The State Of Texas Has The Highest Poverty Rate In the Nation

[Strike For The South]

And in amount of citizens who lack health insurance!

But doesn't the crazed dictator hangs his spurs on the fact that Texas is the job engine? When in reality Texas is just an exccarbated portriat of larger America, a dying middle class and buisness laws which create a class of the super rich

This is to rich I don't think I can finish all of it

http://blog.chron.com/rickperry/2011/09/despite-perry%E2%80%99s-job-creation-talk-texas-poverty-rates-high-%E2%80%94-and-going-higher/

[Ronin]

obviously they didn´t pray enough.

[Tellos Athenaios]

... or troll the rest of the USA from the East District enough.

[Louis VI the Fat]

And in amount of citizens who lack health insurance!

But doesn't the crazed dictator hangs his spurs on the fact that Texas is the job engine? When in reality Texas is just an exccarbated portriat of larger America, a dying middle class and buisness laws which create a class of the super rich

This is to rich I don't think I can finish all of it

http://blog.chron.com/rickperry/2011/09/despite-perry’s-job-creation-talk-texas-poverty-rates-high-—-and-going-higher/ (http://blog.chron.com/rickperry/2011/09/despite-perry%E2%80%99s-job-creation-talk-texas-poverty-rates-high-%E2%80%94-and-going-higher/)Pft!


Once again I just realised that poor in America means a car, air conditioning, a free standing house, and a purchasing power so strong that food and clothing are virtually thrown at you for free.
If it weren't for unaffordable healthcare and education the Texas poor would be European middle class.



Why do you hate freedom?

[Ironside]

Pft!


Once again I just realised that poor in America means a car, air conditioning, a free standing house, and a purchasing power so strong that food and clothing are virtually thrown at you for free.
If it weren't for unaffordable healthcare and education the Texas poor would be European middle class.

Why do you hate freedom?

Psh, the US are still midrange in absolute poverty. Even with that buff, it doesn't beat Scandinavia or the Germanic countries.

[Fragony]

Hardly surprising, do you know what a real cactus costs around here, and don't we all want them

[Hosakawa Tito]

Pft!


Once again I just realised that poor in America means a car, air conditioning, a free standing house, and a purchasing power so strong that food and clothing are virtually thrown at you for free.
If it weren't for unaffordable healthcare and education the Texas poor would be European middle class.



Why do you hate freedom?

Some Surprising Facts About the Poor (http://blog.heritage.org/2011/09/13/morning-bell-surprising-facts-about-americas-poor/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell).


80 percent of poor households have air conditioning
Nearly three-fourths have a car or truck, and 31 percent have two or more cars or trucks
Nearly two-thirds have cable or satellite television
Two-thirds have at least one DVD player and 70 percent have a VCR
Half have a personal computer, and one in seven have two or more computers
More than half of poor families with children have a video game system, such as an Xbox or PlayStation
43 percent have Internet access
One-third have a wide-screen plasma or LCD television
One-fourth have a digital video recorder system, such as a TiVo


This is info from the Census Bureau. Seems some people's definition of poor isn't what many imagine it to be.

[lars573]

That describes my brothers household pretty well, his family is what they call working poor. Although he lacks the HDTV or DV recorder.

[Tuuvi]

Yea it seems that the only real difference between the middle class and the poor these days is what kind of neighborhood you live in and where you work.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Some Surprising Facts About the Poor (http://blog.heritage.org/2011/09/13/morning-bell-surprising-facts-about-americas-poor/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell).



This is info from the Census Bureau. Seems some people's definition of poor isn't what many imagine it to be.

Then "Poor" just means "not Middle Class" which makes it a question of snobbery.

[Husar]

How many credits did they have to take to afford all this? How high is their debt?
People don't just buy PlayStations and cars because they have the money lying around but because they fell that they need them, whether that feeling is warranted or not. Keeping up with the Joneses or what it's called.
And, ahem, how many of them had a house and couldn't pay back the mortgages?
I don't think people having this or that is a good indicator of whether people are poor, they may be lacking in clothes and other things because they bought that TV. Weird priorities maybe, but just owning something relatively expensive doesn't make anyone rich or middle class.
Not that they're third-world-poor but reducing our poor to such a standard hardly sounds like a good idea to me anyway.

As many other things, perception is relative, they're poor compared to their surroundings and fellow countrymen.
Such is the endless struggle of life. :drama1:

[Tellos Athenaios]

... The difference is in what you eat, I'd say.

[Ironside]

Some Surprising Facts About the Poor (http://blog.heritage.org/2011/09/13/morning-bell-surprising-facts-about-americas-poor/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell).


This is info from the Census Bureau. Seems some people's definition of poor isn't what many imagine it to be.

Now, since they never mention how poverty is defined here, I have to go with the guess of less than about 40% of the median income.

I have to say that the reporters doesn't feel like the most clever people though, even if I have no reason to doubt the data. Solutions to reduce child poverty? Marriage (ever heard of correlations? Or social development?) and more jobs (yes, let me simply turn down the unemployment switch). :wall:

A major element in the declining capacity for self-support is the collapse of marriage in low-income communities. As the War on Poverty expanded benefits, welfare began to serve as a substitute for a husband in the home, and low-income marriage began to disappear. When Johnson launched the War on Poverty, 7 percent of American children were born out of wedlock. Today, the number is over 40 percent. As married fathers disappeared from the home, the need for more welfare to support single mothers increased. The War on Poverty created a destructive feedback loop: Welfare undermined marriage, and this generated a need for more welfare.

Today, out-of-wedlock childbearing—with the resulting growth of single-parent homes—is the most important cause of child poverty. (Out-of-wedlock childbearing is not the same thing as teen pregnancy; the overwhelming majority of non-marital births occur to young adult women in their early twenties, not to teenagers in high school.) If poor women who give birth outside of marriage were married to the fathers of their children, two-thirds would immediately be lifted out of poverty.[52] Roughly 80 percent of all long-term poverty occurs in single-parent homes.

Despite the dominant role of the decline of marriage in child poverty, this issue is taboo in most anti-poverty discussions. The press rarely mentions out-of-wedlock childbearing. Far from reducing the main cause of child poverty, the welfare state cannot even acknowledge its existence.

The second major cause of child poverty is lack of parental work. Even in good economic times, the average poor family with children has only 800 hours of total parental work per year—the equivalent of one adult working 16 hours per week. The math is fairly simple: Little work equals little income, which equals poverty. If the amount of work performed by poor families with children was increased to the equivalent of one adult working full time throughout the year, the poverty rate among these families would drop by two-thirds.[53]

[Beskar]

I like how DVD player is classed as a "luxury" item, since they cost $10 or they could have got a second hand one from a friend easy enough. Same with computers, if they have running around with brand new mac's or start-of-the-art rigs is one thing, but then they could easy have got a budget one for $100 or less, upfront cost only. Then there is a comment about cars. A car is needed to get to work or do their work, so it is part of the costs of having to travel and conduct their work. Internet access (even low-speed broadband) is free with telephone. Only really expensive item on there would be air-conditioning, but what is that being classified as, a fan in the bedroom or a fully function room temperature maintainable and cooling system? As for Playstation or whatever, Playstation 2's are rather cheap or probably got it for $10 second-hand, similar with older systems or even some newer ones (Can get first edition xbox360 for $30). As for wide-screen televisions, they are cheap as well. It wouldn't take much to buy one and you are only looking at $100 or even less in some cases.

The way being poor is measured is from your income. If they choose to buy their clothes from a back of the wagon and eating smartprice baked beans on toast, so they can afford a little luxury upfront cost-only piece of equipment, then where is the issue? It is their choice to spend it on that.

I mean, getting a few outfits of 'cheap clothes' setting you back $200 in itself.

[Cute Wolf]

I wonder why some of you whine about "Poverty", as I see, your standard of "Poverty" is pretty much middle class here.

[lars573]

Also the fact that if you have a game console made in the last 10 years you've got a DVD player. Really that list seems like it's from 2000-2005 when the goods they're listing would have been luxury. I mean these days you can walk into Wal-Mart and buy new a wide screen LCD/Plasma TV for less than $500. A new game console can be had for less than that. PC for around the same as well. And in some urban areas groups are building free wireless networks for internet access.

Like others have said, it comes down to the fact that being poor in a rich country means you live better than the middle class of a poor country.

[Tellos Athenaios]

I wonder why some of you whine about "Poverty", as I see, your standard of "Poverty" is pretty much middle class here.

But the irony is that cost of living rises. So the luxury things we take more or less for granted are about as expensive or even less expensive than the basics. For instance a few kg of squid will set you back about one DVD player. ~;)

[Lord Winter]

The list leaves out access to health care which as Strike pointed out is still incredibly low in Texas. Say what you want about what the poor do or do not own but you can still validly critique Texas on this.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

The list leaves out access to health care which as Strike pointed out is still incredibly low in Texas. Say what you want about what the poor do or do not own but you can still validly critique Texas on this.

That's because you're State healthcare isn't universally ensured by direct contributions, that's a quirk of American governance, it applies nowhere else in the Western World.

[Papewaio]

But big business knows best and with one of the highest per capita spend per person in the world on healthcare the US must also have the best healthcare.

Just look at the average spend, average lifespan, access to basic health care... Then with a straight face say that the most efficient and effective system is run by corporations.

=][= As for defining poverty I wouldn't use 40% of median income or ten sheckels a month or a bag of silver or any other monetary means alone to define poverty.

I'd look at access for children to education, clean water, Internet(it's to the modern world what fires are to caves), healthy food, parks and clean air.

I'd also be very careful when defining poverty as the tail of a bell curve. That method assumes that the root problems with poverty will always exist even if someone can access all the basic needs. That method of consigning a percentage always to poverty will make us give up on dealing with the underlying issues as our very measuring stick will always respond with the same status. Best to measure in a method that goes to the root issues and encourages them being resolved.

[Ironside]

=][= As for defining poverty I wouldn't use 40% of median income or ten sheckels a month or a bag of silver or any other monetary means alone to define poverty.

I'd look at access for children to education, clean water, Internet(it's to the modern world what fires are to caves), healthy food, parks and clean air.

I'd also be very careful when defining poverty as the tail of a bell curve. That method assumes that the root problems with poverty will always exist even if someone can access all the basic needs. That method of consigning a percentage always to poverty will make us give up on dealing with the underlying issues as our very measuring stick will always respond with the same status. Best to measure in a method that goes to the root issues and encourages them being resolved.

Using the percentage of median income is actually quite effective and you can still have 0% poverty with it. A more detailed one would be focusing on how much you spend on food/housing, basic needs (like clothing) compared to the average. If almost all your income goes to that and it's much lower than the median, then you're poor.

[rory_20_uk]

But that does mean that personal choice is removed:

If a person wants to live in a mansion and spend 80% of their monthly income on their repayments, that is their choice. But they would be classed as "poor" because of it. Same with heating the property - every hear we hear about these poor elderly unable to heat their houses... Then sell these large houses and get a small place! You expect me to pay for you to live in a house I can not afford???

To a lesser degree, what one spends on food can be altered by a factor of 10 at least, depending on what one buys.

Internet can be c. £5 a month. Or to put it another way, a packet of cigarettes. Thus some markers of poverty are self inflicted by lifestyle choices.

~:smoking:

[Ironside]

But that does mean that personal choice is removed:

If a person wants to live in a mansion and spend 80% of their monthly income on their repayments, that is their choice. But they would be classed as "poor" because of it. Same with heating the property - every hear we hear about these poor elderly unable to heat their houses... Then sell these large houses and get a small place! You expect me to pay for you to live in a house I can not afford???

To a lesser degree, what one spends on food can be altered by a factor of 10 at least, depending on what one buys.

Internet can be c. £5 a month. Or to put it another way, a packet of cigarettes. Thus some markers of poverty are self inflicted by lifestyle choices.

~:smoking:

That's why I mentioned that median income needs to be considered somehow and why median income comes quite close to be a good measurement by itself. If you're paying say 50% of the median on basic living in that area, yet you still got no money left, then you're poor.
If you spend 200% of the median on basic living, yet going debt, then you're financially stupid.
If you spend 50% yet earn 200% of the median, then you're simply making big cash by living cheaply.

The thing is that poverty is complicated to process, since costs varies from country to country and city to city.

Houses can be interesting actually. Since if the loans are payed, in can be cheaper than an apartment. So if you can't afford the house, then you better hope you'll die before the money gotten by selling the house runs out.