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OK, so even if the collected goods were sent to the food banks, these food banks were still NOT abused.
I call BS. And this is why... No ID required to vote. But an ID is required to collect free food so that one's name can be crosschecked in the system? BS!!!
Randomly checking several of the counties above shows >$10 per hour for a single person. Same with the states you named as a whole. And no, the "poverty wage" is not a subsistence wage.
Again, assuming that a work week is 40 hours max (it isn't) and that no such thing as "roommates" exist (they do).
If the living wage is >$10 for a 40 hour week, then it is only $5 for an 80 hour week. How much value you are capable of providing an employer relative to supply & demand for labor in that market dictates your wage. How you wish to live dictates how many hours per week you should be working and earning that wage. If you are only capable of producing $5 per hour in value and wish to lead a $10 per hour life, you need to double the normal work week. Boom! Now $5 is a living wage.
And if costs are too high, SHARE THEM. That's how bartenders and servers can manage to live in places like Manhattan and SanFran. Roommates.
Short answer is not to think there will ever be a day when we don't have poor people and/or rich people, but there is what can be done to help limit the disparities of opportunity between those born disadvantaged vs those born with advantage.
A quick peek at another thread about Warren's proposed free child care immediately caused me to think people will either be for or against depending on whether they believe this effort to limit the above referenced disparities is appropriate for any society to work toward. Needless to say, better access to affordable child care, health care, education, nutritious foods and a safe environment - for as many people as possible -- rich or poor is how we best better provide opportunity for those born disadvantaged.
Some complain about all this "free stuff," as if there is no cost to America that comes from poverty. Do the math with respect to the cost of drugs, crime, poor health and all the rest compared to providing better access to all that helps mitigate the cost of poverty in America, and only then can you come to a better conclusion about how our tax dollars are best spent. Then too the question of who further up the economic ladder should pay what rate of taxes to support these efforts along with all the rest our government is more than happy to spend money on.
Far as you are concerned, should we bother with what I note in bold above? Why or why not?
Answer tends to determine whether you understand where people like Warren, Sanders, Newsom and other more progressive type thinkers are coming from...
Gov. Newsom proposing to expand services for babies and toddlers
I think there is a level of income distribution that optimizes economic activity. I believe that something like 2/3 of GDP comes from consumer consumption. Ergo, theoretically you can increase aggregate demand by distributing more of aggregate income (national) among the working poor and middle class who consume (spend) nearly 100% of the income. If too much of aggregate income goes to the 1%....they don't need to spend it all, rather, using most of it for savings and investment (another vital part of the equation, however).
As it stands now, GDP would benefit from reducing the gap between the rich and poor via allocating more of aggregate income to the working poor and middle class than to the 1%. Race plays a role also. 96.1 percent of the 1% (rich) are white. However, black poverty is 3 times the rate of white poverty. Thus, policies to promote racial economic equality (maybe reparations?) would help to close the gap.
Again, assuming that a work week is 40 hours max (it isn't) and that no such thing as "roommates" exist (they do).
If the living wage is >$10 for a 40 hour week, then it is only $5 for an 80 hour week. How much value you are capable of providing an employer relative to supply & demand for labor in that market dictates your wage. How you wish to live dictates how many hours per week you should be working and earning that wage. If you are only capable of producing $5 per hour in value and wish to lead a $10 per hour life, you need to double the normal work week. Boom! Now $5 is a living wage.
And if costs are too high, SHARE THEM. That's how bartenders and servers can manage to live in places like Manhattan and SanFran. Roommates.
Your "calculator" is seriously flawed.
I was going to say the same about your "logic". Why stop at 80 hours week, 120 is even better, lol.
Employers can get away with non-livable wages and then people who earn them require assistance (taxpayer funded). It is a form of corporate welfare, plain and simple.
Btw, employees in these type of positions typically work less then full time, not more. Unless are are talking
Another "calculator" that only has 40 hours in the week and doesn't include living arrangements like "3 adults, no kids"
If you have 2 roommates and work 60 hours per week, $6.73/hr is actually higher than the living wage for almost the entire state of Ohio.
I simply took the rent and multiplied by 2/3 for the share paid two other roommates and subtracted that from the gross annual salary and then divided that required annual salary by the 3,000 hour work year instead of 2,000, because there are way more than 40 hours in a week. You figure in any other cost saving lifestyle measures, like carpooling and all that, and it is remarkable just how livable you can make $6.73 an hour.
How one lives and how much they are willing to work is what dictates each individual "living wage."
I can tell you are smart enough to realize that when it comes to such things, a standard measure is necessary so everyone can understand a common point of reference. For example the point of "poverty level." What is poverty level for a family of four is a little different than poverty level for a single adult, none of which is really determined by the sort of equation you gin up in terms of how someone might be able to get by.
Also, a "living wage" is not a function of how many hours a person might work in a day. Of course you need to establish some basic parameters in order to establish a generally accepted living wage, that will be what it is whether you are with 3 van mates living in an RV working 60 hours per week vs a single mother than needs to worry about child care, cooking dinner and all the rest while working whatever hours she can. Typically 40 hours a week is also considered the "standard work week," also used to establish a common threshold for justified overtime pay.
You can't just figure whatever values you want to put in all these variables according to your particular equation. Right?
"Local churches" you say?
Think about it - do churches have the refrigerators set at required temperatures to keep dairy/meet/produce safe?
I don't think so ( because that's what "food banks," are required to have to keep expiring/already EXPIRED products for the most part) safe.
So all these "food drives" are yet again for the "dry goods" - mostly macaroni and cheese in the packages and canned foods.
If people are still in need of those things, they are not "abusing" anything - they take it ( as much as they can) because they NEED it, since they don't know what is going to happen to them tomorrow, when/if they'll receive their next paycheck.
So these canned goods will be at least sitting on their shelves "just in case."
You obviously don't understand what poverty in America is.
A lot of people don't I suppose, and that's where the hype about all this "heavy abuse" is coming from.
I understand that some of you would love to "put everyone to work," so that people would "work for their food and the roof over their head," but number one - it's ultimately up to employers to hire or not, and number two - you can't shove the square pegs in the round holes, meaning the kind of jobs the employers WANT to be filled, are not the type of jobs the potential workers are qualified for in each and every sense of this word - be that intellectual or physical requirements. (This is not the Soviet Union after all, the one you'd like to emulate at this point already.)
So people who don't meet these requirements are trying to survive the best they can.
And that's where the hype of supposed "abuses" is coming from.
Lots of problems related to reliance on churches and charities in general, but one big one is the problem of economic downturns when EVERYONE is struggling to make money let alone "give." The "double whammy" is that time when more people are in need due to economic downturn and fewer able to help because they are being negatively impacted at the same time. Still, people need to eat no matter what and usually they need to eat before the time it takes for the economy to turn back around.
This too is where and why the argument for government intervention comes into play, because not only can you manage a more secure reliable manner in which to address these problems during economic ups and downs, but by doing so -- if properly managed -- the severity of the downs can be mitigated some for the most vulnerable and for the economy as a whole. Rather than "let the bottom fall out" as it were...
Lol. If you click on about button it tells you exactly what the methodology is. In fact, it is much better than federal poverty measures which do not include healthcare or childcare costs.
Randomly checking several of the counties above shows >$10 per hour for a single person. Same with the states you named as a whole. And no, the "poverty wage" is not a subsistence wage.
Why I tend to address certain people/comments and not so much others...
I think there is a level of income distribution that optimizes economic activity. I believe that something like 2/3 of GDP comes from consumer consumption. Ergo, theoretically you can increase aggregate demand by distributing more of aggregate income (national) among the working poor and middle class who consume (spend) nearly 100% of the income. If too much of aggregate income goes to the 1%....they don't need to spend it all, rather, using most of it for savings and investment (another vital part of the equation, however).
As it stands now, GDP would benefit from reducing the gap between the rich and poor via allocating more of aggregate income to the working poor and middle class than to the 1%. Race plays a role also. 96.1 percent of the 1% (rich) are white. However, black poverty is 3 times the rate of white poverty. Thus, policies to promote racial economic equality (maybe reparations?) would help to close the gap.
All what to think about, but also worth considering is that whatever money is "redistributed," it tends to eventually end up in the hands of the most wealthy anyway, so there some argument that "redistribution" actually tends to work it's way toward more people's benefit, as you describe, not really at the expense of those top of the "food chain."
For example, a single mother with two young children gets SNAP assistance (food stamps). That helps her and her children avoid malnutrition and hunger. However, this makes that woman more of a customer at the local supermarket where obviously customers are needed to justify the checkers working there and the people working to stock the shelves. Those food stamps are money that helps pay for that as well as the products purchased of course. That money goes into the till that eventually finds it's way back into the pockets of the store owner, those owning stock in the supermarket chain.
"Redistribution" and also of course right back into the economy, because no one receiving any of this sort of assistance does anything but put that money right back into the economy. Unlike someone at the top that takes that wealth funneled to the top and parks it in some offshore account or villa on Lake Como. Not that there is anything wrong with what the rich might do with their wealth, but let's not forget that "redistribution" doesn't stay in the pockets of those in need of assistance, like to eat.
The economics can and do make sense, if properly managed.
Lol. If you click on about button it tells you exactly what the methodology is. In fact, it is much better than federal poverty measures which do not include healthcare or childcare costs.
No, it's flawed, just like I knew it would be.
The living wage is calculated for 382 metropolitan areas and all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
That skews the data, just like I told you it would be.
There 1,387 separately functioning economies in the US, not 382, and there are 3,007 counties.
The federal poverty level is the weighted average of the poverty levels of the 48 lower States.
The federal government excludes Alaska and Hawaii, because they are statistical outliers, due to the extraordinary high Cost-of-Living in both States.
The poverty levels in some States is $6,100, but in some States it's over $20,000.
When you add up the poverty levels of the 48 lower States and divide by 48, you get the federal poverty level of $14,380.
That shows you how irrelevant averages really are, because if you're in a State where the poverty level is over $20,000 you don't get no justice, while those in States where it's $6,000 to $8,000 are unjustly enriched.
HUD takes that into account, while oddly the USDA does not when handing out SNAP benefits, so for some people $520 buys two months of food, while for others it barely buys 2 weeks of food.
For comparison, we use the poverty thresholds for the 48 contiguous states, Washington DC, Alaska, and Hawaii, as of 2017.
The fact that she includes Alaska and Hawaii means all of the results are heavily skewed, but then her goal is to push an agenda.
Her formula also skews the data:
Basic needs budget = Food cost + childcare cost + (insurance premiums + health care costs) + housing cost + transportation cost + other necessities cost
According the US Census Bureau, only 4.2% of children ages 5 to 14 with working mother use childcare.
Only 31.9% of families with children ages 0-5 use childcare.
While that data is from 2011, the National Center for Education Statistics reports that in 2016, only 4,701,000 out of 12,032,000 children ages 3-5 use childcare, or 39%.
The majority of family do not use childcare, but her inclusion inflates her numbers, but like I said, she's pushing an agenda.
Quote:
Originally Posted by LearnMe
I can tell you are smart enough to realize that when it comes to such things, a standard measure is necessary so everyone can understand a common point of reference.
Except there's no common point of reference in the US, since the US isn't Iceland.
The living wage is calculated for 382 metropolitan areas and all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
That skews the data, just like I told you it would be.
There 1,387 separately functioning economies in the US, not 382, and there are 3,007 counties.
The federal poverty level is the weighted average of the poverty levels of the 48 lower States.
The federal government excludes Alaska and Hawaii, because they are statistical outliers, due to the extraordinary high Cost-of-Living in both States.
The poverty levels in some States is $6,100, but in some States it's over $20,000.
When you add up the poverty levels of the 48 lower States and divide by 48, you get the federal poverty level of $14,380.
That shows you how irrelevant averages really are, because if you're in a State where the poverty level is over $20,000 you don't get no justice, while those in States where it's $6,000 to $8,000 are unjustly enriched.
HUD takes that into account, while oddly the USDA does not when handing out SNAP benefits, so for some people $520 buys two months of food, while for others it barely buys 2 weeks of food.
For comparison, we use the poverty thresholds for the 48 contiguous states, Washington DC, Alaska, and Hawaii, as of 2017.
The fact that she includes Alaska and Hawaii means all of the results are heavily skewed, but then her goal is to push an agenda.
Her formula also skews the data:
Basic needs budget = Food cost + childcare cost + (insurance premiums + health care costs) + housing cost + transportation cost + other necessities cost
According the US Census Bureau, only 4.2% of children ages 5 to 14 with working mother use childcare.
Only 31.9% of families with children ages 0-5 use childcare.
While that data is from 2011, the National Center for Education Statistics reports that in 2016, only 4,701,000 out of 12,032,000 children ages 3-5 use childcare, or 39%.
The majority of family do not use childcare, but her inclusion inflates her numbers, but like I said, she's pushing an agenda.
Except there's no common point of reference in the US, since the US isn't Iceland.
No.
Of course not everybody uses childcare, for many it is impossible to afford. So many use extended family, alternate shifts and so on.
If anything, the numbers for childcare/health care expenses used in those tables are way way too low.
You can't have $2000 total yearly health expense (as you said premiums + costs) per adult, full time childcare is not anywhere close to $5000 a year. So, actually these costs are underestimated.
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