Opinion: America once fought a war against poverty – now it wages a war on the poor

[Amica Nostra 4,803]

2 hours ago, bcking said:

For me it's a bit of yes and no. I've been able to find the "truth" behind their numbers and they can all be backed up by CDC data. HOWEVER - Their wording is clearly misleading and makes it difficult to understand. That being said, it doesn't appear that they are outright "bending" numbers, or making numbers up to "support their narrative". They are using true statistical data reported by the CDC. 

 

"Since the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign, the number of Americans in poverty has increased by 60% to 40.6 million"

 

Here is a CDC report that also essentially shows the same results graphically (https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2017/demo/P60-259.pdf) - Go to Page 12 (I'm having issues pasting the snapshot from adobe into here). 12% of the US Population in 1968 was 24 million people. 12.7% of the current US population, is around 41 million. That is about a 70% increase from 1968 in total numbers - Essentially what they suggest. 

 

"More than 95 million Americans (nearly 30 percent of the total population) are either in poverty or considered “low-income” (below twice the poverty line), using the Official Poverty Measure. That number rises to 43.5% (over 140 million people) when using the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM), which takes into account federal assistance resources as well as critical out-of-pocket expenses."

 

The first number I found in the CDC report (link above). Go to page 17 and it has a chart of different "levels of poverty". The highest it goes up to is 2 times the poverty level, and the number is 95,245,000.

 

For the second number - In their document they have a hyperlink in the word "rises" which goes here (https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/visualizations/2017/demo/p60-261/figure6.pdf). The graph is a little confusing however if you combine the percentage of the "total population" (first row) for the SPM measure from 0 - 2.0 (5 categories on the X-axis are income to poverty line threshold ratios), you would get 43.5%. That is 140 million people.  

 

So what they are actually saying is if you use "twice the poverty line" cut off with the statistics provided by the SPM (which is an official alternative measure reported by the CDC, the official report is below), you get 43.5% of the US Population.

 

https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2017/demo/p60-261.pdf - The same data is shown in a table on Page 25. Combine the different poverty line thresholds (0 - 0.5, 0.5 - 1, 1 - 1.5, 1.5 - 2.0) and you get 43.4%.

 

-----------------------------------

 

So are they being misleading? Yes their text doesn't really accurately explain the data they are reporting. However do they actual have facts and statistics to support their numbers? It seems like they do. So it is more an issue with language and how they report things, and less with their actual methodology for coming up with their numbers. I honestly did think for awhile they were just making stuff up.

 

 

We need an official "they did the math" award at VJ.  I nominate you for this weeks winner.

[Keith & Arileidi 437]

13 minutes ago, IDWAF said:

 

I know what the term means, but don't recall us ever getting close to it under your boy.

Simple Google: "As Obama prepares to leave office, the unemployment rate is at 4.7 percent, less than half of the peak it reached in October 2009."-NPR

 

https://www.npr.org/2017/01/07/508600239/what-kind-of-jobs-president-has-obama-been-in-8-charts

[Voice of Reason 10,298]

2 minutes ago, Keith & Arileidi said:

Simple Google: "As Obama prepares to leave office, the unemployment rate is at 4.7 percent, less than half of the peak it reached in October 2009."-NPR

 

https://www.npr.org/2017/01/07/508600239/what-kind-of-jobs-president-has-obama-been-in-8-charts

So NOT full employment.  It's down around 4.1% now, isn't it?  

[Keith & Arileidi 437]

6 minutes ago, IDWAF said:

So NOT full employment.  It's down around 4.1% now, isn't it?  

Full employment is 4 to 5 percent. 

[Voice of Reason 10,298]

4 hours ago, Keith & Arileidi said:

Full employment is 4 to 5 percent. 

No.  There is no one rate for it.

 

”In economic terms, full employment is defined as the point at which all available workers have jobs.”

 

If we were at full employment under Obama, then the rate wouldn’t continue to be dropping today.  It’s a good situation to be in, certainly, but do you really think either president is responsible for it?

[bcking 3,157]

1 minute ago, IDWAF said:

No.  There is no one rate for it.

 

”In economic terms, full employment is defined as the point at which all available workers have jobs.”

 

If we were at full employment under Obama, then the rate wouldn’t continue to be dropping today.  It’s a good situation to be in, certainly, but do you really think either president is responsible for it?

Neither one is completely responsible for it...but a President who was in office for 8 years and saw the shift from rising rates to lowering rates is likely MORE responsible for it than a President who has been in office for a little more than a year after the rates were already declining for several years.

[Voice of Reason 10,298]

2 hours ago, bcking said:

Neither one is completely responsible for it...but a President who was in office for 8 years and saw the shift from rising rates to lowering rates is likely MORE responsible for it than a President who has been in office for a little more than a year after the rates were already declining for several years.

Obama did nothing good for our economy.  He spent billions on companies that should have been forced into bankruptcy.  Bad move.

[OriZ 3,157]

2 hours ago, bcking said:

Neither one is completely responsible for it at all

Fixed for ya 

[TBoneTX 45,273]

8 hours ago, bcking said:

(He's fine btw)

Glad to hear it.

8 hours ago, bcking said:

She still has no job and it's been a year

Was thinking about her lately and wondering about any inroads.  Sorry to hear it.  Keep the faith.

[Keith & Arileidi 437]

11 hours ago, IDWAF said:

No.  There is no one rate for it.

 

”In economic terms, full employment is defined as the point at which all available workers have jobs.”

 

If we were at full employment under Obama, then the rate wouldn’t continue to be dropping today.  It’s a good situation to be in, certainly, but do you really think either president is responsible for it?

Ever thought about investing in A Pixel XL 2, it makes googling much much easier. I personally love mine. 

 

First few paragraphs of wiki: 

"Full employment means that everyone who wants a job have all the hours of work they need on "fair wages".^[1] Because people switch jobs, full employment means a stable rate of unemploymentaround 1 to 2 per cent of the total workforce, but does not allow for underemployment where part-time workers cannot find hours they need for a decent living.^[2] In macroeconomics, full employment is sometimes defined as the level of employment at which there is no cyclical or deficient-demand unemployment.^[3]

Some economists reject that full employment is a worthwhile goal, and see it as a necessary means to control inflation, i.e. to prevent inflation from accelerating. This view is based on a theory centered on the concept of the Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment (NAIRU), and those who hold it usually mean NAIRU when speaking of full employment.^{[citation needed]} The NAIRU has also been described by Milton Friedman, among others, as the "natural" rate of unemployment. Having many names, it has also been called the structural unemployment rate.

For the United States, economist William T. Dickensfound that full-employment unemployment rate varied a lot over time but equaled about 5.5 percent of the civilian labor force during the 2000s.^[4]Recently, economists have emphasized the idea that full employment represents a "range" of possible unemployment rates. For example, in 1999, in the United States, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) gives an estimate of the "full-employment unemployment rate" of 4 to 6.4%. This is the estimated unemployment rate at full employment, plus & minus the standard error of the estimate.^[5]"

^"

 

^{https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_employment}

Edited April 17, 2018 by Keith & Arileidi

[Amica Nostra 4,803]

10 hours ago, IDWAF said:

Obama did nothing good for our economy.  He spent billions on companies that should have been forced into bankruptcy.  Bad move.

The investment in the car companies returned a surplus.  Ford never needed the money,Gm and Chrysler were saved from liquidation. That was necessary because the closure of all those plants, the plants of their suppliers and their suppliers would have created massive unemployment  and possibly a great depression.  The misery factor would be high.

The cause of the auto crisis was not just soft demand for their product, it was the financial crisis that started with Wall Street and the book cooking that was happening there that was immoral, unethical, repugnant but apparently not illegal because hardly anyone on Wall Street went to jail. It really made me throw up in my mouth to watch the banks get a bailout since they caused the problem and still had not fessed up. But again, the other option was to let these institutions slide into Oblivion with sever consequences.

 

We can debate whether it was the right or wrong thing to do to bail these companies out. We can debate whether the Glass Stegal repeal or lax SEC oversight allowed it to happen. We apparently are going to benate undoing  the puney figleaf of Dodd Frank because even that level of regulation is too onerous to the banks. We can point out the irony that the banks that were too big to fail are bigger than ever. But one thing that is sure Obama and Congress were restrained in their bailout and not sloppy. 

[OriZ 3,157]

FWIW, book cooking today is worse than it's ever been. In fact, one of the things that ended the crisis was not Obama or the FED, but the crisis ended and ended precisely when the FAS board abandoned mark-to-market accounting, and replaced it with the mark-to-unicorn we have today.

 

Regarding bailouts, I have always been and always will be against them in any way shape or form. There were many reasons for the crisis, but it was mostly baked in the cake years ahead just like the next one is. The rest are nothing but triggers.

[Ban Hammer 13,334]

1 hour ago, OriZ said:

FWIW, book cooking today is worse than it's ever been. In fact, one of the things that ended the crisis was not Obama or the FED, but the crisis ended and ended precisely when the FAS board abandoned mark-to-market accounting, and replaced it with the mark-to-unicorn we have today.

 

 

uh what?

[Voice of Reason 10,298]

3 hours ago, Keith & Arileidi said:

Ever thought about investing in A Pixel XL 2, it makes googling much much easier. I personally love mine. 

 

First few paragraphs of wiki: 

"Full employment means that everyone who wants a job have all the hours of work they need on "fair wages".^[1] Because people switch jobs, full employment means a stable rate of unemploymentaround 1 to 2 per cent of the total workforce, but does not allow for underemployment where part-time workers cannot find hours they need for a decent living.^[2] In macroeconomics, full employment is sometimes defined as the level of employment at which there is no cyclical or deficient-demand unemployment.^[3]

Some economists reject that full employment is a worthwhile goal, and see it as a necessary means to control inflation, i.e. to prevent inflation from accelerating. This view is based on a theory centered on the concept of the Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment (NAIRU), and those who hold it usually mean NAIRU when speaking of full employment.^{[citation needed]} The NAIRU has also been described by Milton Friedman, among others, as the "natural" rate of unemployment. Having many names, it has also been called the structural unemployment rate.

For the United States, economist William T. Dickensfound that full-employment unemployment rate varied a lot over time but equaled about 5.5 percent of the civilian labor force during the 2000s.^[4]Recently, economists have emphasized the idea that full employment represents a "range" of possible unemployment rates. For example, in 1999, in the United States, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) gives an estimate of the "full-employment unemployment rate" of 4 to 6.4%. This is the estimated unemployment rate at full employment, plus & minus the standard error of the estimate.^[5]"

^"

 

^{https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_employment}

Different words saying the same thing.  If we had hit full employment in 2016 @ 5%,  then why has it kept dropping to 4.1%?  Obviously we were not at full employment in 2012, 2013, 2015, nor 2016.  It just looked that way at the time because it was on the decline.

The average unemployment under Obama was 7.3% (not saying it has anything to do with him, just an average of the years 2008-2016).  We will have to see how the next 8 years go before we can see how it compares.  It WILL go up, and sharply, in the near future, if analysts are correct.

 

https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000

 

https://www.bloomberg.com/quicktake/full-employment

[TBoneTX 45,273]

There are many reasonable, even elegant, calculation methods; however, in the most practical, boiled-down terms:

1.  If one has no job and wants one, the unemployment rate is 100%.

2.  If one has a job, the unemployment rate is 0.