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Wednesday, November 28, 2018
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US is poorer
than it realizes
BY NOAH SMITH
Bloomberg News
What does it mean to be poor? Currently there
are two basic ways to define poverty. To get a
better measure of who needs help — and a better
sense of how to provide it — society needs a third
definition.
The first definition is absolute poverty — essen
tially, material destitution. Human beings need
food, water and shelter, and if we can’t afford
these things, life is pretty miserable. In the U.S.,
the federal government has poverty guidelines
that are based on food consumption: If you make
less than about three times the minimum amount
people need to spend on food each year, you’re
poor.
By this measure, a single adult living on $12,140
or less is considered poor as of 2018. For a fam
ily of four, the figure is $25,100. There is also a
Supplemental Poverty Measure that includes not
just food but clothing, shelter and utilities. Thanks
in part to increased government assistance, U.S.
poverty according to this measure has fallen,
especially for children.
Critics of the federal poverty guidelines argue
that these numbers are too low, thanks to grow
ing inequality — in the 1960s, the federal poverty
level was about half of the median income, but
is now well below that. Moreover, as a country
grows richer, hunger becomes less common, so
using it as measure of poverty becomes less use
ful. When the middle class is defined by having “a
chicken in every pot and a car in every backyard”
(a campaign slogan from 1928), then simply hav
ing a chicken would seem to indicate that you’re
not poor. But when your middle-class neighbors
have several cars, several televisions and spa
cious homes, you might feel poor.
This is where the second measure — relative
poverty — comes in. The Organization for Eco
nomic Cooperation and Development defines
poverty this way: If you earn less than half of the
median income, you’re poor. By this measure, the
U.S. is doing a bit worse than other rich countries:
But this, too, feels unsatisfying. Imagine a
future U.S. in which the median American is fabu
lously wealthy — with flying cars, robot servants,
and multiple overseas vacations every year.
Should someone with half as many flying cars,
robot servants and overseas vacations be consid
ered poor? That seems like a stretch.
Intuitively, then, it seems that a third defini
tion of poverty is necessary — one that measures
more than just material well-being but also takes
into account economic growth.
Luckily, there is just such a concept: It’s called
material security. Psychologist Abraham Maslow
believed that safety ranked second only to food
and shelter as a basic human need. Someone who
has food and a roof over their head today, but
doesn’t know whether they will tomorrow, should
be considered poor.
Imagine a 55-year-old single woman with diabe
tes working a part-time job making close to mini
mum wage. Thanks to government assistance, her
total income is $15,000 a year. But if she loses her
job or has a medical emergency — both of which,
as Matthew Desmond’s book “Evicted: Poverty
and Profit in the American City” illustrates, are
sadly common — she will probably become
homeless. That in turn will make it very hard to
get a new job, or to pay for her future health-care
needs. In short, her situation is very precarious.
As Maslow would predict, this kind of insecurity
causes extreme stress. And this precariousness
exists along several dimensions — housing, health
care, income, the risk of violence — which makes
it hard to capture in a single measure. Still, there
are some existing measures that could be used to
help create a composite picture of security-based
poverty.
For example, the U.S. Department of Agricul
ture tracks food insecurity, a survey-based mea
sure of how worried people are that their food
will run out. Economists track income volatility,
which measures swings in earnings from year to
year. This kind of risk has been on the rise in the
U.S.
The risk of eviction, meanwhile, can be roughly
measured by the percentage of people’s incomes
that they spend on shelter each month. As of 2015,
17 percent of Americans spent half or more of
their incomes on rent.
A reasonable, common-sense definition of pov
erty should include not just an absolute measure
of material deprivation and a relative gauge of
a person’s situation compared to the rest of soci
ety. It should also strive to measure how secure
people feel — in their homes, their health, and
their jobs.
This new measure might well show that poverty
in the U.S. is worse than the current statistics say.
But an accurate view of a problem is the first step
toward addressing it. And eliminating poverty
should be a priority of any wealthy society.
Noah Smith is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist.
He was an assistant professor of finance at Stony
Brook University, and he blogs at Noahpinion.
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Your perspective on the state of the
economy is slanted by political lenses
This month, while the
nation’s attention span has
been fixed on long vote counts
and caravans, the stock mar
ket took another jagged turn
downward, wiping out all its
gains for the year.
Last year, only 1 percent of
the asset classes tracked by
Deutsche Bank lost money,
meaning just about anything
you invested in returned a
profit. This year, 90 percent
of asset classes are on track to
post a negative return for the year.
Market pundits talk cheerily about vola
tility, but lately the climb-backs haven’t
been as steep or long as the breathtaking
drops. Although the outlook for the U.S.
economy is still considered strong, the
market’s unease is being reflected on the
ground.
GM announced Monday that it’s laying
off 15 percent of its salaried workers over
coming months and closing four plants.
It isn’t the worst economy the country’s
had in this century, but it’s not last year by
any measure. There are signals the long
bull market could be coming to an end. If
this is going to have any big impact on poli
tics locally or nationally, however, it hasn’t
shown up yet.
“It’s the economy, stupid,” Democratic
strategist James Carville advised in 1992,
sounding the battle cry of Bill Clinton’s
successful presidential campaign.
Politics still hinge on the state of the
economy, but not in obvious, stupid
ways. Brian Kemp and Stacey Abrams
both talked about Georgia’s ailing rural
economy in the governor’s race, but Kemp
didn’t sweep those counties
because of his economic plat
form, and Abrams didn’t lose
them for that reason either.
Nationally and in Atlanta’s
northern suburbs, one essen
tially economic issue did hit
home: the Democratic push
to defend the Affordable
Care Act. But health care is
like an economic issue with
Kleenex: It’s expressed in
more personal terms. The
Republican tax cut probably
helped the party in some key Senate and
governor’s races, but President Trump
acknowledged during the campaign that
the subject was boring, and moved on to
immigration and other livelier topics. So
did his voters.
In many ways the Clinton years, with
the signing of the NAFTA treaty and the
advent of the internet, made it harder to
talk about the economy in political terms,
because of the sharp divergence of eco
nomic outcomes and the attitudes they
shape.
It has always been the case that people
of different political opinions can look
at the same piece of economic data and
come up with much different conclusions
about what it means, but the complicated
nature of the economy makes this ever
more likely.
A president who stakes his brand on the
unwavering conviction that things have
never been better encourages this ten
dency, but it’s much bigger than him.
Coming as it did at just the time the
country was changing administrations,
the 2008 recession and the bailouts it
prompted forged distinctly political lenses
for viewing the long upward march of the
economy after the fall of Lehman Broth
ers. Americans who voted for Barack
Obama looked at the gradual improve
ment and saw progress, while those who
voted against Obama gave him less than
the usual grudging credit.
A decade after the recession, voters
who agree with Trump on immigration
and trade are the likeliest to sing the
praises of the economy, while voters who
don’t like the president have been most
begrudging of its successes. Increasingly
since the 1990s, political opinions often
seem to eclipse economic realities.
But the financial writer Adam Smith
(the one who wrote “The Money Game,”
not “The Wealth of Nations”) had a line
that’s worth dusting off in a new context.
“The stock does not know you own it,” he
advised inexperienced investors.
By a similar logic, the economy doesn’t
know who you voted for. The late vestiges
of the post-2008 recovery, which Trump
took credit for, were global in nature, and
many of the problems he’ll be blamed for
are global as well.
This lousy market year could turn
around so quickly that the voters most
important to Trump, those who have seen
gains from the improvement in blue-collar
job growth, won’t even notice. But for all
the president’s power, he doesn’t control
the global currents that could make this
happen. He’s taken credit for the economy
more brashly than any of his predeces
sors, but the economy will not be owned.
Tom Baxter is a veteran Georgia journalist
who writes for The Saporta Report.
TOM BAXTER
tom@saporta
report.com
LISA BENSON I Washington Post Writers Group
Caravan crisis at border: It s complicated
Hola from the front row of
the caravan crisis. The U.S.-
Mexico border is just 17 miles
from America’s Finest City.
So here are 17 observations:
■ From perches in New
York and Washington, the
liberal media showed again
how little they know about
immigration when some com
mentators claimed, after the
election, that the caravan was
fake news. It’s here.
■ Conservatives are so
eager to dismiss the idea that
these arrivals from Central America are
seeking asylum that they pounce when
ever one of them says in an interview
that they’re actually coming to work.
Remember when those on the right used
to say they wanted immigrants to work?
■ When entering a foreign country,
a little humility goes a long way. Many
of the refugees have been on their best
behaviors. Others threw rocks and tossed
tear gas canisters back to the border
patrol agents who fired them. We have
enough homegrown arrogance, bel
ligerence and entitlement in the United
States, we don’t need to import more of
those things.
■ Who knew that border hawks are so
easily distracted by non-issues? Many are
fixated on the fact that so many members
of the caravan are not women and chil
dren but young men. So what? Does that
mean they are any less in need of refuge?
■ It is not a good idea for immigrant
advocates to downplay allegations of rock
throwing by caravan members. It’s a real
act of violence, and a real threat that has
for years resulted in Border Patrol agents
being wounded and, in some cases, per
manently blinded by border crossers.
■ It’s not productive for anti-immi
grant forces to blame migrant parents
for putting their children in harm’s way.
As opposed to what? Staying
in Honduras, Guatemala or
El Salvador so their children
could be harmed, or killed,
there?
■ According to media
reports, there was an argu
ment in the White House over
whether to allow U.S. troops
on the border to use “lethal
force.” Those opposed:
Homeland Security Secretary
Kirstjen Nielsen, and her
predecessor, chief of staff
John Kelly. That is, folks who
understand the border.
■ President Trump’s threat to “close
the border” if Mexico doesn’t keep the
Central Americans south of the Rio
Grande is hot air. Forget that closing
down a nearly 2,000-mile border might be
illegal. The real snag: It’s not possible.
■ It’s also not practical to go to the
other extreme and maintain an open
border. Federal immigration agents have
to hold off those who try to crash the gate.
That’s their job, and they must be free to
doit.
■ This doesn’t mean that Border
Patrol agents should not be held account
able for their actions. They should be.
Spraying migrants with tear gas, including
women and children, raised eyebrows a
few weeks ago on the Mexico-Guatemala
border. And it’s raising eyebrows again
now that it is happening on the U.S.-Mex-
ico border.
■ Right-wingers went nuts when Rep.-
elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.,
said that seeking refuge “isn’t a crime”
for Central Americans any more than
it was for “Jewish families fleeing Ger
many.” She wasn’t making comparisons.
She was making a point: Americans can
be fickle depending on who’s at the door.
■ Speaking of racists, all they see is
color. Like when Ron Colburn, president
of an outfit called the Border Patrol Foun
dation, told Fox News that the Border
Patrol agents were fending off migrants
with a pepper spray so natural that “you
could actually put it on your nachos and
eat it.”
■ The hostility that Central Americans
are facing in Mexico isn’t about racism.
It’s about other -isms that aren’t any bet
ter: elitism and classism. It is appalling
that Mexicans — who expect to be treated
well by their northern neighbors — treat
their southern neighbors so poorly.
■ As badly as this administration has
bungled immigration, Democrats are no
prize. They have no ideas, no integrity
and no credibility with immigrant activ
ists given that they often overcompensate
on deportations and enforcement as
if to prove they’re not weak on border
security.
■ Reportedly there is a deal between
the U.S. and Mexico in which Mexico
houses asylum seekers on its side of the
border while their applications are con
sidered by the U.S. This is not a solution.
It’s just a way to create more problems.
■ The photo of a young girl in the
caravan, smiling and waving the Ameri
can flag against a backdrop of makeshift
tents, is both haunting and poetic. Is this
who we’re supposed to be afraid of?
■ Many of these people are exactly the
sort we want in this country: bold risk tak
ers who will walk hundreds of miles and
literally crawl under barbed wire to get a
taste of what so many native-born Ameri
cans take for granted.
This is a complicated problem — and a
recurring one. Why do people from Cen
tral America keep coming to the United
States? We’ve hired them, and their
family members, for years. They come
because they know the way.
Ruben Navarrette writes for The
Washington Post Writers Group.
RUBEN
NAVARRETTE
ruben@
rubennavarrette.com
She Stines
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