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Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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Another statistic where certain areas are increasing the national average, others bringing it down. It's very regional. Seattle's poverty rate is 15%, with high home/rent prices pushing out those with lower incomes. The eastside suburbs are even more expensive. The poverty for those areas an hour or more away are higher, such as Auburn at 20% and Everett at
19.5%, both still well below 25%. Here in our eastside suburb city of 50,000 23 miles from Seattle it's 2.9%.
Compare how the poor live in America to a developing country. Try Cambodia or India. Never been myself. I have been to Vietnam, however.
I mean, mental health while the adult children play at being kids dressed in new kicks and hats (probably made in Vietnam by an actual poor person). Not a whole lot of places handing out free food or free medical care either. Seems there's plenty of money for cigarettes and snacks and smartphones. Bright note is the 22-year-old hasn't popped a bunch of kids of her own yet to get on the doll. There's some hope there.
Oh yes, living in poverty with cell phones, internet, television, video games, lots of food... those starving Kenyan children really pity us.
cell phones? maybe ****ty flip phones from boost or Metro PCS....internet? if theyre lucky they can access a wifi network without a password.....otherwise theyll wait an hour @ the library for 30 mins of access.....video games? hmmm......lots of food? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Sounds like it's an even bigger problem in Da Country--most of that poverty is in the Midwest and South rather than the developed Northeast.
thats because poor neighborhoods in much of the northeast have been "saved" by gentrifiers
Theres not that many places in the northeast for the poor to go once theyve been exiled from their neighborhoods...
the south always had high poverty. It went up in the midwest bc more and more factories are closing, which is what the midwest economy was heavily based on (besides farming).
Sounds like it's an even bigger problem in Da Country--most of that poverty is in the Midwest and South rather than the developed Northeast.
Assuming you meant some dig at rural areas, it's mostly an urban and suburban problem, not a rural problem; most of the South and Midwest happen to be urban or suburban, so if there's a huge worrying trend chances are it originated from those areas. There are high poverty rural areas but the bulk of these were the same 10 or 20 years ago.
Also, the Midwest saw the largest increase in povertization of neighborhoods, and the South has turned into a huge block of poverty zones instead of blotches, but it should also be noted that Arizona, California, and New Mexico have experienced the same trend as the South, and they are some of the most urbanized states in the country. The povertization problem extends across the entire Sun Belt, and if current trends continue it will eventually absorb the Midwest too.
Assuming you meant some dig at rural areas, it's mostly an urban and suburban problem, not a rural problem; most of the South and Midwest happen to be urban or suburban, so if there's a huge worrying trend chances are it originated from those areas. There are high poverty rural areas but the bulk of these were the same 10 or 20 years ago.
Also, the Midwest saw the largest increase in povertization of neighborhoods, and the South has turned into a huge block of poverty zones instead of blotches, but it should also be noted that Arizona, California, and New Mexico have experienced the same trend as the South, and they are some of the most urbanized states in the country. The povertization problem extends across the entire Sun Belt, and if current trends continue it will eventually absorb the Midwest too.
Thank you. But you know, to the NE the rest of the country is rural, to hear them tell it.
It's really interesting when you consider the number of people who have moved to the South over the last few decades and the supposed superiority of their economic model
Not in the way you mean it I don't think. Do economic winners ever move very far? "Hey I've had a ton of success in NYC and my business is doing fine, but I think I'll head to Mississippi and see if I can knock it out of the park there as well."
Maybe a few do, but not very many.
So the ones who were doing sorry to ok up north are the ones who are moving to the south while the ones who are doing well to great remain.
Assuming you meant some dig at rural areas, it's mostly an urban and suburban problem, not a rural problem; most of the South and Midwest happen to be urban or suburban, so if there's a huge worrying trend chances are it originated from those areas. There are high poverty rural areas but the bulk of these were the same 10 or 20 years ago.
Also, the Midwest saw the largest increase in povertization of neighborhoods, and the South has turned into a huge block of poverty zones instead of blotches, but it should also be noted that Arizona, California, and New Mexico have experienced the same trend as the South, and they are some of the most urbanized states in the country. The povertization problem extends across the entire Sun Belt, and if current trends continue it will eventually absorb the Midwest too.
It's not a dig at rural areas, but an acknowledgment that poverty is not solely an urban phenomenon, but a national one. California's poverty rate was 16.3% in 2010, which puts it considerably lower than the South and the Midwest in terms of raw poverty numbers, but the areas of California affected the most by poverty are the inland and rural communities. California comes across as highly developed and urban to non-Californians, but we're still geographically very rural--we're an agricultural powerhouse, producing 8% of the nation's ag products on 1% of the arable land, not counting the majestic mountains and deserts that take up another chunk of the state.
And it's in that national breadbasket where communities are struggling. Cities from Redding to Stockton, Fresno and Bakersfield, dependent on agriculture and natural resources production, are staggering to stay afloat. Even Sacramento, the Valley city least dependent on agriculture, was hit pretty hard and is only now starting to recover as the wave of urban prosperity has begun to lap over the coastal mountains from the Bay Area. Thousands of small California farming communities whose names you wouldn't recognize are struggling, and this year's drought is making matters worse. And the same thing is happening in rural communities all over the country.
So, no, it's not a slight. It's an acknowledgment of fact. The OP implied that the increase in national poverty was an urban problem--more than just an implied slight at cities and suburbs (who have plenty of their own problems, sure) but an insult unsupported by the article they linked. It is reinforced by the general attitude of poverty being linked to urbanity, and the general unwillingness of people to recognize equally dire problems in rural America, because solving those problems might require Big Government--or at least acknowledgment that the problems exist..
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