The "study" cited was done by the very website citing it, and designed expressly to refute a NYT article that the author didn't like. I'm not going to defend the NYT as a paragon of level-headed reporting, but when your only source is yourself, that's a red flag. When your website is literally named "Just Facts", as a preempted defense against the narrative-heavy articles it actually contains, that's a red flag.

America's poverty situation and cultural challenges are extremely complex. Nobody chooses to be poor. Plenty of poor people - I'm sure not every single one of them - aren't able to change their situation despite plenty of hustle. Welfare alone isn't the solution. But making reductionist blog posts on the internet in an attempt to justify your own urge to write people off as morally bankrupt solely based on their finances isn't helping anyone at all.

The source data linked in the article are a bit fishy. On page 36, you see where (I assume) the author derived his consumption data, though the source is by household and somewhere along the line he converted it to per-capita. In that source table, organized by quintile, the consumption for the highest quintile is about twice that of the lowest. But in the same document, on page 35, the income by quintile shows the top 20% earning 10x the income of the lowest 20% (including government benefits). So the wealthiest 20% earn ten times as much, but spend only twice as much? Where does the rest of the money go? It seems highly unlikely that both tables are accurate.

To savings...?

That would be a lot of savings. :-) The actual savings rate is less than 10% (https://www.statista.com/statistics/246268/personal-savings-...).

> when your only source is yourself, that's a red flag

The article includes links to world bank data and OECD that support the article's assertions. They aren't in MLA or APA formats, so you won't see them listed out at the bottom however.

> But making reductionist blog posts on the internet in an attempt to justify your own urge to write people off as morally bankrupt solely based on their finances

The author's intent is to highlight the errors in a NYT video. He's not attacking poor people.

> He's not attacking poor people.

I may have made a leap with that statement, but if you look under "Why Is the U.S. So Much Richer?", he practically lists out the entire Republican platform as corollaries from this one point. Given his unabashed political agenda and the overall point he's trying to make here, it's not a huge jump to assume that he sees the problem of poverty in America as overstated, self-inflicted, and generally not worth making a coordinated public effort to solve beyond proselytizing his personal lifestyle choices including reversing "changing attitudes toward sex [and] marital fidelity" (???).

I'd state that both sides are fishy. NY Times is supposed to be the newspaper of record, but abuses that position daily and to an amount only surpassed (AFAIK) by the Washington Post. Generally research on the homeless is spotty at best.

And what constitutes to riches when you make no income? Does the burger you eat out of the trash mean you're better off than someone who can only stuff dirt in their mouth? Yes, but which nations are actually full of poor doing that? And is the available food waste for consumption really a good and valid indicator of relative poverty?

> as explained by President Obama’s former chief economist Lawrence Summers, “government assistance programs” provide people with “an incentive, and the means, not to work.”

In the interest of pre-empting one obvious way to interpret that quote, this has a lot to do with the way that social welfare programs tend to be structured, and not necessarily a lot to do with laziness.

To take one concrete anecdote, many years ago a bartender at a neighborhood bar I used to frequent had to quit because she got a promotion at her day job. She didn't want to. She was actually kind of pissed off about it. The problem was, the pay raise pushed her combined income just above the cutoff point for eligibility for the state's Medicaid program, but still got her nowhere near what it would have taken to get health care on the private market. So, in order to advance her career while also retaining access to health care, she had to quit her side gig.

Similar thing happened to a good friend of mine. I don't recall the exact numbers, but she got a raise from something like $11.50 to $13/hr. Suddenly no longer qualified for the pretty nice state Medicaid plan, and had to pick up some godawful high deductible, high premium plan that covers virtually nothing from the Obamacare marketplace. She pays at least $150/month for it in premiums, is nowhere near the deductible, and so far it's refused to cover an MRI two doctors have ordered for her. Plus she lost dental and vision coverage - just had to pay $300 out of pocket for a cleaning and x-rays.

Something's very wrong when making more money makes you poorer and less healthy.

> Something's very wrong when making more money makes you poorer and less healthy.

Yes, what's wrong is cut-off thresholds (or just phaseouts that, when totalled across programs, exceed $1 lost benefits for each $1 of additional income.) It's one of the things motivating UBI, since then all the phaseout happens in one place, by way of progressive marginal tax rates.

Why not tackle the origin of the issue instead of subsidizing it? That just gives more money to the people who are now able to charge more.

It's the same argument to raise minimum wage that'll apply to increasing UBI. I don't see it being the correct avenue to have long-standing progress.

> Why not tackle the origin of the issue instead of subsidizing it?

UBI is addressing the root of the issue I pointed to, with healthcare specifically, though, for the same avoiding thresholding reason that UBI serves for aid generally, public baseline healthcare should be universal and not income qualified.

I've seen this time and time again where someone who was just under the threshold to be cut off, would intentionally not work extra hours, or try for a raise because unless they doubled their income, they end up losing a lot more money than the free benefits make up.

If you make 20k a year, and the cutoff for benefits is 22k, the second you make $22,001 you lose all benefits and are left to fend for yourself.

There should be a better sliding scale to assist those who do want to better themselves without de-incentivizing them to do better because of the fear of losing everything.

Don't forget public housing programs that concentrate poverty and crime ("The Projects").

It's as if assistance programs were designed to maintain a permanent underclass of dependents.

To be fair, many states stopped building this kind of housing in the 90's. For a few decades now, any affordable housing built in NY or CA or dozens of other states is almost always mixed-income.

It doesn't help. The 80/20 rule for affordable housing in NY(or is it NYC) has screwed up the market... Middle class gets to pay for it, while some places are now getting "poor entrances".

That's one stupendously negative way to look at it. Obviously it varies project to project. In California, where I've worked up close with many old and new projects, the new ones are almost always far better off than the old-school projects in terms of safety, cleanliness, community activity, etc. And they provide a lot of market-rate and middle-income housing in addition to low-income and senior housing.

The point he's making is that even though it's better it's still not great for the people paying the premium.

It all stems from why should I subsidize my neighbors rent?

The problem isn't that I wish to not subsidize it, but it's a matter that I'm subsidizing it to a much greater relative extent than a rich person living in his own brownstone he paid $10mil for.

On the other hand, nobody wants public housing projects being set up in their nice neighborhoods...often for good reason. The once-safe neighborhood where I grew up once had a grocery store - the lot was bought out by neighborhood housing, a low-income development was planned, locals complained, locals were called racists and NIMBYs, development was built anyway - and now there's no grocery store, no parking, shootings and burglaries are regular occurrences, and kids don't play outside.

The problem isn't solved by spreading poverty and dysfunction around rather than concentrating it - it just makes it everyone's (read: your) problem.

This type of program is why a lot of folks are suspicious of socialist policies. The bartender in this case is somewhat abusing the system. Instead of working and paying for her own health care, she is choosing to not to work in order for other taxpayers to pay for her health care.

If benefits aren't graduated, then you can have a hypothetical situation where you can earn $25,000, and receive $5,000 of benefits, or earn $25,001 and receive $0 of benefits. In this hypothetical situation, every dollar you earn between $25,000 and $30,000 is extra work you have to do that doesn't net you any additional dollars.

There's a whole separate discussion to be had about what taxes should pay for, but I don't think it's abusing the system. I think there's no question the bartender would work full time at a job that paid enough to pay for all of the living expenses and the healthcare, but that's not one of her options. Her options, according to the anecdote, were to work X hours for X money, or to work X + Y hours for X money.

Isn't the system broken if getting a raise is actually the opposite? I'm in the same situation in Georgia: We actually have a pretty great program through Medicaid that provides free health insurance for kids 6 and under and a very low rate for kids older than that.

All 3 of my kids are on it. My salary is just under the limit for a household of 5.

I would love to make more money, but it would have to be a raise of about 20% to cover the difference in premium for my kids to be on my private insurance plan. I'm thankful for the program. Without it, I was forking over 20% of my salary to the health insurance company. It seems stupid to allow myself to fall in that margin, no?

It's clearly a flawed system when a person is incentivized to be a tax burden on other taxpayers instead of making more income.

It’s a flawed system when human individuals are treated like “tax burdens”

It seems like exactly the kind of system you get when people are more worried about who to blame for X than they are about how to make X better.

Hmm, but I also pay Georgia income tax. Indeed there are a lot of government programs funded by income tax that I do not take advantage of. I'm not sure if you're trying to make me feel like a tax burden or not, but... I don't feel bad.

I think the issue is that there seems to be some sort of health coverage cliff, where if you make too much money you aren't covered by government programs, but you still might not be making enough to pay for health coverage yourself.

15 years ago, we just did without health coverage, but we were young and healthy. Not everyone is as blessed.

Can you really blame her when the result of the system is being given these choices:

1) Don't take the pay rise (career stagnation)

2) Keep health care and advance her career (abusing the system, technically, yes)

3) Keep both jobs and advance her career (lose health care)

You don't need to be an expert on game theory to realise what the best decision to make in this situation is. I agree with you in principle that it shouldn't be right to do this, but the system is, well.. shit. What else could she have done?

I don't blame her and probably would have made the same choice.

Well designed programs don't have the feature that making more money means you get less.

The trouble with well-designed programs is that they just work, they don't allow politicians to grandstand. The fact that politicians can and will use "welfare-grifting barmaids" to score points is designed into the program, proof is that they passed the democratic process!

True but republicans will just straight up lie about social programs.

"Subsidy Cliffs" are a real problem. I implore everyone to help get rid of the insane situations they create.

Plug in some numbers for yourself with this Obamacare calculator. If you are, for example, a married couple, both 55 years old, you lose many of thousands of dollars of benefits from an additional $1 of income when your income crosses 400% of the poverty line.

To put some real numbers on the table: if this couple made $65800 of income, they get a $1098 per month subsidy. If they made $65900 of income, they get a $0 subsidy.

https://www.kff.org/interactive/subsidy-calculator/

The problem is that social programs in the US are extremely [fragmented](https://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/i...), and a well designed program has to work in aggregate.

Any solution to this has to be cooperative between federal/state/local authorities, but given that welfare programs are one of the most politically charged topics in the US, there's little chance that this cooperation will happen.

These programs have been designed this way for many decades. Given that track record, why would anyone trust politicians to implement single-payer healthcare or other "socialist" policies?

Well, distrust in the political system has been that way in the U.S. for decades. Single payer systems have been implemented auccesfully in many countries, all it would take is to copy from any one of those countries wholesale. For example, with the current money going into medicare and medicaid it would be possible to fund a universal healthcare system that was a copy of canada’s. They’re nice people, I’m sure they’d be willing to help set it up.

Yeah this is outrageous! I only trust them to design "capitalist" tax policies for large companies and billionaires.

One man's "abusing the system" is another mans "responding to incentives in the way that makes the most sense but happens to not create a flattering depiction of the system."

I agree with this completely. Welfare is not supposed to create incentives for people to earn less money, it's supposed to help the legitimately poor. But those incentives certainly exist, and happen commonly enough that many people are distrustful of the welfare system as a whole.

>Instead of working and paying for her own health care

There was no choice. She couldn't afford to pay for healthcare with the new job. What would you have done?

I probably would have made the same choice.

>The bartender in this case is somewhat abusing the system.

She's choosing to get healthcare, a reasonable choice, 100% legally. The other poster made it clear she could not afford the jump from medicare to the open market.

If you're worried about the policies I suggest you take a closer look as to who wants to limit how those systems work... time and again it's NOT people pushing "socialist policies".

It is legal, for sure. I said "somewhat abusing" because she is choosing to suppress her income in order to qualify for benefits. Nothing illegal about that, but perhaps it's a bit unethical to make less money on purpose to qualify for government aid?

What actually is unethical is to have healthcare systems that people working two jobs can't afford, don't you think?

Healthcare can potentially be a life or death type situation.

I have trouble throwing down questions of ethics on someone who wants to be healthy and live.

> The OECD data is particularly flawed because it is based on “income,” which excludes [...] healthcare provided by Medicaid, free clinics, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Don't many of the other countries offer some kind of "free" medical service for everyone? Should they add this to the average income of those countries?

Anecdote time. Here in Argentina we have:

* Free hospitals and free ambulances for emergencies, and even some standard procedures. The quality and waiting time may vary. It's free for everyone. Should they count this as "income"?

* Also we get a compulsory 5% discount of the salary for additional healthcare that is controlled by the working union, this includes dental care. The quality and waiting time may vary. I'm not sure if they would count this 5% as income.

* Also you can pay a private medical plan or pay to a medic for a consultation. The quality and waiting time may vary, but it's usually faster and you have more options to pick a good medic hopefully.

Poor people in the US, the demographic being discussed here, all have access to free medical care at the same clinics middle class people use. This is partly paid for by the government from taxes and partly subsidized by the non-poor users of medical services.

I grew up very poor in the US. We never paid for anything healthcare related, and still have poor relatives receiving excellent free healthcare today.

False. Medicaid eligibility requirements vary by state. In Mississippi, for example, they cover children and pregnant women at roughly the same income level as other states... but the parents of those children aren't covered if the household makes more than $227/mo (+78/mo for each additional household member).

If you don't have children? No coverage unless you're in a very specific category (disabled, covered by medicare, etc)... no matter how poor and destitute you are.

https://www.healthinsurance.org/mississippi-medicaid/

Missouri: no medicaid if you aren't disabled or have children (and you're below 381/mo for a family of 3): https://www.healthinsurance.org/missouri-medicaid/

Same in TN: https://www.healthinsurance.org/tennessee-medicaid/

Same in TX: https://www.healthinsurance.org/texas-medicaid/

Seriously, go through the states that haven't accepted the ACA expansion: https://www.healthinsurance.org/medicaid/

These poor people are not getting Medicaid.

Who said anything about Medicaid? That is a Federal program that States can opt into to varying degrees, and most States have longstanding separate programs for the purpose. The landscape of how free healthcare is delivered is complicated. Like education, it is the prerogative of the States so any Federal view is only going to tell a small part of the story.

I should add, all of my experience is decades before the ACA Medicaid expansion.

> Who said anything about Medicaid? That is a Federal program that States can opt into to varying degrees, and most States have longstanding separate programs for the purpose.

No, they don't. Many states name their Medicaid-participating program with a local name that does not include “Medicaid”—California’s is “Medi-Cal”, Oregon’s is “Oregon Health Plan”—but none of them have a general, broad coverage health insurance program for the poor that is not the state Medicaid plan (except to the extent that their CHIP program is separate from their Medicaid program, but that is usually not the case, and CHIP is, in any case, a similar federal program to Medicaid, but newer.)

> I should add, all of my experience is decades before the ACA Medicaid expansion.

At a minimum, your generalization of your experience across the country and across times and to the whole body of the poor and not those in specific circumstances, and the understanding of the administrative context which enabled your experience, is incorrect, but it's quite possible that the reported experience itself rather than the generalizations based on it (that is, that you had decent, free healthcare while being poor in the US) is correct, especially as a child.

> Poor people in the US, the demographic being discussed here, all have access to free medical care at the same clinics middle class people use. This is partly paid for by the government from taxes and partly subsidized by the non-poor users of medical services.

This is simply not true. Maybe it was for you growing up where you lived, but I can assure you it isn't today in any part of the country I am familiar with. Our poor friends most certainly do not receive "free medical care at the same clinics middle class people use."

A lot of the these programs don't cover a good chunk of the working poor. If you worked full time at a minimum wage job in california for example, you'd be over the limits and wouldn't have healthcare as a result.

> Poor people in the US, the demographic being discussed here, all have access to free medical care at the same clinics middle class people use.

No, they don't. Poor people in the US have access to emergency care from the same hospital ERs other people use. They do not, as a rule, have access to general healthcare from the same clinics middle class people use; some of them may have Medicaid managed care plans that cover clinics otherwise used by the middle class, and some clinics that also have a middle class clientele may take fee-for-service Medicaid, but neither of those is generally the case. And some of the poor being discussed will not have access to Medicaid, anyway (not all states participate in expansion, and not all the poor are covered, especially in non-expansion states.)

I second that. I grew up poor in the US as well and received entirely free healthcare. I have a few poor relatives that receive free healthcare now due to their low income status, it's quite decent. They get access to exactly the same system as anybody else until you get into the top ~20% or so that are buying another tier of healthcare (easier access to the best specialists and latest medtech & biotech is the primary gap).

In the U.S. we have Medicaid for low-income earners. So the bottom 20% the article mentions would largely qualify for free health care: https://eligibility.com/medicaid/texas-tx-medicaid-benefits

Have you looked at Medicaid eligibility requirements?

It is a common misunderstanding that if you’re poor you get Medicaid. Eg. In Florida no matter how poor your are you don’t qualify unless you’re disabled, have children, or are pregnant. In other states there are hard income limits which are incredibly low, and earns a dollar more, you don’t qualify. You go from having free Medicaid to needing to pay $1000 per month in premiums which obviously you still can’t afford.

Edit: actually looks like it’s the same thing in Texas, if you’re poor you don’t qualify. You have to have kids or be disabled. These are all the states that refused the federal funding for Medicaid expansion I guess.

This is why we should allow medicaid buy in.

Interesting; I wonder if the kids thing is why I always hear from conservatives that medicaid is all we need in this area. "It's your fault for not wanting to start a family like a normal American."

> Eg. In Florida no matter how poor your are you don’t qualify unless you’re disabled, have children, or are pregnant.

There are 4.4 million people on Medicaid in Florida. That's about 21% of the population, which matches up with the national Medicaid figure of 22% of the US population.

How does that relate? Grass is often green. So are leaves.

> In the U.S. we have Medicaid for low-income earners. So the bottom 20% the article mentions would largely qualify for free health care:

Medicaid isn't necessarily free healthcare:

“States can impose copayments, coinsurance, deductibles, and other similar charges on most Medicaid-covered benefits, both inpatient and outpatient services, and the amounts that can be charged vary with income. All out of pocket charges are based on the individual state’s payment for that service.”

https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid/cost-sharing/out-of-pocket...

As an American who's seen and experienced "the bottom 20%" in our country, this was my first thought. People in America "consume" more economically because it's our only option. If our cost of living is higher relative to our average income compared to other developed countries then of course more of our money is economically "consumed". Notice there's no mention or comparison to other key economic indicators like savings, quality of life and upward economic mobility. Statistically most of America's "middle class" lives paycheck to paycheck. According to a recent article on CNBC 60% of Americans couldn't afford an unexpected $1000 expense.

"Just 40 percent of Americans are able to cover an unexpected $1,000 expense, such as an emergency room visit or car repair, with their savings, according to a survey from personal finance website Bankrate."

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/23/most-americans-dont-have-the...

> Should they count this as "income"?

You certainly could include that in the total government benefits category (including it into income is questionable and probably unnecessary), which is regularly done for example when tabulating individual conditions & resources that segments have access to. That picture gives you a combination of income, entitlements, welfare, etc.

The US jumps off the page in this case however, as the US spends 10x or more per capita on healthcare versus Argentina.

For example it would not make sense in the unusual US system, to ignore that the bottom ~25% get free healthcare (which is an extremely expensive social transfer). You would want to consider their healthcare picture when looking at their total condition. If you don't look at the comprehensive, then you would miss that the US welfare state has vastly expanded and improved over the last 20, 30, 50 years. That is, ignoring these details is only effective if you are dealing with an entirely stagnant system (not likely).

I don't think anybody would argue that eg Russia pensions should be ignored when looking at any comprehensive view of their condition as a people. It's a fundamental part of their system, their social contract, and their well-being nationally.

The funny part is the article at the same time arguing how much benefits people receive and thus them not being poor while at the same time pointing out the US is great despite social programs, heavily implying that it would be even better with even less taxation and less "government assistance programs" that provide "an incentive, and the means, not to work."

I would find it a lot more fair to not counting all those benefits in my analysis, if I'd want to get rid of them.

The website appears to be from some sort of right-libertarian organization, so I'm not surprised by this.

How does the publisher of the article affect how surprised you are by anecdotes?

The agenda is clear enough to make it useless as a source of information. Just peeking at their position on birthright citizenship solidifies this

Be careful about jumping to conclusions before you read the full article.

"The high consumption of America’s “poor” doesn’t mean they live better than average people in the nations they outpace, like Spain, Denmark, Japan, Greece, and New Zealand. This is because people’s quality of life also depends on their communities and personal choices, like the local politicians they elect, the violent crimes they commit, and the spending decisions they make."

It's a wholly schizophrenic article. It is also completely ignorant of global financial markets and currency markets.

It's basically a useless statistic that you can read the way you want - does a burger-flipper in McD in US make more burgers? does the price of healthy food have an impact? is USD valued excessively? does this value show the importance of American global military power? do Americans save too little? are the taxes too high elsewhere?

I mean - this is a pointless statistic and poverty is relative to the local community. $1 will not buy you a burger in NYC, but will get you one somewhere else....

In that case, the title is very misleading.

Not unless the reader assumes that money equates directly to quality of life.

America doesn't really have a reputation for wise spending habits and relaxed working habits.

That throw-away about "the violent crimes they commit" is a particularly amusing tell.

It's impossible to take the content on this site seriously. if you look at the Daily section you'll find the usual curriculum of stock right-wing interests and talking points - transparent climate change denial, attacks on the earnings of federal government workers, attacks on the EPA, stock anti-gun control talking points, stock anti-abortion talking points, and so on.

It's absolutely disingenuous to pretend this is an objective fact-based site when in fact it's just another right-wing blog with a political angle to sell.

For comparison here are official USDA figures and French ENFAM figures on food security.

https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/fo...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5876965/

This particular site is definitely strongly right-leaning. However, the vast majority of its claims are based in objective scientific studies and reporting. It's a pretty rare bird, don't see a lot of sites with its style.

So, if you explore the site a bit more, you'll come across a page on racial issues, which among other things includes this fun tidbit:

> Apes, on the contrary, can grasp in this way with the hind-foot as well as the fore-foot, and were therefore regarded as four-handed. Many tribes, however, among the lower races of men, especially many negro tribes, use the foot in the same way as the hand.

Can you explain to me why they'd include such a "fact"?

To be fair, the actual "fact" they claim is that an evolutionary biologist in the 1800s said that, but 1800s evolutionary biologists said many things, so why include that statement specifically as a fact? Especially as I'm sure if I asked them, they'd claim not to endorse such views. But if they don't endorse those views, why bring that fact to the forefront, instead of some other?

They are strongly right-leaning. Their selection of information that they present is heavily biased in its selection, but I believe that the statistics they present are true.

I don't think they would call anyone the "lower races" though. That was a quote from an 1800's biologist. They (the site editors) probably do believe that people of African descent are a bit stupider than other folks. Not sure whether they (the site editors) would believe it is genetic or cultural. It's not like anyone is surprised that an 1800's colonialist would use such language.

The statistics they present, on the whole, are still a useful bit of information to read. A lot of the information they have on gun control was both surprising and trustworthy. Just make sure they're not your only source- it would not be balanced. They are a bit malicious in their selection bias. They might be a gateway drug to the alt-right, but they also present a lot of information that other media specifically avoids because it is inflammatory and bad for business.

Ahh... The 80/20 principle. I throw 80% of facts and provide 20% of opinion to tie these facts together in a way that I want.

I mean.... The article literally acknowledges that an average Spanish person has a higher standard of life, than the bottom 20% of household income families in US. But somehow the same people manage to be wealthier?!?!?!

Also - the name Just Facts is factually untrue, because the author spends more than half of the article on opinions.

- Oh, I always forget that those statistics are computed differently in US. In US this is family income, while most other places it's personal income.

The article is propaganda translucently pushing an anti-poor narrative.

Flagged.

"Just Facts"

"Your source for reliable research"

"A resource for independent thinkers"

Starts off with a made up study that links to itself. Can't get published in any journal, and no peer review. Proclaims the article meets "academic standards"... spends half the article railing against the NY Times. That's something you see all the time in research papers -- rants against a newspaper. /s

This site sets off my fake news alarm. If you want to write an article, write an article. Don't make up a fake research paper. If you're going to lie about this, what else are you lying about. You know who needs a fake research paper to lend their writing credibility? Fake news. I don't trust a single word on the page.

Can someone check me on this? It seems that by equating spending/consumption with wealth, the things that cost us more (healthcare, transport, telecoms, etc) than other nations are being counted as wealth when really they're just overpriced and the profit (generally) goes into someone else's pocket?

At a very basic level, if my quality of life is shitty because I have to work too much and I wind up buying dinner more because I can't afford the time to cook, that's counted as "wealth" in this calculation. I could be misinterpreting it, but I don't see how.

That's how you get increased GDP - force people to get services, that they should not need to get.(think tax services in US for individuals)

If you forced everyone to pay for each Thank you and Please, your GDP would skyrocket!

It's extremely hard to compare apples to oranges like this.

I'm an American former military wife and Americans have trouble figuring out how to compare the value of a military compensation package to a civilian one because the two are structured so differently. It's so bad, people in the military sometimes think that they would be better off leaving the military for a better paid job, but those who actually do that tend to report money is tighter and quality of life worse as a civilian. You don't get much cash pay in the military, but flashing your ID gets you access to a ton of stuff for "free" that all costs money if you leave the military system and try to access similar services.

So that's within the same country with the same currency, same federal tax system, etc. Trying to compare across countries is far harder.

Decades ago, I saw a study (now completely out of date) that asked questions like "how many meals per day do you get?" It found that less than 1/2% of Americans were poor by the expectations of India.

Many materially poor nations have more stay-at-home moms, stronger social fabric and family ties and other things of value that enhance quality of life and are generally overlooked in studies of this sort.

In some sense, I don't care how America compares to other countries. I just know we do a poor job of taking care of our people in certain metrics. We need to stop quibbling about whether or not it's worse than a third world country and focus on resolving some of these issues.

We need to fix our busted housing supply system that cranks out oversized homes that are a mismatch for our current demographic and creates nothing but a thing I call "suburban hell." We need to fix our healthcare issues.

We no doubt could stand to work on other things, but those two are so bad they are chronically in the headlines.

There's some weird circular referencing within this article. One example is the claim of tax rates disincentivizing work, which references another justfacts article. Following that article, it basically gives a weak "some economists believe" statement without much rigor, and further on even negates the referenced claim with "In general, findings indicate that the labor supply of so called “primary earners” tends to be less responsive to changes in marginal tax rates"

I thought there were some relevant points on improving ways we measure poverty but consumption seems to be a less than ideal metric to me at face value because consumption can be propped up by bad debt. A consumption to debt ratio may be more appropriate.

Intuitively, this makes sense. Why would immigrants influx into the United States with no hope of improving their economic situation?

From the NY Times article this article critiques: 'A prime example is their claim that “America is the richest country” in the OECD, “but we’re also the poorest, with a whopping 18% poverty rate—closer to Mexico than Western Europe.”'

The scale of poverty in Mexico is much higher than in the U.S. And higher still in central America. This "3rd World U.S." narrative is often repeated, but as the author shows it has no basis in reality.

> This "3rd World U.S." narrative is often repeated, but as the author shows it has no basis in reality.

Right. The Reality is that the US is at the very bottom of developed (OECD) countries, and is often more comparable to developing countries than developed ones.

>Why would immigrants influx into the United States with no hope of improving their economic situation?

You are correct that people want to influx into the US from very poor undeveloped countries (3rd world). You'll find that hundreds of millions of people living in developed (OECD) countries have no interest in living in the US.

If you want meaningful and useful comparisons, compare the US to developed (OECD) countries. There is nothing to be gained from comparing a major league team to a team of beginners.

Are you saying the only people that immigrate to the US are from undeveloped countries?

I think Silicon Valley would clearly show that’s false.

Well, economic factors play a role. At least on paper, ~100k$/year in SF/Silicon Valley fresh out of college seems like a sweet deal from other countries (personally I started at 36ke/year aka 40k$/year in France) and the complete salary grid looks like that.

But there is also the technical and professional factors, most of the big tech firms are US based, and even if these are international companies, a large chunk of their man power and all key decision making is US based.

That being said, working for a (formerly) French company that was acquired by a large US tech company, I saw very few people taking the opportunity to relocate in the US when we were acquired, maybe 3 or 4 at most on a work force of ~100. And personally I don't see myself migrating to the US.

Of course not.

I'm saying the extreme majority of people who want to immigrate to the US are from developing/undeveloped countries, and likely a very large percentage of people who actually make it are also from developing/undeveloped countries.

But that’s true for probably every country.

Yes, though the point is that other countries doen't use it as a sign their country is "the best" or "perfect" in the same way Americans do.

Poverty is always relative. Until we change that definition, we’ll always have people in poverty no matter how much the poor’s Living situation improves.

I mean... Poverty is a well understood concept. If you're able to pay for basic needs* without experiencing hardship - you're not poor.

* - Basic needs expand with progress. But things like food, shelter, clothes and education are pretty ingrained now.

They're comparing to Europe. We don't have an influx of immigrants from Europe.

If you've spent much time at all in pretty much any European country you would know how much better the general quality of life is than in USA, even/especially amongst the poor.

I'm not sure consumption is the best metric.

If Europe has such a better quality of life than the US then why are the immigration stats so skewed in the US’s favor?

About 3x as many Europeans immigrate to the US than the other way around.[1] These numbers only look at Western Europe, if you added the whole continent it would be a much larger gap. It would be 2 million more if you add Eastern Europe.

[1]https://mises.org/wire/3-times-many-europeans-move-us-other-...

1. Western Europeans mostly speak the language in the US, so they have an easy time living there, while most Americans only speak English so would have a harder time living in most of Europe.

2. The US is great for people in upper income brackets who can actually manage to migrate, not so much for the lower income people who can't.

More immigration-friendly and better marketing.

That premise only holds water if you ignore the bottom 50% of Europe, which includes Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Moldova, Bulgaria, Belarus, etc.

Between Russia and Ukraine there are 190 million people. The bottom half of those people are living in third world conditions. Russia is Europe's largest nation.

In the villages of Western Russia, you've got a lack of access to even basic medical supplies. Doctors are earning $200-$300 per month, they're aging out of the system, and they can't find nurses period -

"Putin’s Health-Care Cuts Spark Protests in Russian Heartland"

"The country has 100 billionaires, and yet more than a third of Russians can’t afford to buy two pairs of shoes a year."

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-05-07/putin-s-h...

I was referring mainly to the EU countries.

It's not my experience. Which countries specifically are you talking about?

Countries in East Europe can have lower quality of life, mostly depends on your income.

Western & Northern, for sure.

No, it's a crazy metric. We consume vastly more healthcare, for example. Is that wealth? This article is insane, and the site has an extraordinarily clear (and manifest) right-wing bias.

But Europe doesn't represent most of the world's population or land area.

It sounds like these people could be going into debt. The graph compares consumption, which does not imply the spending was the direct consequence of having some earned income.

How about necessary expenses? In the US a vehicle is a near-necessity, whereas other countries actually have functional public transport. Car ownership just entails higher expenses, with no improvement in quality of life.

Well car ownership can improve quality of life. You spend less time in bad weather.. you can live in a quieter area outside of town.

Does discharging debt in bankruptcy count as earned income?

I think there can be tax implications. Maybe a judge can waive those though if they aren't by default.

I have a tendency to spend some effort evaluate sources I'm unfamiliar with before I spend time reading their material in detail these days, largely to save time. As such, I glanced around the site and saw they had an article global warming and had a look.

The material looks like it's focused on facts and well-cited, but this rapidly started to feel like a "Merchants of Doubt" kind of product. Feel free to look at the Global Temperature Changes section and make your own assessment - but this feels like politics before (distorted) facts to me, and I'd expect the rest of the site to be similar.

https://www.justfacts.com/globalwarming.asp

Seems misleading because it doesn't account for debt or differing costs of living [edit: doesn't account for it effectively].

"Another important strength of this data is that it is adjusted for purchasing power to measure tangible realities like square feet of living area, foods, smartphones, etc. This removes the confounding effects of factors like inflation and exchange rates. Thus, an apple in one nation is counted the same as an apple in another."

The problem is that this article is all over the place, and seems to be deliberately muddying the waters. For example:

"The upshot is laid bare by the fact that this OECD measure assigns a higher poverty rate to the U.S. (17.8%) than to Mexico (16.6%). Yet, World Bank data shows that 35% of Mexico’s population lives on less than $5.50 per day, as compared to only 2% of people in the United States."

The article is full of loaded words, which already makes me distrust it, and then I find these kinds of silly comparisons...

"Thus, an apple in one nation is counted the same as an apple in another." Em.... Nope. That's factually incorrect. PPP is a metric for overall currency value, not apples to apples comparison.

If you wish to point out apples - the cheapest retail apples I can buy in NY is $3.21/kg, while retail price for apples in Germany is $1.94/kg. The apple PPP index is, anecdotally, 1.65. The formal PPP index for Germany is 1.08, as in $1 buys you 8% more in Germany... that is factually untrue at the lower end of the income.

Averages like purchasing power don't tell the whole story for poor people. You have to ask how much of the basic necessities of life they can actually get for their money.

Does it account for access to health care? How about the way we underfund schools in poor neighborhoods?

The quality of life is what matters.

I really enjoyed the post, could we not discuss if it’s factual before we down vote it to hell...

Yeah but considering the wealth of the USA the bottom 20% should have the highest living standard in the world.

But what food do they eat ? How much time off do they have ? What's their living conditions ?

What food they do eat is largely their own choice. I wouldn't be surprised for example, if the bottom 20% of the US would spend more money per capita on food (purchasing parity adjusted) that median Spanish family, and still manage to eat worse than them.

It's adjusted for cost of living.

Even considering healthcare?

Yes, because the US has relatively generous social programs that cover healthcare for the poorest.

In the USA 20% is a span large enough to cover everyone from those who have roof over their heads and get by, to those who never know if today will be the day they get to eat something.

The only actual fact is that the bottom 20% of American residents spend as much as some developed EU national averages.

But then the whole swathe of conclusions are pure ignorance.

If I were to compare my $20 purchasing power in rural Pennsylvania vs the the same $20 in London, I would get more in London. It's really not the same. There are a lot of services that compound to create a lot of cost for people, that don't exist in many other places.

And then there's the failure to recognize the status of USD, that makes this comparison wholly irrelevant. Donald Trump starts a trade war and the result is 5% rise in value of USD against multiple currencies.

Weird, this post pops onto the top of HN, and then disappears completely from the front page.

That's just the usual tug of war between upvotes and flags. I don't know if it's weird but it's certainly common.

AFAIK Flagging something should be reserved for spam, not for disagreeable content. So upvotes should really override flags.

Any rebuttal of the actual data in the article rather than just calling out air quotes?

What a ridiculous site. "In other words, we are conservative/libertarian in our personal views—but unlike many policy and media organizations—Just Facts is devoted to objectivity, and we do not favor facts that support our viewpoints. Instead, we will report any fact that meets our Standards of Credibility, regardless of the implications."

Except that's never true.

1) If your views make you more inclined to report on / investigate along certain ideological lines, you'll wind up reporting vastly more "facts" that fit your views, even if you're only reporting "facts".

2) Other news media outlets will cherry-pick your facts, even if you don't.

3) Unconscious bias is a fucking thing, guys.

This is not neutrality.

Their bias is patently obvious if you visit their page on abortion:

https://www.justfacts.com/abortion.asp

The entire article is dedicated to repeating typical pro-life talking points. For example, a timeline of when the fetus' heart starts beating, "debunking" cherry-picked statements from Planned Parenthood, and testimonials from people born prematurely.

For example, if anyone is curious, check their "facts" on energy: https://www.justfacts.com/energy.asp

There's a giant section on the benefits of fracking, but the environmental impact section is limited to "generally" not being a problem. They use that word "generally" like 10 times, and they don't bother to report the facts that in many cases it has been a direct and obvious problem. That's not neutrality.