under $27 before taxes

SpaceNut · 2020-11-25 21:37:59

We have been wishing each other a safe and thankful filled thanksgiving but for many there is little to be thankful for.
There is a hunger crisis in America this Thanksgiving

Status is one of 50 million Americans who won't have enough to eat this year, in part because of the pandemic. According to Feeding America, the largest hunger relief group in the United States, the number of hungry Americans in the US is trending towards recession numbers, when 56 million Americans were food insecure.

As pandemic hits pockets, Americans line up for free Thanksgiving meals

As the need for heat in the north continues to grow as the cold gets colder so will the need for help....

Terraformer · 2020-11-26 07:23:36

"in part because of the pandemic"

This is like blaming an infection for a severe allergic reaction. This has nothing to do with the pandemic, and I wish people would stop saying it does. It's the over-reaction to it that's causing the damage.

SpaceNut · 2020-11-26 13:11:57

Some of the poor did exist before the pandemic, some was caused by the over closure but much of its due to other activity in the tariff war and more.

I myself have survive the pandemic but I am still in that poor category even working at a high paying job due to other reasons called family care and doing the right think for my less than normal and disabled family members.

We did ok with a normal family thanksgiving meal in part to church food pantry(lots of canned goods), thanksgiving $25 gift card for a turkey and a $10gift card from the store in which I shop at all the time as it would have required the last $40 dollars in my pocket until biweekly pay day happens on Friday. Todays free item was the mornings coffee and possibly another before the end of the day.

The small town has had along its main street closers over the last 4 years which as of this week stands as about 50% of the 20 issue location still empty with another family owned multi use business closing before the end of the year. The large city to the south of me has not faired much better with business going out of business during the pandemic.

If you are looking forward to retiring you might want to rethink it as there are at a minimum 27 Ugly Truths About Retirement

SpaceNut · 2020-11-27 18:03:36

The protection will run out soon and if you can hold out to next year you might still have a roof over your head but as many as 19 million Americans could lose their homes next year

National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) and the University of Arizona estimates that 6.7 million households could be evicted in the coming months. That amounts to 19 million people potentially losing their homes, rivaling the dislocation that foreclosures caused after the subprime housing bust.

SpaceNut · 2020-12-15 18:34:42

Those that have not been able to pay may soon be evicted and so will the ones that we tried to protect that were already homeless.
We're not wanted': Homeless people were put in hotels to keep them safe. Now they're being evicted

Where were the teams of people that should have been there to mold them into job having tennents during the nearly 8 months for some....
that are not in the 60 plus old crowd and mentally disabled........

kbd512 · 2020-12-16 16:40:20

SpaceNut,

Keep pushing for that $15/hr minimum wage. Unless the value of the product or service goes up, then at least half of everyone now employed will be unemployed, because demand for products and services will not magically go up after you make them more expensive. So, you either figure out how to make those products and services cheaper, or you won't have any demand.

Mickey D's sells cheeseburgers for $1. There's not much that they can do to make their product any cheaper. They can certainly make it more expensive if the government forces them to pay their workers $15/hr, but demand will go down, profitability will go down, and fewer people will be employed as a result. You can make a McD's franchise unprofitable by consuming 100% of their profit margin, but then nobody will operate them and, once again, nobody will be employed by them, either.

This is one of those "simple economics" problems that no magic wand exists to solve. Even China has figured out that command economies don't work, so there's no simpleton solution to your conundrum in communism, either.

SpaceNut · 2020-12-16 17:28:36

Had to see what they are paying Average McDonald's hourly pay ranges from approximately $8.15 per hour for Presenter to $18.00 per hour for Equipment Repair Technician. The average McDonald's salary ranges from approximately $15,080 per year for Staff Member to $68,496 per year for Operations Supervisor.

this one Nov 24, 2020 · McDonald's Corporation pays its employees an average of $10.27 an hour. Hourly pay at McDonald's Corporation ranges from an average of $8.02 to $15.55 an hour.

with this one saying As of Dec 7, 2020, the average hourly pay for the Mcdonalds Cashier jobs category in the United States is $16.27 an hour. While ZipRecruiter is seeing hourly wages as high as $30.77 and as low as $6.97, the majority of wages within the Mcdonalds Cashier jobs category currently range between $9.86 (25th percentile) to $21.88 (75th percentile) across the United States.

Basically these are already there but the jobs which are not will have different numbers in the cost to profit game...
I know the door says hiring at $12 hr but google shows
Average Cumberland Farms hourly pay ranges from approximately $10.00 per hour for Assistant Store Manager to $25.73 per hour for HVAC Technician. The average Cumberland Farms salary ranges from approximately $18,974 per year for Cashier to $60,795 per year for Dispatch Supervisor.

Hourly pay at Cumberland Farms, Inc. ranges from an average of $9.94 to $20.30 an hour. Cumberland Farms, Inc. employees with the job title Customer Service Team Leader

Seems like its the states that are not getting the minimum to agree with for the most part what is already being paid....

kbd512 · 2020-12-16 18:08:02

SpaceNut,

At a macro scale, you can put McDonald's out of business or cut their workforce by half, by government edict mandating a $15/hr minimum wage, but the economics of operating a fast food chain won't change to suit your demands, if the goal is to give everyone now making $8/hr, $15/hr. That's the "big picture" and "bottom line", so decide if you'd rather have half as many people employed who make twice as much, while the other half get nothing, or if whatever the market will bear is better than nothing at all. Personally, I think small businesses have taken enough of a beating, but maybe you'd like to kill off whomever is left because you can't get what you want?

SpaceNut · 2020-12-17 21:14:26

We have many without the stimulus will not have a home and many more that already have been put out on the streets....
A little help is all they need sometimes to survive and with winter we could all use Homeless to receive 2,200 coats that convert to sleeping bags BB1c15NV.img?h=512&w=799&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f&x=446&y=98

The distribution of 2,200 coats is funded by the philanthropic Lucky Duck Foundation and is among the largest ever conducted by the Detroit-based Empowerment Plan, which employees homeless parents to make the coats.
The coats are being distributed by outreach teams from about 20 service providers that already are working with the Lucky Duck Foundation on a program that since May has brought 320,000 meals to homeless people without shelter.
According to the Empowerment Plan website, one coat can be made for a $125 donation.
The most recent count of homeless people in San Diego County was conducted in January and found there were 3,971 people living without shelter and another 3,648 in shelters.

SpaceNut · 2020-12-28 17:44:38

These 20 states are raising their minimum wage on Jan. 1 Four more states, plus Washington, DC, will raise their minimum wages later in 2021.

So just how many that will receive the stimulus not qualify to get it that would be no change as they all still would be way below the threshold....

Florida’s workers will get one of the biggest raises, after voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure in November to gradually increase the minimum wage to $15 by 2026. The lowest-earning workers there earn $8.56 per hour and will move up to $8.65 on Jan. 1 and then $10 on Sept. 30.
Florida joins a range of states — California, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York — that are all in the process of gradually increasing their minimum wage to $15. California’s minimum wage is set to reach $14 in 2021 and then $15 in 2022. Other states will follow with Maryland and Massachusetts also set to reach $15 an hour in 2026.
Certain localities — like New York City, Washington DC, San Francisco, and others — already have minimum wages at or above $15.
The full list of states set to see a wage increase on Jan. 1 include Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, South Dakota, Vermont, and Washington state.

SpaceNut · 2021-01-17 15:50:02

I watched a couple of videos that we against the use of unfinished tiny homes as shelters for the homeless versus the constant eviction and cleaning up of the streets where they continue to go to rather than providing a weather shelter.

Those in power think that a state run building makes a shelter for the poor....

The modified shed had a solar roof cell and small interior light and usb charging port along with a steel door that was with a dead bolt and lockable key for its user to feel safe with. The windows had alarms on them so as to allow for another layer of feeling safe. They came with a chemical toilet and carpeting for the user of the tiny home as temporary shelter.

We have talked about the wage versus the cost of living as why the rising of the wage would cause business to go out of business but with out the better paying jobs the number of homeless will continue to grown.

One can only walk to a work site just so far from where you are bedding down for the night before coming back to it each evening after either working or trying to find work.

The use of a bicycle can only be safe if the one operating it is not in a congested city area where its made unsafe by vehicle drivers as well.

Of course a cab is out of the question as you have no funds and need that to eat with instead.

What political media is spouting for a Rev William Barber: Biden’s plan to increase minimum wage to $15 will lift 39 million out of poverty.

SpaceNut · 2021-01-18 08:52:16

I found on Youtube 3 different videos along the west coast large cities 1 in LA(The man building tiny homes for the homeless in Los Angeles), Oregon, Eugene, Oregon has housed some of its homeless population in tiny homes to much success, and now low-income residents are ready to downsize as well. and Seattle the 2 northern units were more complete with insulation in small tiny home created communities while the first in LA were unfinish shed shelters as mention in the proceeding post.
Local governments idea of help differed in each as to how to help those that are of low income to homeless.
This LA Musician Elvis Summers Built $1,200 Tiny Houses for the Homeless, crowdfunded $100,000 to build dozens of tiny homes. City officials looking to pass a $2 billion housing plan tried to shut him down

Many Veterans are in the category of This Tiny Home Community Gives Homeless Veterans

Once they have shelters one should not need to spend the days each week to get other help as that takes away from working for the income to support ones self and that is what city help is filling in forms to get a little assistance. They do not help to get work an means to get there.

As mention distance from the shelter building in a tiny home is the next key to being able to work....Not everybody can or would walk to work let alone miles each way to be able to do so.

tahanson43206 · 2021-01-18 11:24:14

For SpaceNut re topic

First, thanks for reporting on the attempts to provide reliable housing for people without shelter.

However, as your post #573 seems to indicate, the key is the lack of Job Creators with the imagination needed to find useful employment in a Capitalist society for millions of people who are unable to lift themselves up by their own bootstraps.

We have literally billions of Job Holder qualified people on this planet, but we have a vanishingly small set of Job Creators.

In past centuries, the powers that be were able to provide employment for thousands of people at a time doing backbreaking manual work. It was honest work, and it was rewarded with enough food to live on. An example from a book about economics over the centuries is of the digging of the canal across the desert in Egypt, the Suez. I could be confusing canals, but my recollection of the story is that a westerner suggested using machines to accelerate the rate of progress, but the ruler pointed out (quite sensibly in my opinion) that doing so would remove gainful employment for thousands.

Taking the American game of football as an example ... a coach recruits more players for a team than are required in a game with another organization. The surplus of players allows the coach to exercise the group so that the best players emerge.

The players who do not qualify for the first tier are not let go, and their compensation is still sufficient to keep them motivated to keep trying for higher status.

So it seems to me that an economy on the scale of a Nation should operate.

Just a few elite individuals are capable of providing food and supplies for the entire nation. The need is to keep the population fed and motivated to keep trying to gain one of the productive positions that are available.

In the present time, we can see societies where punishment is the thought process of the elite. They seek to withhold needed minimal food and supplies from the population, to punish them for not showing the ability to find gainful employment, while at the same time doing everything they can think of to eliminate employment opportunities for the people who are in need.

(th)

SpaceNut · 2021-01-18 15:31:49

Here is a question for the radius of 2 miles at most from where you call home for those job creators for those that are on the streets possibly unkempt, dirty, smelly ect … would that get a job even if you did complete an application?

City provided shelter is something you get booted from at each daylight and you are lucky if it provides more for personal care.

A Tiny home could provide all of it in a closed secured village setting. It could also be a service creator for assistance and jobs.

kbd512 · 2021-01-19 02:35:35

SpaceNut,

If that guy can build a home for $1,200, then $2B is enough for 1.66 million homes (a fairly healthy chunk of the homeless population in California). He can probably get a discount on materials with that kind of production rate, so call it a grand and he can provide homes for 2 million people. Your Democrats are gonna need some of that two trillion to build new homes for everyone they've forced into unemployment with their COVID edicts. Alternatively, sit back and watch the revolution.

Calliban · 2021-01-19 04:12:10

I have always been sceptical of the idea of a minimum wage. I don't see how it really does anything for anyone. If I have a job producing widgets that sell for a dollar each, then my wages are going to be a balance between what the employer needs to pay to prevent me from going elsewhere and what he can afford to pay whilst remaining profitable.

Setting the minimum wage at $15 per hour doesn't help in that situation. It is likely to mean that I have no job at all, if it turns out that the employer cannot remain profitable producing widgets and paying me $15/ hour. I would be better off earning $5/hour whilst being employed, than I would be earning 0$/hour as an unemployed person. At the end of the day, wages tend to be a function of individual productivity. On a macro scale, workers are not going to be able to earn more just because the state mandates it. What they earn can only ever be a function of the productivity that they generate. If that doesn't happen, then you don't have a job because an employer cannot profit from employing you. Having the state set a minimum wage of $15/ hour doesn't help if you don't have a job. And it is more likely to mean that you don't have a job.

Why not simply allow free market conditions to determine people's wages? Are people really so stupid that they believe that Marxian dictats on minimum wage levels are going to make them wealthier?

Last edited by Calliban (2021-01-19 04:14:54)

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#551 2020-10-09 18:23:21

Re: Why do we have Poverty in America

#552 2020-10-10 13:39:24

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#553 2020-10-17 08:58:51

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#554 2020-10-26 16:02:50

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#555 2020-10-26 17:59:42

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#556 2020-10-27 17:34:38

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#557 2020-11-02 12:40:59

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#558 2020-11-02 19:36:44

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#559 2020-11-11 13:49:17

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#560 2020-11-25 21:37:59

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#561 2020-11-26 07:23:36

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#562 2020-11-26 13:11:57

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#563 2020-11-27 18:03:36

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#564 2020-12-15 18:34:42

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#565 2020-12-16 16:40:20

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#566 2020-12-16 17:28:36

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#567 2020-12-16 18:08:02

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#568 2020-12-17 21:14:26

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#569 2020-12-28 17:44:38

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#570 2021-01-17 15:50:02

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#571 2021-01-18 08:52:16

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#572 2021-01-18 11:24:14

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#573 2021-01-18 15:31:49

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#574 2021-01-19 02:35:35

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#575 2021-01-19 04:12:10

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