Is $140,000 the New Poverty Line for Americans?
https://www.vice.com/en/article/is-140000-the-new-poverty-line-for-americans/Open linkView original on lemmy.world270
Comments127https://www.vice.com/en/article/is-140000-the-new-poverty-line-for-americans/Open linkView original on lemmy.world
Rent is like 50% of my income currently and I'm trapped because nowhere charges less for the same space and I don't qualify for rentals without a guarantor that I no longer have. At this age, my parents were in their 3rd house on a single income with 3 kids.
The wealthy really fucked us over, hey. They're scum for what they did.
They're scum for what they are currently still doing, and must be stopped.
1000%. Preach it!
They are also scum for what they are doing.
The wealthy do what the wealthy do, voters in their millions enable them.
Don't insult people over their nature. Money corrupts, especially over many generations. They just play a rigged game and have the edge to win. Time for some regulations. Social capitalism is the answer, fair taxes even on rich people. Prevent wealth hoarding over a certain point. Stop insulting people and get to three voting booth. Start telling real people to change their vote.
Spare us the civility horseshit. Their nature? The level of organized greed and cruelty that is being inflicted on the world is NOT natural. It is abnormal and it is evil. The "edge to win" means they had a rich white mommy and daddy who also had a rich white mommy and daddy.
And "some regulations" and "fair tax" aren't going to fix shit. Social capitalism? What the holy fuck is that? The winning entry in an oxymoron contest? Fuck off liberal.
Acting humane is about keeping society off a slippery slope not about the billionaires. Keeping people in check is a States prerogative, acting humanely should be a societies first priority.
Being a raging lunatic killing everything and everyone you disagree with sounds a lot like the nazis but left leaning. ;)
An child rapist is also just dealing with their nature.
Putting them in a wood chipper is fair to them, we just need to regulate which children they are allowed to rape.
Punishment has to be about protection for the people and about rehabilitation of the individual. Don't forget the pedophile has no choice in his proclivities. So getting him to make healthy safe choices is the goal and protecting children from him. Not killing him, but storing him safely is not about his wellbeing but about keeping the rest of society acting humanely. People here talk about basic income all the time. Not being humane is a slippery slope for society, and the cost of not entering it is very much worth it.
I wasn't actually talking about child rape there. Capitalists will rape us and anyone who suggest we just need to regulate the conditions of the rape is fucking insane.
I do not consent.
Same and I live in what would be considered a rural state. We don't have any big cities and a studio apartment would cost me about $1500 a month about 50 miles outside our biggest city and $1800+ within 50 miles of Portland Maine which is our biggest city. This shit is out of control. Our wages are more in line with a rural state, but our rent prices are near what you'd expect in a bigger city.
that's because your real estate is bought up by people like me with 150K salaries who think your 1800 rent is dirt cheap. In Boston a studio is over 3K now.
i know people who moved to Maine to find cheaper housing because none is available in Boston area. and the people who live in Boston fight any/all development to expand the housing supply, including renters. like i have friends who rent, who pay 3K a month, and then go to town meetings to fight new housing developments, and then complain went there rent goes up another 10%
Exactly, I make a fraction of what you make and I could never afford to buy a house anywhere. Back when I first started renting 16 years ago, my friend and I rented a 2 bedroom place for $450 a month and now a studio is 4 times that in rural states.
The owner of the place I currently rent has surprised us with a Christmas notice that she's selling the place and we have to leave by April. We can't afford anywhere near here so we'll have to move very far north and our commutes will at least double. Maybe triple. Locals are getting forced out of places they've lived their whole lives. This shit is fucked up. People are too damn greedy and selfish.
"a family of four needs $136,500 a year"
I could see that, more likely in more expensive areas. You aren't getting anywhere in New York or San Francisco on $140K.
A month?
plenty of people live in these cities on less than 140K and are doing fine.
I live in Boston and I do great and a few years ago I was only making 70K.
I'm not sure what are the living standards in Boston or even if those exist, but good for you.
Boston scares and mystifies me and I know nothing of your bizarre customs.
it's a city with a lot of money. but nobody shows it off the way they do in nyc/la. it's very 'modest'.
people with 50million in the bank drive a 30K prius and wear eddie bauer and agonizing over their property tax going up $500 as if it will bankrupt them.
you can still live in those areas with that income lol, unless you buying multimillionaire penthouses.
The poverty line is for the nation overall. Using some of the highest cost of living areas to set it doesn't make sense. Why would you say a family making considerably more than most of their peers is poor because they would struggle to afford living somewhere else entirely?
It should be localized. it cuts both ways. Why would we say a family struggling to make ends meet is not really poor because they could live comfortably on that salary in a different region?
I mean, we're poor but we make less than half that just outside San Francisco. Honestly we're doing okay. We don't get any of the luxuries my parents had at our age, but we have smartphones so we can never get away from anything!
How much is your rent, if it's not too much to ask?
we live with family, maintain the property and shit. that's our rent. given our locale it comes out to about 15k/yr net we're saving.
i'm disabled. my medical care costs more than rent would. should i have included that too?
Yes. That seems pretty relevant to your financial story.
well, if you're comparing your income to the average, then yes, anything that substantially puts you out of the average would be pertinent for a comparison
Like always, how far your money goes depends on multiple factors. 140k in the Midwest alone means you're living comfortably. Like all bills paid off, a lot of extra money for leisure, etc.
If you have a family and live in the bay area, then it's not that much. I personally wouldn't put it at poverty, but it'd be somewhat close to being paycheck to paycheck (assuming you still need to pay mortgage and whatnot)
I highly recommend that you read the actual substack article.
The claim is based around how the original poverty line was the cost of food multiplied by 3. This assumes that food is 33% of your spending and that your other expenses are approximately the other 67%.
The $140k value is based around the fact that the ratio has shifted immensely. Food is cheap in the US relative to the other goods/services required to live in society. If you take the new ratio and extrapolate it out, the multiplier is over 10x the cost of food to account for the other components of spending.
Even if you want to debate the actual number itself. The poverty line is laughable and anyone living at it is legitimately destitute, not just in "casual poverty"
The issue is... how do you accurately determine the poverty line without just taking some number and multiplying it. Because not only do costs vary by location, so does their ratio. So you really need a set of costs per location added together, then averaged based on the density of population in the area the costs were pulled from. And of course at that point the finaly number is probably true nowhere. So what is the use of it anyway. Each specific area needs it's own poverty line. The smaller the area the more useful and accurate the number will be. But you can't just say "fine, we will do it by zipcode". Because zipcodes have significant variation of sizes. It needs to be done intelligently and constantly as things shift. So in the end, there simply is no reasonably accurate poverty line unless a human calculates it for a specific address.
Take how much it takes for a living wage in the most expensive part of the country.
And that's it. If you try to shrink wrap it down to where it's bare subsistence anywhere, you trap people in places where everyone with the means leaves. Sure, the cost of living is low, but there's no jobs because everyone with money left. So it becomes impossible to get by, let alone amass the funds needed to relocate.
I guess it depends what you plan to use the number for. If you plan to set the min wage on it, you will destroy small businesses in poorer areas, and probably cause the chains to leave those same areas.
This is already happening, but it's better to keep paying the poor less under all circumstances as far as republicans and centrist democrats are concerned.
Can't create a permanent subclass of flyover morlocks if you pay them like the blue state eloi.
No jobs will mean no people eventually. That will solve poverty.
Same plan for make America healthy again. Kill off the ones who can't afford to be healthy.
The poverty line is about 32K for a family of four, and 15K for a single person.
fed minimum wage full time is a income of 15K per year. this of course, varies by state, w/ CA min wage becoming 36K a year.
I truly feel for the people that are in that boat..
Which is nuts, because a two bedroom (hope your kids are the same gender) place is gonna be 24k of that. So 8k left over for insurance (car, life, home, and medical) food, childcare, all other bills, taxes, Christmas, school supplies, children's clothes and shoes. It's way below the number that would cover half of that.
Plus in all too many places you’re practically forced to buy a car
ISTG there are more commenters up in here who obviously didn't read the article than ones who did.
That doesn't even buy a single politician.
I thought I heard Sam Bankman-Fried say he was surprised at how little it cost, it was like $50k or something.
State level politicians are like $5k-$10k. Shockingly cheap but you do need to buy most of the set.
I live alone in a moderately low cost of living area making about 52k take home. With no extenuating expenses related to health I can put away a hundred or two a month after rent, gas, utilities, food and car maintenance (I drive and fix old shit myself rather than make a car payment). But that is literally all I can do. If I had a second person to support or was in any other area I'd be underwater quick.
It's mentioned in the substack article that for a single individual his calculations place the poverty line around 50k, while 140k is for a family.
yeah but is your income going to go up? or are you like 50 and it's maxxed out?
context is everything. if you're 25 and your salary will double in 5-10 years your situation isn't bad.
blows my mind in my city how many 22-25 year olds scream how poor they are when they are just starting out their lives and think their 50-60K wage is 'poverty' when it will be 100K in 5 years.
who? the ultra religious/conservative types?
22-25 is way too young to be doing either of those things.
This is highly dependant on where you live, as has been said before.
Yes. The people saying no are no longer temporarily embarrassed millionaires but temporarily embarrassed middle class. Have or have not, and 140k is have not given inflation, healthcare, education, food, rent/mortgage, energy etc.
140K is more 85% of the USA population.
It's upper middle class. it's about 5 grand a month in disposable income. assuming a 1/3 tax rate and 3K in rent/mortage
it's also what I make, and yeah i have that much disposable income per month.
how many kids do you have and how much of your income is going towards their education/childcare?
If $140,000 is the poverty line can I please make poverty wages?
This calculation is for a family of four. Please read more than the headline and comments.
If my wife and I both made 70k I think we could comfortably raise 2 kids.
As is? We would need some serious help.
No obviously not.
This calculation is for a family of four. Please read more than the headline and comments.
Well shit thats a little Less than 3x what I make lol. 💀💀💀💀
The substack is well worth the read.
Math that a lot of us educated poverty-livers have done before. Its refreshing to see one of the econ-bros validate it.
Which method does the U.S. use to calculate its poverty line?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States#Poverty_income_thresholds
TL;DR: "The U.S. poverty line is calculated as three times the cost of a minimum food diet in 1963, adjusted for inflation."
Adjusted for inflation using an inflation statistic that does not factor in changes to the price of medical care, housing, or energy.
Adjusted for not real adjusted inflation. But like including a gameboy so it feels legitimate.
And what's not talked about is that food prices have been kept low this entire time via government while the cost of everything else has skyrocketed.
"My plastic surgeon said smiling is a waste of Botox, but I can't help but let out a boisterous ha cha fucking cha at the absurdity. If poor people don't want to spend so much money on cost of living they should just go live in the places nobody lives because there are no jobs or resources."
"Poor people are just so bad at managing money. That's why they have to blindly trust everything we say. We know how to spend money wisely, and we know what's best for the economy and them."
"Get out of the way Plebs! We're betting it all on AI!"
"Oh my! Well, that was unfortunate but also completely unforeseeable. I guess the only thing left to do is brush ourselves off, pat ourselves on the back for being such altruistic utilitarians, ignore the screams from the plebs and go again."
"So where's our bailout? Time is money."
Yeah you're right, this is verging on dishonest. The whole point of him picking Caldwell, NJ was to find an extremely median place to live and avoid accusations of cherry-picking San Francisco or Manhattan prices. Essex county is 13th out of 21 counties in NJ for income, NJ is the 11th largest state by population. I'm sure you could find something more mundane, but not that would affect the final numbers to any significant degree unless you were cherry-picking in the other direction.
Sure there's lots of states with much lower property values, but you have to weight it based on where people actually live. Telling poor people to move to Buttfuck, ID and get a job there instead doesn't work.
Like there is a figure low enough for either party.
Maybe. Depends on where you live. If you live somewhere relatively inexpensive it's not bad. However, I'd have to caution that this sounds like gross income (I did a search and the article didn't say), and if it is, this isn't great. Taxes, medical, any union dues, and hopefully a significant chunk going into a retirement fund will eat this up quickly. This is in the 24% fed tax bracket - not including child credit or any pre-tax deductions for something like a 401k, and no State tax taken. 140k take-home would be pretty good.
Yes. That as a household income is not actually that far from two median individual incomes. As someone in a high cost of living area, I can see you’d be very restricted on less than that, and it’s tough to see how you’d ever afford to own a home.
as income, that is quite a bit above middle income. unless you living in very rich neighborhoods, its still affordable in places even with hcol.
<100k is considered low income though in HCOL.
God I wish that were me
uh huh, thank you vice and mr wallstreet substack poster for spreading such awareness, but where does that leave people in actual poverty?
Uh... right where they are? The American welfare state is insufficient across the board, so it needs to be strengthened across the board, and employers across the board should be forced to pay living wages.
Well he addresses that, the lowest level gets some assistance. Once you reach a certain income to climb out you lose the assistance and effectively are back in poverty again.
vast majority people in actual poverty spend their lifetime in poverty. about 10% make it out, mostly via education for gifted kids.
Well shit thats a little Less than 3x what I make lol. 💀💀💀💀
This calculation is for a family of four. If you live alone on a single income then you're probably right about at the line
No.
The answer is NO, it's not. However, to be completely fair, I've bookmarked the "supporting materials" to give it a review later when I have a little more time.
As someone who grew up in a family actually straggling the poverty line, there's simply 0% chance that any family anywhere in this country is living in poverty with that kind of income. It's well above what most households are bringing in, and while there may be a limited subset of circumstances where that money isn't sufficient, that's not what poverty is.
And I read through some of the comments in this thread -- Assuming they've come from real humans not pushing an agenda, it makes me ashamed to be associated with those people.
The original Substack addresses this point, but the short of it is: Most income gains from 35k to 100k are cancelled out by a loss of government benefits, so there's a lot less difference between these than you'd expect. You only start making real gains starting from 100k. Now a family making 100k will have expendable income that's true, but the vast majority of its income will still go towards essentials so it's still one emergency away from insolvency.
Edit: This means that a family with two incomes and two young children making 50k is getting a market price equivalent of 50k in government benefits, so we can crudely approximate families straddling the poverty line as making 100k net. In that case the difference between the effective official poverty line and the proposed poverty line is a large but realistic 40%.
This makes way more sense. Thanks for the explanation.
Unfortunately, no it doesn't address that point. It's basically, if you pervert the definition from a century ago and interpret it in one specific way for a way of life that's hardly anywhere close to the standard/average, then you can maybe make a clickbait case for a super high income that drives engagement. Think of the click through and comments!
So what you're saying is, if you're not on the brink of starvation and/or homelessness you're not poor?
Like, someone who hasn't been able to afford vacations or any other luxury, is one medical issue or car issue away from homelessness, and doesn't go to the doctor for routine/preventative stuff because it's too expensive, isn't poor. So long as they pay rent on time and eat three meals a day.
No, what I'm saying is $140,000 is not the new poverty line for Americans.
dude, everyone is one medical issue away from bankrupcy. if i got cancer i'd go bankrupt.
yes, as long as you pay rent, have heat, and other necessities you're not poor in in poverty.
i don't know what your standard is, but i grew up with a roof over my head, food in my belly, and zero luxuries. we were considered middle class. not poor. our houses were old and crappy, and our cars were used based models. the only 'luxury' we had was cable tv.
the issue is now 'middle class' seems to mean 'upper middle class' as if if you can't lve in the best towns, with teh best schools, and travel to europe with your family every year, you are 'poor'. where i live people lve in posh expensive years, have the $5000 in electronics or more, are leasing new model cars, and traveling abroad 2-3x a year and claim they are 'in poverty'. because their salary is 'only' 100K.
It's not the line between being poor or not, it's the poverty line and what you're describing would be considered poverty.
What? You're not making any sense.
You really should read the article before commenting. I know you are not alone in this thread don't feel singled out, but they make a very good point.
bingo. where i live everyone thinks they are in 'poverty' because they can't afford luxuries like expensive cars, expensive vacations, and luxury housing. they are not anywhere near true poverty. but since most grew up wealthy/middle class, they think they are.
as someone who grew up lower-class, it blows my mind how poor most people are with money, and how they blame society rather than their own budgeting skills. i know people who make 40K a year who spend 10K a year traveling, and then cry poor.
No, it’s not. Having to use a budget and not spending whatever you want on anything you want at any time is not poverty. Fuck off with this.
I think the headline is a little misleading.
My gut reaction was the same as yours, but after reading the article I don’t think they are far off.
$140,000 for a family of four in certain locations could be doing very poorly.
After taxes, it’s about $110,000 a year. According to a few sits I found when seaching, the per year cost of a child varies by state. In NY, it’s approx $30k per year. So, for a family of four with two kids that $50k-60k a year.
That leaves about $60k a year. Housing costs in NY is approx $4.3k a month for a 3br house. . That’s $51,600 a year.
You now have $8,400 left for the utilities, food, clothing, etc.
The current federal poverty level is roughly $30k/yr which is basically impossible to make work.
No.
Yes. If you actually read what that means.
Does a single person need $140k? No.
Does a family with kids in a city? Yes.
That number is for a family of four. Could you imagine trying to pay today's costs to raise a family of four? You would basically need six figures
I read the article just fine, actually. If you actually understand what poverty means, you wouldn't make such a ridiculous claim. It'd have to be a really high cost-of-living city for that to be the case, but there are a lot of cities where a family can raise children on $140k easily. Affordability these days is difficult in general, I understand the frustration, and it's probably why people downvoted me by reflex, but creating a poverty line off cherry-picked conditions doesn't make any sense.
What is poverty to you?
The line has always been arbitrary.
when you can't pay for necessities. food, housing, clothing.
if you can afford these things. you aren't in poverty.
How much food, housing, and clothing?
If you have a family of 5 living in a 1 bedroom unit eating mac and cheese every night, they're technically housed and fed. Most people would say that's poverty though.
That's why I say the line has always been arbitrary.
depends on who you ask. depends on the size of the bedroom.
for a rich person, it would be a much higher threshold than for those who are poor. that's all about 'standards' of living.
i grew up on canned/frozen foods, and yeah ate a shitload of mac and cheese and other horrible foods. i hate plenty of calories, even if they were unhealthy. but it's what we could afford. i also only had cheap fall apart clothes. but i was never hungry, or cold. i didn't shared a bedroom, but many of my friends did. like a lot of poor people, we spent more on certain things like clothes because we could not afford nicer things that lasted longer. but where i lived... everyone was like that so it wasn't a big deal.
most of my peers where i live now, think i grew up in poverty, because they grew up much wealthier. i've been on first dates where the person lecture me how my parents were irresponsible to have me if they could not afford to pay for my college or buy me a new car at 16, etc. i usually laugh at their absurdly high standards, but to them it is a 'bare minimum' and anyone who doesn't have those things shouldn't exist.
for a family of 5 living in a 1 bedroom eating shitty food, any minor improvement would feel like a huge success. but waht rich people don't get about poor people is they tend to appreciate that they aren't homeless and starving, and don't really have a concept of nicer/healthier food because it doesn't exist in their social peer group. i never ate healthy food until i got to college because it was the first time in my life it was ever available to me. nobody in my rural working-class down ate that stuff, just like we didn't go to live performances, own luxury cars, or a ton of other stuff.
None of that changes the fact that poverty is still an arbitrary line.
I also never went hungry or cold, but had the power turned off at the house probably a half dozen times growing up because the bill got too far behind. Pretty sure my mother went hungry a few times to make sure we ate, but she always hid it. I shared a room with a sibling until I moved out. I'd argue I did grow up in poverty.
That being said, I have travelled through China, and pooped through a hole in the bottom of a moving train where people lived in a shack next to the train line with no running water or electricity at all. Those people also live in poverty, far worse than what I experienced.
So as a developed country, why can't we set the poverty line at a level where we WANT people to be? The line itself is just a tool to help us better set policies to reduce the number of people on one side of the line. Set it too high and it's difficult to move people across it, but set it too low and you're not helping a large number of people who aren't in a situation that is reasonable. There isn't any reason why we can't feed and house everyone with running water and electricity in this country, even with healthy food. So that should definitely be required. I'd argue, like the original article though, that other things should also be included. Like kids having access to a decent education, youth and adult participation in physical activities like sports, and the transportation required to get around (be that public transit in cities, or a personal vehicle in more rural locations)
There's your problem. Supply, demand, and entitlement.
"Entitlement?"
Back in 1960, minimum wage was $1.00/hour and the average US home was $11,000.00
A brand new high school graduate could be a homeowner in a decade.
Please explain to me how anyone wanting to be able to live like that is 'entitled.'
The new American dream is having a giant polycule and splitting a home between several paying adults
That actually does sound cool.
Damn entitled people, wanting to live within 4 hours of where they work...
Solution: move to a small town, Mr/Mrs Entitlement! Somewhere cheaper to live, where coincidentally the pay is lower and opportunities aren't as abundant. Also extremely limited mass-transit options but hey that's why you buy a car and get tied up in that whole mess. Not to mention property values doubling/tripling post-covid but I'm sure most folks have a few $100k laying around, especially in these particularly prosperous times.
Perhaps it's just a skill issue though? Lol
Also vastly fewer cultural and social options. Poor people don't deserve those things, I guess!
Poor people deserve to suffer, is an opinion far too many people hold.
the fact that you made this comparison tells me you are rich
I grew up in a rural area 2 hours city of the city, because it's all we could afford. i had no culture into i got to college.
am i suppose to feel like i was therefore impoverished or something?
...
Sounds like yes? You're saying yes. I don't understand your question.
I never felt impoverished until rich people told me i shouldn't be alive because my life doesn't meet there inflated living standards.
Just like my 150K a year salary feels rich to me, and they tell me it's shameful and a poverty wage.
What you don't understand is that you don't get to determine how other people live, or their living standards. They do.
You can feel bad for people like me for 'suffering', but what you don't get is that to us it was never suffering. it was a normal life. If you think my life was impoverished, it's likely because your own was so privledged. and to think anyone who doesn't live their life by your standards is 'less than' you is pure arrogance.
It's really not as bad as you make it sound. Have you ever lived here?
I grew up in a car-centric suburb and I never want to live there again. It's worse on most metrics. Transit sucks. Fewer options for food, entertainment, socializing, etc.
The fact that cars are necessary is really awful for poor people. I'm driving a 28-year-old car if a salvage title and I'm still paying hundreds for gasoline insurance and keeping fluids in it since it leaks oil, and that's when it's not burning the oil, because anything else would be unaffordable. We really need to stretch out grade separated rail Transit as deep into the suburbs as possible and then densify around it
So we should just sprawl out huh? That’s just making unsustainable towns.
Versus living in a shoebox like this permanently?
I'll take suburban sprawl over this any day of the week.
Also Suburbia isn't that much cheaper, especially these days. It's just worse. Rural areas are cheaper but you have lower wages that offset that so it's not even like you could just move out to Nowhere County anymore
Unfortunately true. Housing prices being regulated by supply and demand is the problem. Housing is a human right and should be guaranteed to everyone. Spot on, comrade!