Yeah they eat McDonalds and Hamburger Helper because it's cheaper
Eating out, even eating out and McDonalds, is more expensive then preparing your own foods if your operating based on a budget and not on being a gourmet.
I don't know. In the inner cities, people are living in the same buildings. I assume they are the same size. You think people should work twqo jobs for an extra 100 sq. feet?
Average family size is down, so even when the building is the same size you have more space per person. In any case the average home size across the country is up, as are homeownership rates and the average size of apartments. That includes in the inner city, as a decent portion of the old housing for the poor from a few generations ago no longer exists.
Poor people don't have "all the cars, electronics and sevices" that you enjoy.
They don't have an Infiniti or $100/month satelite bills, but they are likely to have TV, including at least basic cable, they are more likely to have cars than in the past, and more likely to have multple cars. I'm not comparing them to someone who is in the middle class now (me), but to the poor in the past. They have more than they used to. In many cases more than the middle class used to. In any case I wasn't just talking about the poor, but the non-rich. Yes the poor have it bad now, but they have always had it bad, and in material terms their lot isn't as bad as it used to be, while that of the middle class has probably improved even more.
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Today, almost every family owns a car. Most own their own home. Most of us have dishwashers and cellphones and computers and air conditioning, comforts only the richest of the rich had 40 years ago. Rich people work longer hours than poor people today. Neither is likely to encounter much danger on the job. A poor person having a heart attack gets the same treatment as a rich person, and both get better treatment than the richest fat cat received 25 or 50 years ago.
Yes, the rich get richer in America. But so does everyone else. So why should we care that inequality is climbing if we're only aware of it when we read the government data? Deep down, we assume that if the distribution of income is getting less equal, someone must be manipulating it to make it so — evil politicians, maybe, or greedy multinational corporations.
But no one is. The measured level of inequality is, in fact, the result of the choices that millions of us make individually, decisions to go to school or drop out, decisions to marry or divorce, decisions to emigrate to America or stay in one's home country.
What most of us really care about isn't inequality but opportunity. We're less concerned with getting ahead of the Joneses than with simply getting ahead. Stay in school, finish high school and go on to college and you get ahead in America. Spend less than you earn and you can end up wealthy.
The data are easily manipulated to scare us. We should worry less about inequality and more about opportunity.
latimes.com
(link may not work anymore I got it from an old SI post)
"But if we're talking about security from material deprivation, that's a different story. Let's start with the biggest risk of all: that of premature death. Back in 1970, during Mr. Hacker's golden age of economic stability and risk-sharing, the age-adjusted death rate stood at 12.2 deaths per 1,000 people. By 2002, it had fallen more than 30%, to 8.5 per 1,000. In particular, infant mortality plummeted to 7.0 from 20.0, while the number of Americans killed on the job dropped to three per 100,000 workers from 18.
Next, look at the two main indicators of middle-class status: a home of one's own and a college degree. Between 1970 and 2004, the homeownership rate climbed to 69% from 63%, even as the physical size of the median new home grew by nearly 60%. Back in 1970, 11% of Americans 25 years of age or older had a college or higher degree. By 2004, the figure had risen to 28%.
As to consumer possessions, the following comparison should suffice to make the point. In 1971, 45% of American households had clothes dryers, 19% had DISHWASHERS, 83% had refrigerators, 32% had air conditioning, and 43% had color televisions. By the mid-1990s all of these ownership rates were exceeded even by Americans below the poverty line.
No matter how the doom-and-gloomers torture the data, the fact is that Americans have made huge strides in material welfare over the past generation."
coyoteblog.com
"From 1970 to 1992, a typical new home increased in size by the equivalent of two 15-foot by 20-foot rooms. While home ownership rates have remained roughly constant over the past two decades, the average age at which Americans buy their first home has moved by roughly three yearsfrom 27.9 in 1970 to 31.0 in 1992. Doomsayers, of course, have been quick to chalk this up to deteriorating economic conditions, ignoring the marked change in Americans' lifestyles. The median age at which we first marry (an event that often precedes home buying) has increased from 21.5 in 1970 to 24.7 in 1992again roughly three years. And nearly 12 percent more of us today also decide never to marry. Add to this the fact that the average number of children per family has declinedfrom 1.09 in 1970 to 0.67 todayand the story clearly changes from deteriorating economic conditions to lifestyle changes.
Then there are the homes themselves. New houses are much more likely to have central air conditioning and garages. About 45 percent of homes now have dishwashers, up from 26 percent two decades ago. Clothes washers were in three-quarters of homes in 1990, up from less than two-thirds in 1970. At the same time, households with dryers jumped from 45 percent to almost 70 percent. The average number of televisions in a household rose from 1.4 in 1970 to 2.1 in 1990. Comparing 1970 and 1990, the typical U.S. family owned 4.5 times more in audio and video equipment, 50 percent more in kitchen appliances, and 30 percent more in furniture. For fun and games, the household has twice as much gear for sports and hobbies. "
reason.com
"...In a supplementary report that got no press attention, the Census Bureau looked at some of these new necessities and their ownership by the poor. It turns out that many poor people today own appliances that were considered luxuries when I grew up, and some would still be considered luxuries today. For example, 91 percent of those in the lowest 10 percent of households — all of whom are officially poor — own color TVs, 74 percent own microwave ovens, 55 percent own VCRs, 47 percent own clothes dryers, 42 percent own stereos, 23 percent own dishwashers, 21 percent own computers, and 19 percent own garbage disposals.
When I grew up in the 1950s, only the wealthy owned color TVs, clothes dryers, stereos, dishwashers, and disposals. These were all considered luxuries. We got by with black-and-white TVs, hanging our wet cloths on a line to dry, washing dishes by hand, and throwing our potato peels in a pail instead of down the drain. So did most other middle-class families. Not even the wealthiest people owned microwave ovens, VCRs, or computers.
Some economists have suggested that using consumption, rather than income, as the measure of poverty gives a better idea of the true economic condition of the poor. They note than many of those officially classified as poor based on income actually live quite well. For example, many are elderly who own their homes free and clear. Others may just be poor temporarily and can draw down saving to tide them over. An analysis by economic Daniel Slesnick found that the official poverty rate of 13.8 percent in 1995 would actually have been 9.5 percent if based on consumption rather than income.
The Census Bureau itself acknowledges serious limitations to its calculations. One problem is that it is required by law to use a measure of inflation that is known to overstate price increases. Using a corrected inflation measure would have lowered the poverty rate from 12.1 percent to 10.8 percent last year. The inclusion of income that is not now counted, such as noncash income transfers like food stamps, would lower the rate to just 7.5 percent.
Lastly, it is worth noting that few of the poor remain poor for very long. According to the Census Bureau, over half of all those classified as poor between 1996 and 1999 were so for less than 4 consecutive months. Eighty percent were poor for less than a year. This sort of income mobility means that our measures of income inequality are also overstated, according to a new Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco study..."
nationalreview.com
...Real GDP per capita tripled from 1900 to 1950; then it tripled again from 1950 to 2000, reaching $35,970.
The wealth didn't benefit just a few. It spread throughout society. For many people, owning a home defines the American Dream, and 68 percent of families now do -- the highest percentage on record. Three-quarters of Americans drive their own cars. The vast majority of households possess color televisions (98 percent), videocassette recorders (94 percent), microwave ovens (90 percent), frost-free refrigerators (87 percent), washing machines (83 percent), and clothes dryers (75 percent). In the past decade or so, computers and cell phones have become commonplace.
As people become wealthier, they continue to consume more, but they also look to take care of other needs and wants. They typically choose to forgo at least some additional goods and services, taking a portion of their new wealth in other forms.
Consider a nation that rapidly increases its productive capacity with each passing generation. Workers could toil the same number of hours, taking all of the gains as consumption. They may choose to do so for a while, but eventually they will give up some potential material gains for better working conditions or additional leisure. Hours of work shrink. Workplaces become more comfortable. In the same way, we give up consumption in favor of safety, security, variety, convenience, and a cleaner environment.
>Less Work, More Play
In the early years of the Industrial Revolution, most Americans were poor, and they wanted, above all, more goods and services. These factory workers sharply improved their lives as consumers, even though for most of them it meant long hours of toil in surroundings we'd consider abominable today. As America grew richer, what workers wanted began to change, and leisure became a higher priority.
Few of us want to dedicate every waking hour to earning money. Free time allows us to relax and enjoy ourselves, spend time with family and friends. Higher pay means that each hour of work yields more consumption -- in essence, the price for an hour of leisure is going up -- but we're still choosing to work less than ever before. According to economists' estimates and Department of Labor figures, the average workweek shrank from 59 hours in 1890 to 40 hours in 1950. Although today we hear stories about harried, overworked Americans who never seem to have enough time, the proportion of time spent on the job has continued to fall. Average weekly hours for production workers dropped from 39 in 1960 to 34 in 2001.
Since 1950 time off for holidays has doubled, to an average of 12 days a year. We've added an average of four vacation days a year. Compared to previous generations, today's Americans are starting work later in life, spending less time on chores at home, and living longer after retirement. All told, 70 percent of a typical American's waking lifetime hours are available for leisure, up from 55 percent in 1950...
...In 1997, 28 percent of American workers were on flexible schedules, double the percentage in 1985...
...Work isn't just more pleasant. It's also safer. Occupational injuries and illnesses, as tallied by the National Safety Council, are at an all-time low of 63 per 1,000 workers. The number of Americans killed on the job has fallen to a record low of 38 per million workers, down from 87 in 1990 and 214 in 1960...
reason.com
reason.com |
