[sarchertech]

You’re arguing with a different person than you think you are.

I’m arguing about available resources, not willingness to use them.

If you want to define poor purely by percentage of people who are living below the poverty line instead of median income, average income, gdp per capita or tax revenue, go ahead. But in the context of whether the government has the resources to do something, that’s not a good metric.

And beyond this scope if you look at average or median personal income, the average or median person in Louisiana is not poor, which is the metric I would use if I was going to call a group of people poor.

[dahart]

Okay I see your point; the state has money, even if a significant portion of the population doesn’t. That in itself is a problem. I was arguing, and many others here are arguing that the population of LA is poor, and you’re arguing that the state isn’t poor, and has options (whether or not it uses them). Both points are true - the state has resources, and the population has the greatest poverty in the US. Poverty rate is a valid objective metric of whether a state is “poor”, but it refers to the population and not the state budget, which is also a valid objective metric of whether a state is “poor” or not.

> if you look at average or median personal income, the average or median person in Louisiana is not poor

This is one to be more careful with. Neither the average nor the median inherently tell you anything about the state’s poverty rate, and having a poverty rate that’s the highest in the US and almost twice the national average absolutely supports the viewpoint that LA is relatively poor. When it comes to median household income specifically, the LA Budget Project says “These numbers obscure stark racial disparities” and points out that the median Black income is around half that of White non-Hispanic household income. (Page 9 - https://www.labudget.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/LBP-Cens...)

It might seem like the median $60k household income isn’t poor, but 50% of households are below “ALICE” levels and having to compromise on basic necessities. This doesn’t support your claim that the median resident of LA is not poor. https://www.unitedforalice.org/introducing-ALICE/louisiana

[sarchertech]

That metric makes Louisiana look relatively better because cost of living is low. For example, 48% of households in New York are below ALICE levels.

It highlights one problem with using percent of people below the federal poverty level as your metric. Median income doesn’t tell the whole story, but neither does percent below the poverty level. $33k goes a lot further in Louisiana than it does in New York.

https://www.unitedforalice.org/state-overview-mobile/new-yor...

[dahart]

> Median income doesn’t tell the whole story, but neither does percent below the poverty level.

You’re equivocating. Poverty rate is a much better metric for measuring poverty than median income is.

Louisiana has a higher poverty rate, and a higher child poverty rate, than New York State. New York’s ALICE level seems comparable because New York’s cost of living is so much higher, but it’s actually true that around half the people in New York (and Louisiana, and make other states) are struggling to afford all their basic necessities. Poverty rate isn’t ALICE, poverty rate is high probability of compromising on nutrition.

Come on, be honest, are you willing to live on $16k/year in Louisiana? (Or any state??) I wouldn’t want to, and I bet you don’t either. Are you really going to argue that’s not poor?

[sarchertech]

> ALICE level seems comparable because New York’s cost of living is so much higher

That’s my point. You’re the one who brought up ALICE as a metric to show how someone making the median income is still poor.

If it applies to Louisiana, it applies to New York as well.

> Louisiana has a higher poverty rate, and a higher child poverty rate, than New York State.

If you adjust for cost of living, New York and Louisiana have the same poverty rate.

> Come on, be honest, are you willing to live on $16k/year in Louisiana? (Or any state??) I wouldn’t want to, and I bet you don’t either. Are you really going to argue that’s not poor?

No but I’d rather live on $16k in Louisiana than New York. I’m not making a value judgement on what constitutes poor or not, I’m saying that if $16k is poor in Louisiana, then $22k is poor in NY.

Incidentally for big chunks of my childhood my family was below the poverty level in the Deep South, and so were many of my friends.

[dahart]

Yes I understand your point and yes I brought up ALICE - as an aside - and I see that was my mistake because you’re using it to dodge the core fact that LA has very high poverty relative to most other states. ALICE levels are a completely different tier of wealth metric than the federal poverty line.

Cost of living is less applicable to the federal poverty line than it is to the ALICE threshold or the median income because the cost of food and several other basic necessities don’t vary geographically as much as the price of housing does. The poverty line of $16k/person is set in part because it’s the line where going below likely means you can’t afford enough food no matter where in the U.S. you live.

[sarchertech]

> The poverty line of $16k/person is set in part because it’s the line where going below likely means you can’t afford enough food no matter where in the U.S. you live.

That’s not correct at all. The poverty level is 3x the amount of money it took to feed one person a nutritional diet in 1963 and then adjusted for inflation. They picked 3 times because food represented about 1/3 of a poor family’s budget.

Note that they use CPI-U for the adjustment, and food prices haven’t risen as fast as most is the rest of the goods in CPI-U so it’s closer to 4x the amount needed to afford the minimum nutritional diet.

If you look here, you’ll see that the “thrifty food plan” for the most expensive person (male 20-50) comes out to $3,800 a year.

https://www.fns.usda.gov/research/cnpp/usda-food-plans/cost-...

If you just think about it for a minute $16k or $43 a day is a crazy amount for the minimum amount of money to afford food. I don’t spend that much on myself on average and I ‘m making many times more than $16k a year.

Now I can try very hard to come up with the most charitable explanation for what you are saying and assume that you mean that $16k is the number that you need to afford other necessities plus food.

However if that’s what you’re saying then the number 1 other necessity is housing. Which means for an accurate comparison you need to factor in housing price differences.

To your point housing cost is the largest difference between states, but it’s also the largest part of nearly everyone’s budget, even people living on $16k a year, and it’s far from the only difference. Groceries a fair amount between states, and other necessities are somewhere in between.

You can’t just look at a flat number across the US, there’s no way around it.

I mean just look at average rent. It’s more than 2x higher in NY than LA. Even looking at another southern state, GA. Rent is 25% higher there. That’s a huge difference and it absolutely needs to be accounted for if you care about comparing poverty between states.