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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   37952 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 27, 2023

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The federal poverty rate — 11.6 per cent in 2021 — has been roughly flat since 1970.

I'm always very skeptical of these sorts of stats. "Federal poverty rate" is not an objective measure given to us by God or nature. That's a somewhat arbitrary and adjusted threshold.

Overall the US tax system is barely progressive

Okay, but, I've seen contrary assertions that America has the most progressive tax system. But I suppose that might just be Federal taxes and regressive state level sales taxes are skewing the results. Or maybe some people are lying or distorting how progressive our taxes are.

If you’re a worker without a college degree, you’re making less — inflation adjusted — in wages than you would have 40 years ago. How can we look at the American economy and still believe it’s an engine for broad prosperity?

As usual: at the end of WW2 much of Europe and Japan was bombed to rubble, the Chinese were coming out of decades of ruinous warfare, Taiwan and Korea were not that developed. In that special situation America was doing great. Being the major industrialized nation not bombed to hell enriched them. But these days we are one developed country among many. Our inflation adjusted prosperity shouldn't necessarily be expected to endlessly increase now that the rest of the world is catching up.

You want to run a lathe at work and raise a family in a decent house off of just that wage? Too bad, a Chinese guy does that job now. Your union costs too much to deal with. That Chinese guy will be punished if he agitates for a union. This set of facts do not contribute to increased inflation adjusted non-college wages.

I'm always very skeptical of these sorts of stats. "Federal poverty rate" is not an objective measure given to us by God or nature. That's a somewhat arbitrary and adjusted threshold.

It is, although it was decreasing for a long time before the 70s. I can only find https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States#/media/File:Number_in_Poverty_and_Poverty_Rate,_1959_to_2017.png which only goes back to the late 50s, but I believe that it was steadily declining for decades before that, even through the Great Depression. I would guess what happened is that general economic and productivity growth brought everyone who is capable of consistently working full-time above the poverty line, and what's left is people with some other problem (mental illness, drugs, crime, broken family, or otherwise incapable of or unwilling to participate in normal society), but it is certainly convenient for my ideology that it bottomed out right when LBJ introduced the War on Poverty.

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