U.S. Suffers Sharpest Rise in Poverty Rate in More Than 50 Years

Re:U.S. Suffers Sharpest Rise in Poverty Rate in More Than 5... by pietrovismara on Wednesday January 27, 2021 @12:36PM (#25931136)

Exactly. Some people seem to refer to poverty as living with the standards of 2000 years ago. Of course we improved. That doesn't mean that relative poverty is getting worse and that other factors like free time have worsened if compared with centuries ago.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:U.S. Suffers Sharpest Rise in Poverty Rate in More Than 5... by Aunche on Wednesday January 27, 2021 @02:36PM (#25932830)

>other factors like free time have worsened if compared with centuries ago.

This might be true if you consider being holed up with your family for the entirety of winter as "free time." Also, these studies always neglect the amount of random work that needed to be done before technology (e.g. fetching water from a well, chopping firewood, weaving baskets, etc).

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:U.S. Suffers Sharpest Rise in Poverty Rate in More Than 5... by iguy on Wednesday January 27, 2021 @03:31PM (#25933522)

Even ignoring time spent doing non-work things we don't do, free time has increased a lot over a century. We have good data on this. Factory shifts circa 1900 were long, and 2-day weekends rare.

Unless "centuries ago" means several centuries, in which case maybe it's murkier, the pre-industrial world was different. IIRC hours worked increased in the pre-industrial build-up to the revolution -- perhaps because there was more to buy, and people adjusted to try to buy things, rather than stopping when they had enough to eat.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:U.S. Suffers Sharpest Rise in Poverty Rate in More Than 5... by hrjfkgkgk on Wednesday January 27, 2021 @12:44PM (#25931251)

idk man poverty in the us is not as bad as in india but it sure is worse than east europe. there is a dude here stating inequality is not bad, perhaps they’d want to visit communist countries to see how wide the gap is between regular folks and the elite

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:U.S. Suffers Sharpest Rise in Poverty Rate in More Than 5... by inglor_cz on Wednesday January 27, 2021 @02:11PM (#25932480)

Have you ever visited a gypsy village in eastern Slovakia or in the Balkans? You know, the huts that barely stand? Or some of the most notorious housing projects?

That is a trip straight to the Middle Ages. Look at the following videos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZ7WHKU_UoY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Men6iwpLjno

Eastern Europe has some really bad places. IDK if USA is worse, but it would have to try.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:U.S. Suffers Sharpest Rise in Poverty Rate in More Than 5... by pietrovismara on Wednesday January 27, 2021 @02:31PM (#25932748)

Those are gypsy and you can find the same exact type of camps/villages in Western Europe, no need to go to Eastern Europe.

Their condition doesn't really depend on the poverty level of the country they live in, but other factors such as cultural and integration issues, not always caused by them.

In short, not a really good example of poverty.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:U.S. Suffers Sharpest Rise in Poverty Rate in More Than 5... by inglor_cz on Wednesday January 27, 2021 @02:36PM (#25932825)

I am a Czech, I know gypsies well, I had several classmates from all sorts of gypsy families - from very well integrated to the ghetto standard.

I would argue that multigenerational poverty in contemporary West has always something to do with cultural and integration issues. Plenty of refugees who came with a small bags of personal items have built middle class lives in a generation, even though they were foreign, did not know the language and faced crude racism from primitives.

[ Parent | on HN ]