Living in Poverty?

by Andrew S. Fischer

In an earlier article, I wrote (indirectly quoting Economist magazine) that poverty could be overcome fairly effectively if teenagers do just a few things: finish high school, don’t have babies, and find a job and keep it. I also stated that two people working full time, each earning just $7.50 per hour, should have over $24,000 a year after income taxes. My belief was that they could spend a third of that on rent and have enough left over to live decently.

A few e-mailers challenged my budgeting skills, and, since our national socialists – oops, I mean our federal socialists – are planning to increase the minimum wage to approximately that hourly rate, I thought it might be a good time to explore my previous assertions. There's no need to discuss how our fearless leaders' misguided wage increase will also amplify unemployment, since Austrian economists and others have explained this many times over.

Let's use the impending $7.25 per hour wage this time, and assume that the two people in question, who could be in a committed relationship or just roommates, work a moderate thirty-five hours per week, fifty weeks a year. The resultant annual gross income for each, before taxes, is approximately $12,687. The household thus earns $25,375 annually, which I'll round downward to $25,000, or $2,083 per month. Household budgets typically allocate up to 30% of gross income toward rent; in the case of our hypothetical couple this would be $625 per month. So the first question is: can a decent $625 per month rental be found, anywhere in the United States?

Full article at:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/fischer/fischer23.html

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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." - Schopenhauer

Underestimating, IMO. I didn't see healthcare factored in (or lack there of.) Either way, that can be costly. $400 for food is also unrealistic, IMO. Plus, low wage jobs usually don't have paid sick days.

Only if you are a total idiot....

a bowl of ramon noodles or a double cheese burger go for a 1 or sometimes less and if they eat 8 a day for 30 days that would be 240 and if they add prescription and others that would be 140 enough for some lousy form of medical coverage though the alt for the poor is medicare which is honestly as lousy as medical coverage goes also they have 150 a month for travel and if they take a bus bike or carpool you can probably cut back on that to about 100 so as long as the minimum wage worker set priorities they will get by also most jobs have minor raises after certain time periods or they could just search for a better job while still working at minimum wage the problem lies with the fact that many poor dont have high school degrees have kids , medical problems or are just lazy the lazy being the minority im assuming ether way any form of welfare should be done through private charities , families or churches

Whenever people mention poverty, they automatically assume the dumb@$$ friend they had in high school that doesn't get a job... or they picture these welfare mothers. Sure those people exist, as well as the morons who live beyond their means twenty times over and never learn no matter how bad things get.
But the other side of it is the disabled, who most of us except a few wacky libertarians and a few even wackier (but less deluded- they admit to being heartless) Nazis, agree deserve some aid... and the old who can no longer support themselves. Most of us are okay with them.
But even in the groups we don't care for so much, a lot of it is structural and just going on saying only idiots are poor doesn't help. Plus the consequences of the people living in structural poverty are real, typically seen by us as crime.
Only a person with very lop-sided life experiences can come to either the conclusion that all poor are idiots or that all are deserving of unconditional aid. Until we get beyond the stupidity of either of these assumptions, we will continue to see more and more garbage that is not helpful at least, detrimental at its strongest... more crap either making excuses for all poor or condemning them all. Truth is that poverty has many faces... and as much as few in the US are poor... a lot of that has to do with Social Security... Doesn't it seem odd to use the "fact" that there's no poverty to support an ideology that will give us more poverty.
Realism, folks. It's the unideology.

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"It's never over... BOY!"
The Tall Man, Phantasm III

Is there? Yes actually and its a proven fact. One need only look at the increased need for food pantries, the increase in homelessness, the increase in bankruptcies for people of little means, the number of kids who get one of their 2 meals a day thanks to hot lunch programs.....

Its nonsense like this that proves beyond doubt that the right is the party of the real ivory tower....a tower so isolated that they never see the inner city or rural poverty that is a fact of life in this country. Is their poverty in the US? Ask the victims of Katrina......

Well then prove it.

Show evidence from an unbiased source to support your claim.

Show evidence from an unbiased source to support your claim.

A lot of people declaring bankruptcy simply spent beyond their means.
Show evidence from an unbiased source to support your claim that there has been an increase in people declaring bankruptcy who could not otherwise pay their bills for essentials.

This has increased? Produce and present evidence from an unbiased source.

I'm not a Republican, sorry. Bush has been one of the worst Presidents in the history of the country.

Are they ever going to accept responsibility for living in a hurricane zone? Are they ever going to accept responsibility for not leaving and instead foolishly waiting for big daddy government to come save them?

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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." - Schopenhauer

Wow Truth-Bringer, you do live a sheltered life. Many poor are mentally ill and are unable to hold down a job. Yes, it is true that there are some people that do take advantage of government. The ones that really do need help are often overlooked.

How little you know of me...

If they're too mentally unstable to qualify for a job, how do they manage to know how to go to a welfare office? I have no doubt that some homeless people are mentally ill, but this isn't anyone's fault. Should we help those who cannot help themselves? Yes. But we should not help those who can help themselves yet refuse to work. That's my problem with the welfare system. More people would also be able to support themselves if taxes weren't so high and if fiat currency and central banking weren't destroying the value of the dollar through inflation.

Look, enough with the speculation, produce and present evidence that people who need help aren't getting it. I've donated my time to help the homeless. I've spoken to many of these people. Some said they wouldn't go back to a job if a free job was offered. If you want to watch a good documentary on the subject, go rent "Dark Days." These people finally were helped, BY THE INITIATIVE OF A PRIVATE CHARITY - not by government.

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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." - Schopenhauer

Perhaps... if some mercy would be shown when they use a large portion of their resources to move to another part of the country in hopes of finding jobs.
One thing people fail to see when they sit upon perches and look down upon the "lowly" is that change in life itself requires use of resources... which probably explains why we see so many of the "solutions" involve making the capital necessary for upward mobility even more difficult for the underclass to grasp ahold of.

Let's take a fictitious scenario: Gee... I'm born in a cesspool town in a hurricane zone where the education system sucks, crime is rampant, and jobs are scarce and low-paying. In addition, all the family I know is here. I have no connections in another state. So, let's see... What are my options?

The problem with those who make it their personal philosophy to despise the poor is that they expect high risk behaviors out of people who have very little to risk. You want people to save... but you want them to take risks... and to be looked down upon as dumb and pathetic if the risks fail, deserving of no aid to get back on their feet. My guess is that people with such a poor-despising mentality don't have to worry about risks or have somehow managed to have every risk turn out for the best in life. Good for them... but at the same time, they are missing a crucial piece of reality. Sometimes people do need help. Sometimes they do wind up at death's door due to bad luck or a poor start. Sometimes people learn their lessons but aren't in a position to put those lessons to use.
The ideology of poor-hate is nothing but a rationalization to the problem of "Why do bad things happen to good people?" where the rationalization is that they do not.

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"It's never over... BOY!"
The Tall Man, Phantasm III