Media Spin and the Hidden Poverty in America

Masadi,

Try and understand your ailment. Of course, there will be problems with ANY system. We try and try and try. Maybe we will go extinct trying and most probably never achieve across-the-board success. Your worldview, OTOH, comes from `knowing` that there is a system out there that a God kinda entity knows about and we should take the gift of revelation and make it work. Or even if revelations are not explicit, then use our `God-given` abilities to achieve that utopia. But masadi, mairi jaan, do you respect the view and research that informs us that there is no such God entity and no such utopia and `us` is all we have?

Your expectations are coming with this stupid knowledge of `God has the knowledge to know about a great system because he was merciful/powerful enough to make it available`. Suffice is to say that the system is not perfect, but your expectations come from truly idiotic assumptions about reality and metaphysics.

Now do you realize, why Islamists and religionist should not be taken seriously?

masadi:

``If we use ``real`` measures of poverty, based upon average incomes in the US and a current basket of goods, including health and childcare, this percentage is actually double that of the official figures (many private studies and models based on them have documented this).``

Where can I find some of these studies?

`Poor` is 1 dollar a day or below.

Sorry masadi. You`re wrong.

Talking about transition out of poverty, and following on from #80, I did some quick (non rigorous) calculations from the US census data.

Imagine that the age distribution is constant from 1984 to 2004. Assume that poverty in the US is chronic. Then if x% of ALL children are poor, we will expect to see x% of all adults to also be poor. On the other hand, transitory poverty would imply that if x% of all children are poor and y% of all adults are poor then x should be greater than y.

Here is what the census tells us:

Year...................% of people below 18 yrs...........% of people between 18 and 64
1984...................21.5%.....................................11.7%
1994....................21.8%.....................................11.9%
2004.....................17.8%.....................................11.3%


Of course the above is a rough check. It has to be corrected for the actual age distribution, immigration, etc., etc. But still you get a tremendously stark picture. Almost 50% of poor children seem to be escaping poverty!

Re: # 65

tahmed,

...... i agree with you completely, there is absolutely nothing wrong with driving a cab - some of my best friends are limo drivers ....... if you own two limos and drive one of them yourself you can make the same, if not more, money than a code coolie sitting in front of a boob-toob twelve hours a day .......... of course you have to `work` seven days a week but you are home taking a nap when you are not making a run, or you can spend the time hanging out with your buddies at the airport ....... the only down side is that if you get into a bad card game you can loose your day`s earnings in a hurry! .........

............... the irony is that if you can sign up an indian owned sweat shop you can net 5-8000 a month by making a few weekly runs to the airport, loading ten coolies in a crown victoria every weekday morning, unloading them in a corporate parking lot, and then picking them up in the evening to bring them back to their three bedroom apartments where they live and play (all ten of them) ......... if you don`t mind the smell of heeng in the apartment, and can talk the madrasi into a card game, you can also walk away with a few extra bucks .........

Poverty is not the same everywhere. For example take two countries A and B. In A, 10% of the population is poor and the same people remain poor through generations. In B also, 10% of the people are poor. Bur every year (over a 10 year period) a different segment of the population become poor. To understand the second case situation think of it in the following way: only students are poor; once you complete college you are no longer poor. In other words I am differentiating between ``chronic`` and ``temporary poverty``.

It is quite difficult to measure ``chronic`` poverty from census data because this data is anonymous and hence one cannot follow a household through time. Furthermore, the calculation of `chronic`` poverty depends on the definition of the ``poverty line`` and the ``consumption dynamics of households below the poverty line`` (say because of the introduction of new products, birth, death, illness etc). Nevertheless several theoretical measurements exist.

For the US, the most popular sample which traces a set of households over time is the PSID data (Panel study of income dynamics). It started in 1968 with 4802 households. The size of the households have grown to more than double today because of birth, marriage etc. I do not know what is the most recent measure of chronic poverty based on this data. But in 1991, Joan Rodgers and John Rodgers in their paper ``The measurement of chronic and transitory poverty: with application to the United States``, concluded that over the period 1968-1987 two-third of the people below the poverty line faced transitort poverty. In other words, on average a family would expect to escape poverty with probability 2/3 over a 10 year period.

Not too bad.

I do not know of comparable studies for other countries.

#74 no ..i did in the past but in monkey county MD ..but do use the dulles flyer from time to time.

arjun, many F1s work on and off campus..indian engg students work in the computer center or some small engg/software operations ..you can get a work-permit for ``work-experience`` for intern jobs. i have even seen some professors with small consulting bussiness use students ``illegaly`` .. but in that case the pay as well as the work is of good quality and even useful for your resume.

samosa: Please dont confuse masadi with facts and logic. Actually, amend that.

What I mean is, you will have better luck in trying to break through the Great Wall of China using a teaspoon as your tool then you will in breaking through to Stonewall Masadi using mere facts and logic as your tools.

The way media spins information it seems masadi likes to have his own spins. I though agree in general that there is poverty in USA but if you look at this
article one gets a a very different picture of poors in USA compared to poors in other part of world. A lot needs to be done with respect to reducing number of poors in USA.
Following are some points in the article:

Forty-six percent of all poor households actually own their own homes. The average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau is a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage, and a porch or patio.
Seventy-six percent of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, 30 years ago, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.
Only 6 percent of poor households are overcrowded. More than two-thirds have more than two rooms per person.
The average poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens, and other cities throughout Europe. (These comparisons are to the average citizens in foreign countries, not to those classified as poor.)
Nearly three-quarters of poor households own a car; 30 percent own two or more cars.
Ninety-seven percent of poor households have a color television; over half own two or more color televisions.
Seventy-eight percent have a VCR or DVD player; 62 percent have cable or satellite TV reception.
Seventy-three percent own microwave ovens, more than half have a stereo, and a third have an automatic dishwasher.

mohar: OK, pal. your 20 campfollower posts are up. Here is the bone I normally toss at you after 20 unsolicited posts from you.

Be sure to read every thing I write diligently, and then make sure you twist it. ha! ha!

Re: # 70 bong

Good one :).... ClosetMullah32 just sits in his dark closet, eyes closed, nostrils flared.... as soon as he smells a hinud - he goes ballistic.... ``indians b@stards are out to get me, these caste-ridden code coolies, hate-mongers, they hate pakis.... pakis are so good people, why do they hate pakis??....``

Jang

Are you living in DC/NoVA area too?....

#39 by masadi on April 2, 2006 7:41pm PT


yes, I still hold a job, and have held one ever since I arrived in this godforsaken country, be it a low paying, hard work, service job, working over 60 hours a week while going to school full time.


I`m assuming the comrade is here on a student visa...Can someone who came here on a student visa confirm this: I thought you couldn`t work more than 20hrs if you are on a student visa..not legally anyway..

His profile says he`s teaching something..

does this all add up?

dullabhatti ji: sirjee, i have nothing against code writers. some of my best friends are code writers. what i am opposed to is this smelly attitude of sniffing upon cab driving as being a ``lower profession``. I have found cab drivers (hindus, muslims, sikhs, blacks, whites) to be perfectly fine, normal human beings trying to earn a living. and I will speak up on their behalf if I have to among these fu!king babus on chowk!!

jang #67 dulles airport cabbies are not all pakistanis, although there are many muslims among them. and the reason is simple - the cab franchise (at least the last time i checked, a couple of years ago) is with an afghan, and presumably he favors muslims. However, DC cabs are often driven by sikh cabbies all over DC (easy to spot by their turbans) and i recall taking cabs driven by hindus as well as pakistanis. so lets keep the facts straight.

the other point i made that you missed was that cab driving is something to be ashamed of only in the mind of someone brought up in a caste-ridden environment, where some forms of honest work are considered shameful. This to my mind is real poverty, this poverty of the mind. The cab driver who makes an honest living is a cut above these clowns, no matter if they wear a suit and call themselves Mo or Joe.

#69
dullabhai, every facet of the human experience is reflected in the Mahabharata. TAhmed is the blind king Dhritarastra who refuses to believe why the Kaurava`s are so vilified, instead he sits on his throne and (if you remember the TV version) goes ...

``Kya ho raha hai, yeh sab kya ho raha hai ...``