California poorest state in the union

[angus]

I call bullshit on that "alternative" measure.  Lots of reasons, yada yada.  I don't care to go into it at the moment.  I post here mostly to comment on the fact that you missed the most important point of the article you posted.  It appears in the penultimate paragraph:

By either measure, poverty has stagnated. Earlier this year, the Census Bureau reported that the official poverty rate was virtually the same in 2011 and 2012. The alternative also shows little change in those years, a reflection of continued hardship in the wake of the recession.

This will be the case everywhere, and not just in California.  If the eradication of poverty is a goal--and I'm not say that it should or shouldn't be, but if it is--then the current US President, whose website claims that he is a "lifelong advocate for the poor,"  has a funny way of showing it.  Long-term unfunded liabilities are extended, and that has taken money away from programs that might have some impact among the impoverished (head start, and now foodstamps).  The shovel-ready projects that turned out not to be so shovel-ready, and now this PPACA boondoggle, which is already projected to cost three times the initial estimate, and will no doubt further reduce the amount of money allocated to programs which may reduce poverty.  The two million jobs "created" by Obama have turned out to be temporary and part-time, which have the net effect of merely prolonging the impoverished status of those who accepted them.  All of it may have a greater impact in California simply because there's more people (and more money!) in California than elsewhere, but you need to take a long tour of the United States before buying into this revisionist claim that California is more impoverished than the rest of the world.  True, the rent in many parts of California are 2.5 times as high as the rents in much of the country--I paid $1500 per month for a tiny one-bedroom apartment in the SF Bay area for three years, which was about twice what I paid for a similar-sized apartment in Boston for the previous five years--but the wages are higher as well, and generally so are the social safety nets.  Not to mention that being homeless where it's minus ten degrees fahrenheit tonight is a hell of a lot more impoverishing than being homeless where it's sixty degrees fahrenheit tonight.

Anyway, as I said, my goal wasn't necessarily to put down this "alternative" measure, since I imagine many scholars will do so immediately and with greater authority.  My goal is only to point out that the salient statement in this article deals not with California, but with the nation in general.  Poverty isn't being ameliorated.  It's being prolonged, at best, and perhaps exacerbated.

Thanks Obama.

[angus]

Okay, that was more of a rant than a response. 

I thought it was an interesting article.  For about twenty seconds, I even seriously considered its conclusion.  But really what is poverty?  I used to always say that I was poor growing up.  My father died when I was in the eighth grade and things were pretty tough after that.  Still, we always had enough food.  We always had cable TV service.  We always had a telephone.  (internet didn't yet exist, so I mention cable and phone)  We always had reasonably fashionable clothes.  We always had enough pocket change for a bag of weed and fast food and the sort of trinkets that could impress the members of the opposite sex sufficiently to get them to remove their pants.  Well, once in a while it worked, anyway.  I didn't go to a private university, and had to attend a state university, but still I had an education.  Is any of that poor?  In retrospect, I understand that I always understood that being broke was a temporary condition.  Poverty, though, isn't temporary. 

I suspect that none of us who post here really appreciate poverty on anything other than an academic level.  It's a gut thing.  Do you know where your next meal is coming from?  Do you know whether you'll be able to make rent?  Do you have to choose between eating and education?  Do you even understand the workings of the world well enough to know that you don't have to make that choice?  Sure, the rent is high Out West, but so is the level of the mercury in the thermometer, and so is the wage, and so is the general expectation of the populace upon the government, and so is the general educational level, not only of the social service workers, but also of the people who visit them.  Try getting a driver's license in Mississippi sometime.  Or registering to vote.  Or making a withdrawal at a bank!  I've done all of those things.  In Mississippi and in California.  I can assure you than Mississippi is far, far more impoverished than California.  I happened to have lived in Mississippi for a three-year period immediately after having lived in California for a three-year period, so I consider myself as qualified to comment on this as anyone.  Poverty is obvious.  Poverty is exceptional.  Poverty is unmistakeable.  It shows up in all levels of society.  It shows up in the fact that a transaction that takes maybe five minutes at some office in California, takes at least half an hour in Mississippi.  It shows up in the Wal-mart employees, who in California know how much change to give you for a ten-dollar bill when you make a four dollar and forty-seven cent purchase, but in Mississippi requires a manager when the cash register isn't working right.  It shows in in the expectations and hopes of the people.  When you live in California, you're never more than five miles from a reasonably well-paying blue-collar job, and never more than ten miles from the nearest community college if you decide that you're tired of blue collar jobs.  When you live in Mississippi, you're desperately hoping that Honda doesn't shut down it's plant because you and ten other people depend on one wage earner.  It's a whole bunch of little things that don't fit neatly into the sound-bite mentality of a new article's headline.  Things that neither you nor I nor the writer of that article understand on a visceral level.  Sure, rent is high in California.  The actuaries and statisticians who get paid big dollars by the federal government to publish poverty statistics understand all that as well.  None of it justifies the statement that California is the poorest state in the Union. 

[angus]

My father died when I was in the eighth grade and things were pretty tough after that.

Really? Accept my very belated condolences. That sucks. I can't imagine how I would have dealt with such an event, but I'm pretty sure I would be a totally different person. (You must have mentioned it many times before but somehow I didn't know it.)

Smartass.  That's fine.  I remember May 20, 2011 very well.  It was the day that I was 44 years and 99 days old.  That's how long my father lived.  I always get that "oh, your father died young, you should watch how much salt you eat or how many cigarettes you smoke"  Ah, whatever.  That year May 20 was weird.  I woke up nervous and went to bed nervous, of course.  The following morning I awoke knowing that I had outlived my father.  We all do, I suppose.  Anyway, the article you posted, although interesting, really struck me as heuristic.  The do at least make some intelligent points:  Poverty sucks and Poverty is not on the decline.  My guess is that we have a long way to go before we can walk up to a food replicator and say, "Tea, Earl Gray" and the tea appears.  Between now and then, the world will keep getting more crowded and the supply of food will not increase enough to keep up with it.  There may well be a time when arid, overpopulated California is a diseased, withering wasteland where Might makes Right and no one goes out at night unarmed, but that time isn't just now.  Take a look for yourself.  It's really grand there.  Sure, a lid may cost 300 dollars, but it's sticky and wet and chronic.  Better than three times as good as the Mexican dirtweed that costs 100 dollars a lid in most of the rest of the country.  Not that I have anything against the Mexican dirtweed on offer in the rest of the land, mind you. 

[angus]

But really what is poverty?

By my definition nearly everyone is poor.

I've been watching CHE (the biopic with Benicio del Toro) and some of his comments made me think of you.  e.g., "the myth of the self-made man is profoundly hypocritical:  it consist in self-interested demonstrations that the lie of the permanence of class divisions is a truth..."  

But there are also parts that don't necessarily bring you to mind.  "The revolutionary is guided primarily by love.  Love of humanity, love of justice, and love of the truth."  

I've watched it before, as well as the Motorcycle Diaries and lots of other films about Ernesto Guevara de la Serna, but since we're off for a few days and it's too cold to do much outside and I've finished my Tolstoy book and don't want to start any heavy reading at the moment, we got some movies to watch.  

There were moments that also made me think of the Capital Punishment thread.  Che doesn't seem to have any qualms with executing unfaithful followers.