Asymmetrical Information

Well put. As someone once said "having is not so pleasing a thing as wanting."

Weird, ain't it?

Still, it never occured to me that American "wealth-denial" came from dreaming about more riches. I always thought that it has soemthing to do with superstition and politics.

When my family returned to the United States -- suburban Virginia, to be exact -- after living in Latin America for 12 years, this was one of the things that I noticed first. My new American friends were, by just about any standard, rich, but they all considered themselves "middle-class". A five-bedroom house in Fairfax County with a Jag and a Benz in the garage and they're only middle class? It's so irrational as to be laughable. (Not that begrudge that -- quite the opposite.)

But then I thought about it somemore. Even though we all want to become wealthy, the rich have been demonized for so long in this nation that it has affected how we think about ourselves. The irrationality of "wealth-denial" seems to me not to come from dreams, so much as superstitions. It's a warding-off-the-evil-eye response: few Americans consider themselves rich, and fewer still will talk about it, out of fear of attracting the attention of evil spirits/bad fortune/IRS/Democrats, etc.

Also, the upward mobility in our economy presents some rather unqiue political realities. In less upwardly-mobile societies, socio-economic classes are more pronounced. Accent, dialect, clothes, manners, beliefs -- you name it -- are all markers for the observer of class/caste. One always know where one comes from. In America, upward-mobility means that these markers are not easily discernable. Which is why some of the upwardly-mobile are not aware themselves that they are now "rich". More than likely politically motivated, this cognitive-dissonance results from a vesitgial belief on the part of the upwardly-mobile person that the wealthy should "pay their fair share", i.e. soak the rich, combined with the reflexive need to protect one's own material resources and belongings.

But I think that you're right, in the minds of most Americans, being "rich" is a fantastical place where there are no limitations, and everything's for sale. Everyone experiences their own financial situation and finds it not up to that unreal standard, and assumes that they're not upper class.

But, if Americans as a whole are in denial of their wealth, then was Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class flawed?

robert fogel addresses this in his the "fourth great awakening," that by 1920's standards we have completely resolved material inequality, but we're left with a spiritual inequality, which he's pretty vague about...

http://www.globalrichlist.com/

Jane

The big issue is just what does it mean to be rich? What level of income or wealth?

Is making $30K/year rich? Yes according to the last Louisiana governor. How about $50K? or 100K? or 300K?

Paris Hilton is rich, starting there when do you hit middle-class? Does it depend on where you live? $50K/year goes a long way in some places in the US while in NYC you can't afford a warm grate on that salary.

I also note that when you ask that question on the lefty blogs (Drum, Yglesias, Atrios) you never get an answer...just soak the rich.

Jane - what's your take on "Rich"?

Short of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, isn't there a benchmarking problem here? After all, the rich are basically anyone who makes significantly more than you do...

I'd like to add, rich in experience, rich in love, rich in the arts. These are the riches I aspire to. I hope we all get them.

If we listen to the Democrats, Rich= "Someone earning dollar one more than I am"

Of course that the Democrat leadership are to a man, millionaires, doesn't seem to have entered the lexicon, for some strange reason.

Who's rich? Whoever makes more than the speaker...

I was thinking about the same thing a few days back.

The technology I have at my desk allows me powers that not even kings or emperors would have had.

http://fallofthestate.blogspot.com/2005/04/everyone-king.html

"But, if Americans as a whole are in denial of their wealth, then was Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class flawed?"

Yes. :)

I've seen several cases of people who have risen from poverty who say something like this: "We were poor, but we didn't know it." Such a mindset kept them from obsessing as defining themselves as deficient. Have we turned that on its head now--"we were rich, but we didn't know it?" That mindset also keeps people from defining themselves as deficient--morally, spiritually, in terms of character. Do we prefer, "we were rich and didn't want to admit it"?

We don't have poverty here in the United States.

We have a crime problem that's worst among the least wealthy of us, and we have artificial shortages of housing and medical care. Transferring money from one class to another will solve neither of these problems; so long as present policy continues, the least wealthy among us will continue to be preyed upon by thugs regardless of how much money they have, and the supply of housing and medical care will not meet demand and some will do without regardless of how much of everything else they have.

The answer to the latter problem is to allow the free market to operate and cause supply to meet demand and prices to fall and quality to rise, the way it is in those other industries that supply even the most humble of us with affordable televisions, computers, cell phones, and so on. As to the former problem, I would simply note that public resources used for proper law enforcement would be far more beneficial to the least wealthy among us that public resources used for any other purpose I can think of.

Dallas Morning News columnist Scott Burns created the "Life of Riley" index to explore the question. Take the US median income -- now around $60K. Determine the current return/withdrawal rate from a carefully conservative investment portfolio -- say about 3%. So, how much do you have to have in invested "wealth" to support a median level "income" -- without actually having to, you know, get a "job", report in every day to accomplish actual, some sort of "work"?

About two million dollars.

Get a nice big 4 or 5 bedroom house with an acre or so of yard in a quiet small town for maybe $120-150K. Put a couple of 2 to 4 year old nice cars in the two car garage. Shop at the local market and buy fresh meat, fruit, and vegetables flown in from around the world. Enjoy 100 channels of cable TV and high speed DSL. Order whatever you want to wear from Eddie Bauer. And never never never have to kiss up to the boss, take a meeting, swing a hammer, chew out a subordinate, beg for a day off ...

You have rooms in the house you rarely go in. You have clothes in the closet you hardly ever wear. You have food in the fridge you didn't get 'round to eating before it went bad. You keep family heirlooms in the attic you don't even like but can't get rid of because you promised Grandma. You have CDs you don't listen to, DVDs you don't watch, PC games you don't play, and sports equipment you don't ride/use/remember why you bought.

This differs from you neighbors' lives only in that they spend a few hours a day doing some remunerative chores and you don't. But you all have guest rooms, out-of-fashion clothes, dusty discs, and spoiled food in the fridge. And most of the neighbors are in no more danger of losing their jobs than you are at risk of having your portfolio wiped out in a market failure. Their jobs could be capitalized at $2 million. I guess the annual review of your portfolio performance statement would count as your job. Adjust the next year's withdrawal a wee bit ... "Work" the numbers, and you're done.

Are you "rich"?

Here in the USA it is "bad" to be 'rich'.

We have some friends that own a couple of
Jaguars and 14 other cars, two vacation homes,
a farm and a couple of small businesses.

They are constantly complaining about how
"those 'RICH' people spend their money".

Of course my wife and I think that they are
"RICH". We are just too polite to point it
out to them.

And I'm sure that to many in other countries,
or even here in the USA, we are considered
'rich'.

Go figure ...

We have a crime problem that's worst among the least wealthy of us.

Thanks to the drug war. Easy money for those with no skills and the willingness to break the law.

If you can afford to have someone working for you full time (for personal needs, not as a business employee) that's rich.

(Nannies/au-pairs may be excluded.)

The covetous man is never satisfied with money, and the lover of wealth reaps no fruit from it; so this too is vanity.

- Ecclesiastes 5:9

Poor man wanna be rich,
rich man wanna be king
And a king ain´t satisfied
till he rules everything.

- Bruce Springsteen, Badlands

Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters . . . Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves.

- Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

Pouncer: Good point - but out in the real world, even Paris Hilton is working, more-or-less. The one heiress I know personally works at a charitable foundation created by her grandfather - that is, she goes to an office most days and works at deciding who to give grandpa's money to. The Kennedy's and Rockefellers could certainly spend their time doing nothing ... and I'd rather that than what they do spend their time on.

Not working is ultimately boring. And it's currently socially unacceptable in the USA unless you're in school or old. I'm not sure it was always that way. Jack London's novel Martin Eden described a moneyed non-working class in America, circa 1900, but I've no idea how much reality was in that description. I suspect the picture of the women was sometimes accurate - it's easy for a woman whose riches come from someone else to get locked into a terribly boring and pointless life - but that the only men fitting that description were quite young and hadn't been pushed into adulthood and jobs yet.

I, personally, am rich beyond my wildest dreams.

And I'm not ashamed to admit it, either.

Funny, though, it turns out that I make less money than I thought I would.

Several years ago I met with an estate planning client to discuss his goals and objectives. The man grew up in a poorer section of an east coast city. He had started a business while in school to support himself. He'd grown that business and had taken it public. At the time of our meeting, he was not quite 40 and a billionaire. He and his wife had a couple of young children.

As we sat around his dining room table, he ate a bowl of fruit loops and expounded on the kind of adults he'd like his children to become. He used the term "middle class values" about 10 times in the space of 15 minutes. At the end of which, he said that he did not want their kids to know that they were rich. "That's why we live a middle class life," he said. I blurted out, "Fred (not his real name), you've got a Picasso hanging on your dining room wall. If I'm not mistaken, that's a Van Gough by the front door. Your kids are not going to think that they are middle class."

His wife just about fell off her chair laughing. She said to her shocked husband, "David's right. Honey, we ride in a chauffeured limo to our private jet to fly to our house in Vail for the weekend. How long do you think it'll take our kids to notice that their friends don't have chauffer, private jets, or a house in Vail?"

As I flew back home to Texas from that meeting, I wondered why it was so important for so many of my clients to consider themselves as having "middle class values". My take is that our society has demonized both rich and poor while lionizing the great in-between. Values are values and none of them are exclusively owned by the middle class. But that is not the perception. The poor are thought to be lazy and uninterested in education. The poor value NASCAR and cheap beer. The rich are lazy and snooty. The rich value social status and family connections. The middle class are hard working, productive, interested in self-improvement, community minded, and accepting of others. The middle class value those things that make America great (whatever those things are).

root,

Thanks to the drug war. Easy money for those with no skills and the willingness to break the law.

Actually, one of the things every reviewer seems to highlight in the new Levitt/Dubner book Freakonomics is that it's not. "Easy money," that is. The authors evidently show that the ordinary drug dealer makes about minimum wage, and is moreover unbelievably more likely to die of, um, "work-related injuries" than is a worker in the most hazardous legitimate professions. I haven't read the book yet, but that's the claim. The authors apparently go on to some (plausible, to me) theories about why people enter such a shitty "profession" anyway.

I think "rich" is much more associated with wealth than with income. I would say that someone is rich if they can live at or above the 90th percentile (in other words, have disposable income equal to someone at the 90th percentile in earnings for their society) without earning any money from work. I think that somewhere in that realm is where you find the "rich" in every society; of course, in societies with more barbelled income distributions, such people may account for close to 10% of the society, while in the US they account for less than 1%.

The average middle class man of 1920 would have regarded all but the most hopelessly drug addled or mentally ill street people as wealthy beyond dreams of avarice.

Hmmm. I think that's wrong. Read "Mr Bridge" and "Mrs Bridge" for example. We're talking about the 30's rather than the 20's but it don't think that makes much difference. What makes the Bridges rich? Mr Bridge is a attorney who owns his own law practice. His friends and neighbors are bankers, business owners, and doctors. He belongs to the country club. Mrs Bridge and her friends do volunteer work and take art classes. Mr and Mrs Bridge go on a European vacation. The kids hang out at the club and the pool during the summer. It is truly surprising how little the basic parameters of such lives have changed in three generations.

Yes, in terms of gadgets, even the poor are better off than the Bridges were, but working class do not now live in places anything like Mission Hills, Kansas:

http://ks-missionhills.civicplus.com/index.asp?ID=16

Nor do they now lead anything like Mission Hills style lives, and all of that is much more basic to our idea of who is rich and who is not than all the iPods, central air, and DVDs in the world.

I have a slightly different take than Sam. IMHO, you are rich if you can quit working tomorrow and maintain your current standard of living. If you depend on a job for your income, you are not rich no matter how much money you make.

We are not all rich, even by 1920s standards. There are still homeless people. Migrant workers probably aren't doing much better than migrant workers in the 1920s, and in both cases they are considered poor. Certainly very few people starve to death now, but I suspect few people did back then, either.

Sure, people have televisions now, but the simple existence of a cheap technology doesn't make someone rich or poor. Televisions are cheap. People throw out or give away their old TVs. I don't think it's reasonable to say someone can't be poor if they have a TV. If you can't afford to fix your car when it breaks down, you are poor. If you can't afford to pay your electric bill, you are poor. If your rent is more than your welfare check, you are poor. Lots of people are poor. Worldwide, I suspect there is more poverty today (especially in absolute terms) than there was in the 1920s.

But, Dave Munger - possibly you could afford to fix your car if you didn't have a TV, or didn't have such a big TV, or dropped down to the most basic cable. Possibly you could afford your electric bill if you bought no-name jeans (or from Goodwill, where you can often find "name" jeans that aren't too worn), or if you went without a cellphone (unless you use your cellphone as your only phone, as I understand is becoming more common, and exercise restraint in the plan you buy). It appears to me that most of the American poor (excluding the homeless, excluding probably most migrant workers, who are a separate issue not to be addressed herein) could step onto the set of The Honeymooners without a hitch, perhaps even wondering what happened to their DVD player. Surely, even if there's no stable goalpost for wealth, there ought to be one for poverty - such as going to bed hungry through no choice of your own some number of times per week or something?

Wealth is bound to be self-defined, and I suspect the self-definition tracks well with a person's take on whether the glass is half-full or half-empty. But one patently obvious point to anyone who's had more money than they absolutely need in order to live, is that money really doesn't buy happiness. So then we have to determine our priorities. One of the most wonderful things about American life, IMHO, is that we have the luxury of both time and money to make this determination of priorities both possible and necessary for most of us.

One form of parable holds that the optimal amount of money to have is always a little more than whatever I have now.

Maybe we can think of the upward-looking definition of wealth as being "threshold expectations" -- the search for possessions that are just above one's current means, but realistically attainable given a slight increase of income. At the same time, if the increase of income is realized, expectations gradually adjust to the new threshold.

DBL:

If you depend on a job for your income, you are not rich no matter how much money you make.

IMO that definition is useless by reason of being narrow. For example, some people "depend" on a job for income because they live far beyond their means via payments. If the job goes away, so does the standard of living. And yet, another person making the same amount of money could have lived more modestly, yet still quite well, and squirreled away a good chunk of income against a future day of Not Working. How can that definition account for these two?

My conception of "rich" is pretty close to Jane's: you're rich if you never have to worry about money.

Although, it's actually a little more complicated than that. My 87 year-old grandmother never has to worry about money, but I'm not ready to call her rich simply because she collects social security and a decent pension, and has accumulated enough property from a lifetime of her and my deceased grandfather working that she doesn't need to worry about how she's going to pay for the Assisted Care facility she's living in.

My baseline for "rich" is anyone who has enough that, if they were just beginning adulthood with that amount, they could afford to get married and raise a family in a comfortable middle class style (nice home, yearly vacations, new cars every few years, etc.) without either spouse ever having to even consider doing a moment's worth of work for the rest of their lives. If you own a half-million dollar house outright, and are liquid for an additional $3 million or so, I guess that would do it. More in NYC, and less in Texarkana, but that's roughly the amount, IMO.

My 87 year-old grandmother never has to worry about money...

Hmmm, come to think of it, Grandma is 88 now...

Jamie, I could afford to repair my car without selling my TV, but I do know people who could not.

I think this notion that it is simply "priorities" which cause some people to believe they are "poor" is ridiculous. Some people are poor because they are poor. They have eliminated all nonessentials from their budget, and they still do not have enough money to get by. They are poor.

Eliminating the homeless and migrant workers from the equation is disingenious. These are the poorest of the poor. So you're saying that aside from the poorest of the poor, there are no poor?

But even if you do eliminate the homeless and migrant workers, there are people who must choose between soap and food, or between heat and food. You're telling me these people aren't poor if they choose food, simply because they don't go to bed hungry?

I agree, "poverty" is a relative thing, but even with a very conservative definition of poverty, there is still significant poverty in America.

I should add that a cheap TV is practically worthless. A used 19-inch color TV probably sells for less than $50. A typical car repair is $400 plus. So "changing priorities" is not going to get the car fixed.

"In America, upward-mobility means that these markers are not easily discernable. Which is why some of the upwardly-mobile are not aware themselves that they are now 'rich.' "

I think this is a good point. I'm a lawyer married to a lawyer, and we make a good living. My parents have a high school education; my grandparents were farmers. I grew up listening to Johnny Cash and wearing K-Mart sneakers. A nice dinner out was Pizza Hut. When my friends and I went to the local department store, the clerks would watch us for shoplifting (maybe they did that with all teenagers, but I can't help thinking we had a "wrong end of town" aura).

The first time I remember getting a taste of how the other half lives was when I was in junior high and my parents bought us Nikes, $32 a pair.

Now, I occasionally go into Talbot's and drop $500, or to a Nordstrom and buy 5 pairs of shoes. I get a nice handwritten note in the mail from the sales clerk and a call from the credit card company asking if I really made those purchases (which I guess shows that I don't do this very frequently).

Why don't I feel rich? Because I still listen to Johnny Cash and eat at Pizza Hut sometimes. Rich people don't do that. And when I go into Talbot's or Nordstrom, I still feel like I don't belong there.

But even if you do eliminate the homeless and migrant workers,

Well, *I* wouldn't, but I what I would do is point to the facts that (1) Something like 40% of the homeless suffer from mental illness, which puts a different light on why they have no stable income and (2) the country accepts a large number of impoverished immigrants each year, but the overall level of poverty isn't rising correspondingly (meaning, typically, that the second generation is working its way upward).

there are people who must choose between soap and food, or between heat and food. You're telling me these people aren't poor if they choose food, simply because they don't go to bed hungry?

The real question is, how many of "these people" are out there? Simply pointing to their existence, while tragic, doesn't prove anything in absolute terms.

Meanwhile, I can relate several personal examples of people who almost fit your definition, but for a few bad decisions here and there. One case involved a single mother who lived paycheck-to-paycheck most months, shared housing with another single mother, and drove a $500 piece of junk; but she still managed to burn a pack or two of cigs each day. Another case involved an immigrant family that, during the winter, was often reduced to wearing their clothes threadbare and eating potato peel soup; but during the summer, when ag work was plentiful, they frittered away a lot of income on non-essentials. A third case involved a cabinetry contractor who left home amidst marital difficulties, and froze to death under a bridge after being ruined by a succession of fast women and liquor containers. And there are still other cases involving self-supporting college students who lived on pennies some weeks, but went on to better things after graduation.

Again I ask: what is the real level of systemic poverty? Not "does it exist," but how many people are actually there (and basically stuck there) through no evident fault of their own?

A fellow Navy shipmate of mine (circa 1974, black, one of the smartest people I have ever been associated with) told me (I was what? 21 then?) that rich is defined as "Anyone making $10,000 more than you are". LaShawn Barber reminds me of him. Smart. Pragmatic. Outspoken. Another definition (sliding democratic government scale) was that anyone making less than $25k was 'poor' and that anyone making more than $35k was rich. I pooh-pooh-ed the idea until I tried for monetary assistance when I sent my kids off to college and found I fell into the "Too poor to pay for their education and too rich to get assistance". So my kids joined the "Great mass of students making payments to Sallie-Mae for 10 years after graduation club" set. So, I have a mortgage, car payments, parent loan payments, credit card payments, insurance payments, utility payments, and still have enough for pizza and Dr. Pepper on Saturday so I guess I am rich. Now if I only had health insurance I truly would be, eh?

-Joe

Somehow, when I hear people like Dave try to prove poverty by bringing up electric bills, car repair bills, and welfare checks, I find the point Jane was making to be stronger, not weaker.

It seems to me that he should have stuck with migrant workers and the homeless.

Dave does not need to be accurate nor precise, because it is his job to point out the problems he perceives--not to solve them. Let the problem solvers deal with the reality of what is actually out there. People like Dave feel good just pointing out that perfection does not exist, thus things are pretty bad indeed.

why is it so hard for people here to understand that poverty is a relative term, that has changed dramatically over time and still today changes dramatically over relatively short distances?

American poverty is, largely, about stress. As has been pointed out at great lengths on other threads, food is cheap and roommates are available. Medications exist for the poorest that were not available at any price just a few years ago, not to mention 60 years. But millions of americans do not have steady work and feel ground down by the stress of uncertainty. Being one paycheck ahead or one paycheck behind on rent vs. heat vs. transportation vs. clothes vs. ... etc. is hard.

Poverty in rural mexico looks much more like the 19th century. Poverty in rural Africa can look like nothing's changed since the dawn of time.

The fact that the poverty there conforms more to our Dickensian notions of poverty should not lead us to minimize the impacts of modern urban american poverty.

Upper middle class people work because they have to. Rich people work because they want to.

without poor there is no rich
like tall without short
it has no meaning

I don't think rich has to be relative or subjective. I realize there are variables like cost of living, investments, savings, assets that aren't always measured in terms of income. But I still think the uppermost 10% of the income bracket are going to be rich by most standards. Some people will always think they need to save more, but just because a person doesn't admit to being rich doesn't mean he isn't rich by most standards.

>Somehow, when I hear people like Dave try to prove poverty by bringing up electric bills, car repair bills, and welfare checks, I find the point Jane was making to be stronger, not weaker.

Jeff, that's not quite fair. Yes, it's true, things like electricity and cars are new and modern. Yes, people didn't have it back then. However, they lived within an infrastructure that had low-tech alternatives for things like home heating and transportation that we've since lost.

Most urbanites today can't exactly go out and chop wood for the fire. A job within walking distance may be out of the question (and you can forget about a horse...)

Poverty is better defined at the level of basic essentials. Food, Water, Heat, Transportation-to-the-things-you-need, etc...

Maybe you need electricity and a car to get that nowadays... I dunno.

Do any of you have a problem with self-inflicted, but accidental, poverty? As in, it's OK for Some Guy to be poor to the point of starvation, as long as it's basically his fault due to bad decisions and such.

Just curious.

I get the impression that most of you are pretty much OK with that morally. Or at least governmentally.

Some Guy,

I think you might be trying to derail the thread, but in a nutshell, "no" -- I don't think its a good thing that some people accidentally self-inflict poverty. If each of us paid the full price of our mistakes, none of us would be in such good shape, right?

However, I think there is usually a difference between that type of poverty, and poverty that is self-inflicted through willful stupidity. For example, if someone can't get to work because their car broke down and they don't have money to repair it, that's a tragedy; but if that same person has been coughing up $5+ a day for vice, such as cigarrettes or beer, then by all means go hungry for a spell. It tends to put priorities back in order.

Here's a thought experiment: couldn't any British person say the same thing about their health care under the NHS today compared to what was available under the NHS in the 1950s or at any time before? Aren't they truly "rich"?

I’m only 62 but when I tell my grand kids about conditions that existed when I was a kid, I just get an unbelieving gaze. The real issue is, are you happy? If not, you can never be rich.
As Rod Steward said:
Some guys have all the luck
Some guys have all the pain
Some guys get all the breaks
Some guys do nothing but complain

By the numbers:

>>>WASHINGTON (CNN) - The number of Americans living in poverty jumped to 35.9 million last year, up by 1.3 million, while the number of those without health care insurance rose to 45 million from 43.6 million in 2002, the U.S. government said in a report Thursday...
...The percentage of the U.S. population living in poverty rose to 12.5 percent from 12.1 percent -- as the poverty rate among children jumped to its highest level in 10 years, the Census Bureau said in an annual report. The rate for adults 18-to-64 and 65-and-older remained steady...
...The Office of Management and Budget at the Census Bureau defined the poverty threshold in 2003 as $18,810 for a family of four; $14,680 for a family of three; $12,015 for a family of two; and $9,393 for an individual."
http://money.cnn.com/2004/08/26/news/economy/poverty_survey/?cnn=yes

Moreover, if NOT for Social Security:

>>>Without Social Security, the study found, 15.3 million elderly had incomes below the poverty line. After Social Security, only 3.8 million elderly did. Three-fourths of those elderly people who would have been poor without Social Security were lifted from poverty by it...
The study, "Social Security and Poverty Among the Elderly," found Social Security's effects in shrinking poverty to be most striking among elderly women. Seven million of the 11.4 million elderly people whom Social Security lifted from poverty in 1997 — more than 60 percent — were women."
http://www.cbpp.org/4-8-99socsec.htm

It's my belief that poverty means you can't AFFORD to be get sick, especially in light of the recent Bankruptcy Bill. It means you can't AFFORD to have whatever used clunker you're driving break down, (if you can even AFFORD the car insurance in your area.) Living in poverty means the slightest uptick in cost of living forces basic lifestyle changes, like meal-skipping, or prescription pill-splitting to make things "last". Living in poverty means that anything "new" you'll purchase was probably made in China by sweat shop labor, and until then, you make do with holes, warps, dents, tears and stains. Living in poverty means you may have to swallow your pride and take a subsidy check or food stamps so that your children can swallow some nutrition.

There are some people on this board who may not believe that there are millions of people who may be one job loss, divorce, medical emergency, environmental disaster or lawsuit away from being in the predicament I described.
Interestingly enough, there are some on this board who would have you believe that this predicament is glamorous. Some have suggested that possession of a color television set, available at most garage sales, is the lap of luxary. Some have suggested that poverty is "self-inflicted", which I find hard to reconcile since over a third of all Americans living below the poverty line are children.
This is indeed a revealing thread.

--Cobra

Do any of you have a problem with self-inflicted, but accidental, poverty? As in, it's OK for Some Guy to be poor to the point of starvation, as long as it's basically his fault due to bad decisions and such.

Just curious.

I get the impression that most of you are pretty much OK with that morally. Or at least governmentally.

Any blogger who goes by the name "Jane Galt" is likely to attract, on balance, a fairly libertarian (/conservative/anarcho-capitalist/objectivist/"right wing"/whatever) readership, dontcha think? And yeah, a doctrinaire libertarian would say that Some Guy's ineptitude does not represent a legal claim on the aptitude of Other Guy. However, just because libertarians don't believe in coercive government redistribution, it doesn't follow that they want to see anyone starve, or that they aren't generous. I think most would say that it's a relatively tiny fraction of adults who truly can't support themselves, and in the absence of any government support there would still be ample charity to cover them. I know Ayn Rand believed this (as I'm sure did her protagonist John Galt; were these heroes ever much more than her mouthpieces?).

If your Some Guy is basically of sound mind and body, but just dug himself into a financial hole due to "bad decisions and such", I don't understand why he's on the brink of starvation. Was one of his bad decisions getting lost in the Yukon? If not, can't he just file for bankruptcy and get a job washing dishes somewhere? If the answer to this last question is "no", then I would be inclined to say he's not really of sound mind and/or body after all, and it's worth noting that many people who call themselves libertarians make an exception when it comes to government support of such people, including P.J. O'Rourke, (I think) Robert Nozick, and probably many of the commenters in this thread.

Not quite sure exactly where I stand on this, but I wouldn't be one to quibble with a much smaller government that still provided some small safety net, especially if it were fairly fraud-resistant and geared more toward getting people on their feet than encouraging dependence.

Figures that a pretty innocuous post musing on what it means to be rich would become politicized in here.

Cobra,

There are some people on this board who may not believe that there are millions of people who may be one job loss, divorce, medical emergency, environmental disaster or lawsuit away from being in the predicament I described.

One lawsuit? I understand the others (though your basic "environmental disaster" usually comes equipped with your basic FEMA pile-of-money, generally supplemented by lots of charity). But really, are many people in poverty because someone sued them? There are, as I understand it, a few men who deliberately live in poverty because if they actually made any money to speak of they'd have to pay some of it as alimony or child support or both, and they'd rather not. But I doubt that's what you mean.

The point of the color TV in this tale is that it is evidently a necessity now. I spent 20 years with the same small B/W TV (and frankly could have lived happily without even that — hell I was a student; I wasn't exactly home much), and the reason my now-husband gave me a color TV one Christmas is that he'd seen one too many investigative reports on the plight of the American poor featuring a large color TV in the living room. These days I'd imagine there's a VCR attached, if not a DVD player, and probably cable.

Cobra, I don't doubt that you can get $50 TVs at garage sales, but if you are lacking, oh, clothes and food and the like, why would you? If someone in danger of not making ends meet bought $50 worth of, say, books at a garage sale, or a library discard sale, I'd be impressed. Likely, you think?

It means you can't AFFORD to have whatever used clunker you're driving break down, (if you can even AFFORD the car insurance in your area.) Living in poverty means the slightest uptick in cost of living forces basic lifestyle changes, like meal-skipping, or prescription pill-splitting to make things "last". Living in poverty means that anything "new" you'll purchase was probably made in China by sweat shop labor, and until then, you make do with holes, warps, dents, tears and stains.

Ok, so as of 2005, technology and the free market have not managed to eradicate all of the worries and struggles facing the bottom quintile (or whatever % we're actually talking about) of wage earners. Fair enough. But in 1920 - the year Jane is using as a comparison point - these folks wouldn't even be driving a clunker at all. Meal rationing and poor nutrition might be a regular fact of life, not a temporary condition precipitated by a sudden uptick in the inflation rate (temporary, because wages are subject to inflation as well; in fact, I'm pretty sure they are usually the primary cause of it). They probably wouldn't even have any prescription pills to split, because most of these medications hadn't been developed/discovered yet, and I'm not sure those that had would be widely available to the poorest folks anyway, as they are now. There wouldn't be a place like Walmart where you could go to buy decent cheap foreign-made goods and clothing. I guess there would be the Sears catalog, but it wouldn't offer a similar bang for your extremely limited buck, and holes, warps, dents, tears and stains would be a regular fact of life.

The point was not that poor people in 2005 lead stress-free lives, shielded from all consequence. It's that compared to their 1920 counterparts, they have much better shelter, transportation, creature comforts (comfy beds, air conditioning, showers, etc.), health care, educational opportunities, and clothing. They also have access to cheaper food, healthier food, and a wider variety of food. They have a lot more leisure time, thanks in part to modern appliances, and a lot more ways to spend it, thanks to the widespread availability of all sorts of inexpensive modern consumer goods, from color tv's to sports equipment to cosmetics. The potential consequences of being poor in 2005, while not things any of us would want to face, are on average a hell of a lot less dire than they were in 1920.

Of course, it's not just the poor. We're all a lot richer in absolute quality-of-life and material terms. That's pretty much the definition of "progress", isn't it?

Living in poverty means you may have to swallow your pride and take a subsidy check or food stamps so that your children can swallow some nutrition

Sigh. I may be the only person around who thinks that people who are too poor to support children shouldn't have any. I guess if I was less of a heartless bastard I would think reproducing to your heart's content is a God-given right, and the rest of the world has an obligation to pick up the slack on their care without any criticism of your behaviour, and in a way that is extremely respectful of your well-earned pride and self-esteem.

Rich is a state of mind, not a statistic. To be rich is to have secured the means to live one's desires. If you'd be in bankruptcy court within a month if you lost your job, you're not rich, even if you make a million dollars a year. I, on the other hand (far, far below that), _am_ rich.

I'll freely admit I've never lived in anything like the kind of poverty one finds in the third world, and found here in America a hundred years ago, but I do know more than I want to about what it's like to be terrorized by financial issues...to have to skip meals in order to buy gas to get to work, to stop answering the telephone because it's almost always another abusive bill collector, to be abandoned by family and friends because they're tired of helping. I've been there. It wasn't all that long ago.

I'm not rich just because I'm not currently there anymore. I'm rich because I know that nothing, short of a cataclysm so severe that money will be the least of anyone's worries, could ever put me back there.

The millionaire living beyond his means, though, is just a higher-nominal-stakes sucker in the same racket I was caught in.

Rob, chalk me up with you on the don't-have-kids-if-you-can't-pay-for-them side. I'm not sure if this is the best way of implementing the idea, but I really feel like we should start thinking about policy initiatives like "unmarried teenage mothers can only receive welfare if they've had they're tubes tied--we'll pay for the operation, too." Might be a more elegant way of achieving the same effect, and more people we can apply it to...but people on welfare just shouldn't have kids.

"Do any of you have a problem with self-inflicted, but accidental, poverty? As in, it's OK for Some Guy to be poor to the point of starvation, as long as it's basically his fault due to bad decisions and such."

I prefer that to the alternatives.

Seriously. The alternatives are to cover for his bad decisions, ensuring he'll keep making more of them until the end of time, or restrict him by law and use the power of the state to force him to make better decisions.

Just as people should be allowed to smoke and eat unhealthy food, even though it may end up killing them, people should be able to spend and shirk their way into starvation, even though it may end up killing them.

"Moreover, if NOT for Social Security:

>>>Without Social Security, the study found, 15.3 million elderly had incomes below the poverty line. After Social Security, only 3.8 million elderly did. Three-fourths of those elderly people who would have been poor without Social Security were lifted from poverty by it..."

Either they were lifted from poverty by transferring money from younger people, who were thereby pushed toward poverty, or they got a fair return on the money they paid in, in which case they could have saved the money on their own if Social Security hadn't existed with no change in their standard of living over their working life, and therefore would not be poor without Social Security.

Why is it unacceptable for our compassionate society to allow an older person to be poor, but perfectly acceptable to not only allow but cause a young person to be poor in order to prevent that?

Just as the wealthy in this country deny their wealth to free themselves of the guilt of having more than they need, you are denying the existence of poverty in the U.S. to relieve your own guilt about profiting from an economic system in which a tiny fraction of the population (the rich) own about half of the country's property. I advise you to look at some statistics (or at least wander outside of the upper west side) before making these wild assumptions.

"Moreover, if NOT for Social Security:

>>>Without Social Security, the study found, 15.3 million elderly had incomes below the poverty line. After Social Security, only 3.8 million elderly did. Three-fourths of those elderly people who would have been poor without Social Security were lifted from poverty by it..."

Perfect, Social Security is doing exactly what it is meant to do. Now we means test it so only people who would be "in poverty" get it. The rest just don't get to cash in the insurance policy. This would work like any other welfare program - only for the needy.

It should solve the SS crises forever and run a net profit for the government...

"you are denying the existence of poverty in the U.S. to relieve your own guilt about profiting from an economic system in which a tiny fraction of the population (the rich) own about half of the country's property."

Why should I feel guilty about profiting from a system in which other people own lots of property?

And what we have are politically induced shortages in medicine and housing and insufficient law enforcement, which impacts the least wealthy among us no matter how wealthy they are. The answer is deregulation to get rid of the shortages and bring prices down. The fact that other people own lots of property is completely and utterly irrelevant.

"to relieve your own guilt about profiting from an economic system in which a tiny fraction of the population (the rich) own about half of the country's property"

You seem to think that this is wrong in and of itself. If a tiny fraction of the population can be so productive that they contribute large amounts to society (through taxes as well as voluntary contributions) and yet have plenty left for themselves, why is that bad? Yes, some people are still relatively poor, but you're the one that seems to want to deny the fact that our economic system has produced enormous benefits for the vast majority of the population (and for the world). Electric lights, hot and cold running water, antibiotics and vaccinations - these allow all but the very poorest today to live more comfortable lives than all but the richest did 200 years ago.

You seem to be advocating that we turn to a system that hurts everyone, even the poor, simply for the sake of hurting rich people the most. Have you read about how societies worked that claimed to value "equality" above all else? They led to some of the worst humanitarian disasters of the 20th century. Try reading Hungry Ghosts by Jasper Becker.

"Worldwide, I suspect there is more poverty today (especially in absolute terms) than there was in the 1920s."

That's certainly not true. There's still far too much poverty (which is self-inflicted at the country level by vested interests that want to prevent progress). But Asia in particular has lifted vast numbers out of poverty, largely by protecting private property rights. Even with population growth, there are fewer poor in absolute terms today.

I have a practical definition of what rich is.

You are rich if you have enough money in the bank that you are not required to work for a living for the rest of your life. In the US they say this takes a paid off house and enough liquid assets to generate an income capable of paying for your living expenses

This standard excludes government pensioners because that isn't really money in the bank (e.g. you can't go blow it all in Vegas and become not rich).

...a tiny fraction of the population (the rich) own about half of the country's property

Of course, that tiny fraction of the population also created the half of the country's property that they own. Unless you think, for example, that Michael Dell and some guy who works the loading bay in one of his factories are equally responsible for the fact that even the lower middle classes can now afford home computers.

I think a more applicable question is what do you mean by poor? People being rich isn't a problem, people been truly poor is a problem. THe one definition that I keep coming back to is that you are poor if you have cut out the nonessential costs in your life and are still having trouble paying your bills. So to me the quickest shorthand I can use is to say that no person who has cable TV is poor. If a person is truly poor, that money would be going to a more worthy goal every month. Other things would apply to the same rule of thumb but none so cleanly as cable TV because of the free alternative.

Damon, I'm not sure I agree that anyone who is paying nonessential costs is not poor. Plenty of people I consider poor spend money on things that are not only nonessential, but downright detrimental, like cigarettes and alcohol. I could be wrong, but I think that people who have the brains and willpower to set a priority like "I'll cancel my cable subscription, so that I can afford to have my kid's cavities filled", are probably not the majority of people who find themselves faced with such a tradeoff in the first place.

Hmmm. I don't know that I care. If we want to talk about what to do for (perhaps "about" if that's the way your mind runs) those who are living in poverty, then we can do that.

As a wise poster once said, the uncertainty is the crusher. Doesn't really matter if you are playing tiddlywinks with hand-carved winks salvaged from the dump or watching TV. If you can't be sure you'll have the same home in 30 days, there's a stress level.

You are as rich or poor as you believe you are. I learned this while walking through a rain storm in Mississippi in 1979. I had $10 in my pocket and no property other than what I had in my pack. And I had never been happier in my entire life. Freedom is also wealth.

Rob- I don't put cigarettes or alcohol into the same category because of the addictive nature of those products. Its not just a matter of willpower- for many its getting over the addiction. I think it would be hard to make a case that people are literally addicted to cable TV.

Other things that are a one time cost would certainly be considered non-essential but even those I think can be justified more than the month recurring cost of cable TV.

that tiny fraction of the population also created the half of the country's property that they own.

Does that include Alice Walton, Helen Walton, Jim Walton, John Walton, and Robson Walton? Each one of them has more money than Michael Dell.

What I apparently entirely failed to make clear in my original comment was that you can gauge poverty relative to lots of things. Relative to the ubiquitous Paris, I'm poor. My sister, relative to me, is poor. OR you can look at most of the American poor, such as those who are a paycheck away from living in their cars as Cobra brought up (nice to hear from you, Cobra - long time!), relative to the poor of Mexico, or of the 19th century US, and they appear reasonably comfortable, even if their situation is precarious. In terms of standard of living and available options, even the (modern) person who has to choose between heat and food, if that person is housed and has clothes and blankets, is better off than a dustbowl victim in OK was.

I wanted to take the homeless and undocumented migrant workers out of my point for the reasons others have mentioned: they are not typical for various reasons. Their situations are more dire than most American poor people, but their circumstances dictate that their problems can't be addressed the same way (in policy terms) those of the "ordinary" poor could be. (I can't bring myself to say they're the "poorest of the poor," as Dave called them, without my relativity-o-meter going all out of whack.)

Some have suggested that possession of a color television set, available at most garage sales, is the lap of luxary.

Sarcasm noted, but I don't think anyone used the expression "lap of luxury" for that scenario. By the way, I grew up in a firmly middle-class household and nonetheless my folks decided there would be no television in said household, for many of the same reasons that inspire rational people not to install a septic sump in reverse. It is quite possible to live without a TV, and *if* (note the clause) someone were to spend money on a television while having unmet essential expenses, then yes, it is a luxury purchase, even if it was a $25 garage sale/thrift store piece or whatever.

Some have suggested that poverty is "self-inflicted", which I find hard to reconcile since over a third of all Americans living below the poverty line are children.

Some have argued that SOME poverty is "self-inflicted." Either stay with the thread, or stay out of it, your choice, but lose the half-cocked criticisms.

This is indeed a revealing thread.

It reveals that some of the ocassional posters don't feel the need to fairly address the arguments in lieu of agenda-pushing, yes.

I agree with Brittain.

There is a significant portion of the indisputably rich who did not obtain their wealth through their own merit. There is another significant portion whose earnings have been out of proportion to their real contributions. Michael Dell is one thing. The Walton kids and the golden parachute crowd are another.

There were also kids I went to schoool with whose daddies picked up the tab for their entire educations, their first car, their first home and filled it with furniture. Whatever these people do with their lives, they have a leg-up over those like me whose parents did what they could, but who had to pay their own way through college and/or sog their way through student loan debt, car payments, saving for a mortgage down payment, . . . A person of equal moral worth, equal employment and intelligence can never catch up with a daddy-bought. Those first several years as an adult are just too important.

This assumption by most Republicans and libertarians -- that the poor necessarily deserve to be poor and that the rich deserve just as equally to be rich; and a person's weath or income is the measure of his worth as a human being -- is one of the things keeping me in the Democratic party.

And I don't always agree with the party as to what to do about the situation, but I think it at least starts at the right place: income and wealth do not correlate exactly with merit (undoubtedly there is some correlation in most cases).

that tiny fraction of the population also created the half of the country's property that they own.

Does that include Alice Walton, Helen Walton, Jim Walton, John Walton, and Robson Walton? Each one of them has more money than Michael Dell.

Ok, so let me amend my statement to read "...that tiny fraction of the population, who's total share of the country's property amounts to half, also either created their share of it or were freely given it by whoever did."

Denise, when the standard Democratic line is "Raise taxes on the rich" in regards to solving all social ills and balancing the budget, I'll never pull the level for a Democrat again.

BTW, Jane, I had to give a fake e-mail address, your filter has blocked my regular one.

why is it so hard for people here to understand that poverty is a relative term, that has changed dramatically over time and still today changes dramatically over relatively short distances?

Poverty is only relative if you choose to define it that way, which ensures that it is a problem that can never be resolved. Relative "poverty" is just a measure of income distribution within a society. As long as some people make more money than others, there will always be "poor" people, no matter how well, in absolute terms, those people happen to live. Relatively poor in Beverly Hills, to use an extreme example, probably would be doing OK by most standards. Having less toys than the guy next door does not necessarily make someone poor.

I'm generally sceptical of poverty stats since so many of them do turn out to be relative measures. The official US stats quoted above at least seem to be attempting to measure absolute poverty. They still need to pick an arbitrary measure though (one-third or more of household income spent on a recommended food bundle), are based on cost factors determined in 1964 and make no allowances for cost of living variations across the country, so I think they need to be taken with a grain of salt. I don't think you can say 12.5% of Americans are poor as if it settles the argument.

I will say though, that $14,680 per year for a family of three can't be a whole lot of fun, no matter where you live.

The goal is to advance the poor into the middle class. To do so requires a basic education, a solid work ethic, and the avoidance of stupidity.

The rich, and income redistribution, are irrelevant to this equation. They are only relevant if the goal is to create an elaborate patronage scheme.

and a person's weath or income is the measure of his worth as a human being

I am a registered Republican who describes himself variously as "libertarian", "Republican", or "neo-Conservative" (depending on what mood I'm in), and I don't subscribe to this doctrine.

Paris Hilton has been mentioned in this thread and someone had to bring in the Waltons as an example of the undeserving rich? ;)

This assumption by most Republicans and libertarians -- that the poor necessarily deserve to be poor and that the rich deserve just as equally to be rich; and a person's weath or income is the measure of his worth as a human being -- is one of the things keeping me in the Democratic party.

I think whatever is keeping you in the Democratic party is related to your inability to see just how ridiculous that statement is.

A person of equal moral worth, equal employment and intelligence can never catch up with a daddy-bought. Those first several years as an adult are just too important.

There's wisdom in that, but it's also just a simple observation of the real world. People don't start from the same position. What they are offered, however, is not starting equality, but equality of opportunity. At this moment I'm contracting with a small, multinational IP company whose owner grew up poor and is presently rich because he took a good idea and knocked on doors and rang telephones until he had built it up into a stable business.

Of course, not all people are natural self-starters, and those that aren't don't always grow up with positive role models pushing them to excel. But how is that fundamental human problem solvable with anybody's politics?

Okay, so Michael Dell gets to own his money, since he earned it (unlike those deadbeat Walton and Hilton kids). But to own something means that you get to decide what happens to it. So suppose Mr. Dell wants to give his money to his own kids? (I have no idea whether he has children).

Sam Walton earned piles of money. He wanted to give his money to his kids. End of story.

"But they didn't earn it! They don't deserve it! They were just lucky to be born rich!" True. But by the same token, Michael Jordan didn't earn his wealth either -- he was simply lucky to be born with the capacity to play basketball very, very well, and the will to maximize that capacity. So should we confiscate the fruits of his undeserved genetic inheritance, too?

The heart of the matter is that the amount of wealth in the world is not fixed. Wealth gets created all the time, through hard work and brilliant flashes of insight. And societies in which people get to keep most of the wealth that they create (property rights) tend to create more wealth than do societies in which people's wealth is confiscated in the name of the greater good.

I know that a large part of why I work as hard as I do is to make a better life for my own children. Take away that incentive, and I don't work as hard, I don't create as much wealth.

Denise, next time you want to set up a straw man and knock him down, why don't you invite us over? Maybe serve some snacks. It's a lovely show.

This thread is sooooooooooo republican. It asks, "What is rich?" and the answer is mostly screw the poor, they did it to themselves. Where you end up has alot to do with were you start. It seems the republicans can set a price for most things, so why can't they put a minimum on being "rich"? I see all this advice here about which economics books to read, all these complex no tax schemes, but none of you want to hang a number on being rich. I think its completely logical to say a certain level of income defines being rich. I think the people in the bottom half of earners would call the top 10% rich. No matter what their earning future holds. I think that some who have never suffered think of having to worry about makeing the payment on the BMW or not having as much disposable income for like, shopping, means they are not rich. Not that there's anything fabulous about suffering. A person that lives a life that leaves them broke every month because they spend to much on car, rent, bills, even shopping shouldn't be able to assume the right to b*tch about being "sort of" poor.

You know what the rich and poor know that the middle class doesn't? Gratification delayed is boring and not fabulous...

"What they are offered, however, is not starting equality, but equality of opportunity"

This is not true.

Best definition I ever heard of rich was this:

You are rich if you can live the lifestyle you desire without having to work. Otherwise -- whether you make minimum wage or earn $500,000 a year you are just working poor.

By that definition I am working poor. My retired parents -- who can get anything they want -- are rich. (And, yeah, what they want is a comfortable upper middle-class lifestyle -- they don't want a yatch and personal trainer.)

denise wrote:

This assumption by most Republicans and libertarians -- that the poor necessarily deserve to be poor and that the rich deserve just as equally to be rich; and a person's wealth or income is the measure of his worth as a human being -- is one of the things keeping me in the Democratic party.

"Deserve" has nothing to do with it. We just recognize the futility and, ultimately, danger in allowing the government to arbitrarily decide who is deserving and who isn't. The free market is not perfect, and I don't believe even the most rabid Libertarians think it is. It is, however, less apt to result in tyranny and oppression than having a giant bureaucracy deciding who is worthy of their possessions and who isn't. Or worse, allowing people to vote goodies for themselves to be taken from their fellow man by agents of the government at threat of force.

If you want to help the needy, good for you. Help them. Come by and I'll write you a check to help you help them. I suspect the great majority of "most Republicans and libertarians" would, as well. That's compassion. That's charity. Using government force to coercively extract money from you neighbors to use as you see fit isn't compassion, even if you intend to use it to help those you (in your obviously superior wisdom) consider more worthy, needy, or deserving.

If any political group has trouble confusing financial status with worth as a human being, it's Leftists. Witness the insistence that every person who is "valued" by the Left but doesn't make a lot of money justifies more wealth redistribution. It's the Left that's obsessed with material wealth, or the lack of it, as a measure of "social injustice" that must be remedied.

"Most Republicans and libertarians" recognize that life is often unfair, and will usually offer a hand to those who really need help. It's just that there's less sympathy for those who materially contribute to their own situation and just expect the rest of society to continually bale them out. We also don’t believe "compassion" and "government programs" are synonymous. Why do lefties assume someone is heartless because they distrust government and assume someone is compassionate because they yearn to force their fellow citizens to do the "right thing"?

I think I can safely speak for "most Republicans and libertarians" when I say all this. Or at least, feel I can speak for them better than you can when you paint them all as heartless Scrooges.

"What they are offered, however, is not starting equality, but equality of opportunity"

This is not true.

Ah, because you say it isn't. Of course. How foolish of me, taking a position that could be dismissed by a just-so fallacy.

No, really -- care to provide a counterpoint argument that we can debate, or is it merely a point of faith for you?

It's easy to sit in our secured homes and cozy offices pondering over what the meaning of "Rich" is but I think by bringing this question to the the real working class people they'll have a more genuine answer and opinion contrary to what we all think. Ask the homeless man that has been trying to get back on his feet for the past 3 years, the single mom of 4 working 3 jobs to stay off of welfare, the 18 year old full time student working 2 jobs to put himself through college, the family of 4 who lives in a crime infested community trying to make ends meet or the immigrant father who's trying to make enough money in the U.S to send back to his family for food and shelter. Or better yet, get out there and ask the people that don't have computers with internet access. Not everyone has or may be having trouble maintaining a roof over their head, food to eat, running water, clothes on their backs, heat, a bathtub or toilet or even money to take public transportation. Even having these things doesn't make a person "Rich". That's the bare necessity--survival at its least. It's easy to think one dimensional and only consider the meaning of "Rich" within your own class. Leave your comfort zone and just imagine what it would mean if you didn't have all these basics things. Would you still feel Rich? Maybe "Rich" with stregnth, love, compassion, hope, dreams, goals, passion and drive?

"People don't start from the same position. What they are offered, however, is not starting equality, but equality of opportunity."

Do you really believe that? That if your daddy is a doctor or a banker, your opportunities are no different than if your daddy is a janitor or a prison inmate?

I don't believe that, and I don't believe that inspiring examples of people who have overcome mean the opportunities were equal.

I do agree that what society, and government in particular, can or should do about it is a different question. I just don't think the debate should start from the standpoint of wealth and merit being so intertwined.

Mycin, your position is based in the reality that life is unfair, and not all the rich deserve to be, and not all the poor deserve to be, so I don't have any quarrel with that.

I never said the rich or Republicans were heartless Scrooges or anything of the sort. I do think there are some people who don't realize what good fortune they have had. There really are people who were born on third base and think they hit a triple. I've met my share.

I also never said I favor a big redistribution from rich to poor. And I completely agree that there should be "less sympathy for those who materially contribute to their own situation and just expect the rest of society to continually bale them out." And the left does underestimate the effect of a lifetime of bad judgment in a person's situation. I've always said if the poor generally had good money skills and judgment, there would be no rent-to-own industry.

Of course, a lot of the middle class has poor judgment about money too. The "latte factor" that causes some of my relatives to think that they can't afford put money into their 401(k), yet they can buy all their clothes at Banana Republic and wouldn't be caught dead in a J.C. Penney. The consequences are just a lot less dire if you have poor budgeting skills, but a pretty good job.

I'm sure I lost Brittain somewhere in this response. I know I am a moderate because half the blog commenters I encounter think I'm a rabid right-winger and half think I'm a lefty nut.

"It's easy to sit in our secured homes and cozy offices pondering over what the meaning of "Rich" is but I think by bringing this question to the the real working class people they'll have a more genuine answer and opinion contrary to what we all think. Ask the homeless man that has been trying to get back on his feet for the past 3 years"

Why is housing so expensive? I'll give you a hint - it ain't the free market.

"the single mom of 4 working 3 jobs to stay off of welfare"

Those four children just appeared out of the blue?

(What about the ones that were married and are single moms because of divorce?)

Well, easy divorce wasn't dreamed up by conservatives. And a fair number of those divorced single moms fought tooth and nail to get sole custody - how much should we sympathise with them now that they've got what they fought for and find it difficult?

The true victims - the ones abandoned by husbands that refuse to raise the kids or send money - are fewer in number. I'd be on board with helping them out - after we've done all we can to force the abandoners to pay up.

"the 18 year old full time student working 2 jobs to put himself through college"

For which he'll make a handsome profit. Or else he's wasting his time and his money.

"the family of 4 who lives in a crime infested community trying to make ends meet"

And why is that community crime infested? It isn't because of the existence of rich people or the insufficiency of welfare benefits. It's because the government is allowing criminals to flourish in that community. Laissez-faire economics does not cause that to happen.

"or the immigrant father who's trying to make enough money in the U.S to send back to his family for food and shelter."

No one forced him to come, and if he doesn't like the deal he's getting, he doesn't have to stick around.

Ken writes:

>>>Either they were lifted from poverty by transferring money from younger people, who were thereby pushed toward poverty, or they got a fair return on the money they paid in, in which case they could have saved the money on their own if Social Security hadn't existed with no change in their standard of living over their working life, and therefore would not be poor without Social Security."
What is the basis in historical fact do you have for this statement? Do you realize the horrific fate for the elderly BEFORE Social Security?

Anony-mouse writes:

>>>Some have argued that SOME poverty is "self-inflicted." Either stay with the thread, or stay out of it, your choice, but lose the half-cocked criticisms."

I'm well within the parameters of the thread. For example, YOUR statements here, preceded my own:

>>>I think you might be trying to derail the thread, but in a nutshell, "no" -- I don't think its a good thing that some people accidentally SELF-INFLICT POVERTY. If each of us paid the full price of our mistakes, none of us would be in such good shape, right?

However, I think there is usually a difference between that type of poverty, and POVERTY that is SELF-INFLICTED through willful stupidity. For example, if someone can't get to work because their car broke down and they don't have money to repair it, that's a tragedy; but if that same person has been coughing up $5+ a day for vice, such as cigarrettes or beer, then by all means go hungry for a spell. It tends to put priorities back in order.:"

In fairness, you were responding to Some Guys question, but since you RESPONDED to the question, you extended the width of the thread, allowing rebuttal.

Michelle writes:

>>>There are, as I understand it, a few men who deliberately live in poverty because if they actually made any money to speak of they'd have to pay some of it as alimony or child support or both, and they'd rather not. But I doubt that's what you mean."

I'm leaning towards the women and children of divorce, especially where the children are under school age, and mothers have to deal with deadbeat husbands who, like you aptly put, seek to avoid alimony and child support at all costs.
In a society where the divorce rate is around 50%, it's a lot more common than you would be led to believe.
Point taken on the TV set's intrinsic value as opposed to it's sticker price. All of America needs to shut that damned tube off and blog more, IMHO.

Ken writes:

>>>The heart of the matter is that the amount of wealth in the world is not fixed. Wealth gets created all the time, through hard work and brilliant flashes of insight. And societies in which people get to keep most of the wealth that they create (property rights) tend to create more wealth than do societies in which people's wealth is confiscated in the name of the greater good."

I don't deny that wealth CAN be created through hard work, but I think you, and others who seem to believe that wealth is the reward for dilligence should review American History a little more closely, and examine the wealth creating-ramifications of the Homestead Act of 1862, the GI Bill following WW2, FHA Housing loans and the historically unequal access to capital for women and minorities throughout the American Centuries.
Then come back to me with the "Work Hard-Get Rich" equation.

Also, since America is in this "People of Faith", "Family Values" mode, how much of a factor do those deadly sins GREED and ENVY play in the definition of "RICH?"

Ken writes:

>>>We don't have poverty here in the United States."

If poverty doesn't exist, and a person can technically "subsist" at the U.S. rated poverty level of $9,393, and any non life-sustaining purchase is a "luxary" item, then by definition, everyone living above those means is guilty of GREED. Aren't there "poverty vows" among many religeous followers? Why, what did Jesus say to the rich young man he met on the road?

>>>And, behold, one came and said unto him, Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life?

And he said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.

He saith unto him, Which? Jesus said, Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness,

Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

The young man saith unto him, All these things have I kept from my youth up: what lack I yet?

Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.

But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions.

Then said Jesus unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven.

And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God."

Matthew 19:16-24

Now, for the non-Christians, agnostics and atheists out there, this little story probably doesn't mean much, but I doubt this little story ever makes it on those James Dobson telethons.

--Cobra

I think there are a number of misstakements about "everyone." Beginning with the million "street people" in the country there are impovrished regions of the country from the old coal mining areas of West Virginia to the former steel manufacturing areas of the upper midwest. Those in the "poverty" level are not all necessarily available to avail themselves of consistent and adequate food souirces, even with the assistance of food stamps and other programs. Owning a color TV with cable access is a dream that many of the nation's poor cannot possibly afford and many get themselves into serious debt problems in renting appliances such as TVs because of exhorbinant monthly fees (due to their inability to get credit). A bad checking account experience, perhaps due to exhorbinant medical expenses, can ruin the credit of someone who otherwise would have no trouble getting a checking account simply because all local banks check with each other to look for "bad risks" leaving the individual with the sole option of purchasing money orders with cash to pay bills. Look at the numerous "check cashing" operations in virtually all states where the poor have to go to cash a payroll check. Their credit is so bad they can't even cash a payroll check at their grocery store. Come on, let's be realistic, all of the comparisons to the 1920's or whenever in terms of "wealth" simply don't apply. Many work the same hours at the same low wages, comparitively speaking, as they did in past ages. This article is an affront to many such people and, for that matter, I can't conceive of a bigger insult. Services in various states with regard to Medicaid, for example, differ widely, and typically in those states individuals can't possibly afford to live up to the "standards" set in this article.

There were also kids I went to schoool with whose daddies picked up the tab for their entire educations, their first car, their first home and filled it with furniture. Whatever these people do with their lives, they have a leg-up over those like me whose parents did what they could, but who had to pay their own way through college and/or sog their way through student loan debt, car payments, saving for a mortgage down payment, . . . A person of equal moral worth, equal employment and intelligence can never catch up with a daddy-bought. Those first several years as an adult are just too important.

For the handful of people who can make it big by brilliantly executing a novel and unique idea, this is not true.

For the rest of the most intelligent, talented, and diligent top 1% to 10%, this is true. There are certain career paths that, for the best and the brightest, will reliably lead to comfortable affluence regardless of background: medicine, law, some finance jobs. But almost certainly they will never lead to Trimalchian opulence.

Case study: a pretty smart guy graduated from a good college with a mediocre GPA, wanted the prestigious finance jobs but struck out. He moved to a big city to "look for a job" while his parents paid his living expenses. He got nothing, so took a menial temp job for cash with some rich guy his parents know. His parents are not especially wealthy but do have a few good connections. After a few months with this rich guy, said rich guy got him a job, no questions asked, with an even richer guy. He was placed on the same level as older guys who each had several years of experience in the line of business. This job paid nothing for the first year, but this was not a problem as the parents were footing the bill. Fortunately, the richer guy paid him handsomely at the end of the year, paid him more the second year, and he now presently gets paid about $400,000 a year in salary, bonus, and perks for 45 hours a week of work, all before the age of 25. He often complains to his merely mortal friends about how much he has to pay in taxes.

I'm as frothingly rabid a right-winger as you'll find, which I suppose also makes me an empiricist and pragmatist who understands that life ain't fair.

This assumption by most Republicans and libertarians -- that the poor necessarily deserve to be poor and that the rich deserve just as equally to be rich; and a person's weath or income is the measure of his worth as a human being -- is one of the things keeping me in the Democratic party.

Yes, I have encountered persons of the opinion that wealth is a manifestation of virtue. They don't believe it consciously, though it's pretty close. They will not admit it if asked, and they will honestly say it never occured to them. Nevertheless, it is indisputably true that they think this way. I find it revolting. Still, it is not my problem, and such attitudes in need of adjustment do not demand wacky and inefficient tax codes.

In fairness, you were responding to Some Guys question, but since you RESPONDED to the question, you extended the width of the thread, allowing rebuttal.

No, that's not fair at all, since you have misrepresented the context. Some Guy's question was:

"Do any of you have a problem with self-inflicted, but accidental, poverty?"

Thus, the fact that I was responding to a specific question about self-inflicted poverty meant that I wasn't even addressing other types of poverty. You cannot infer therefrom what my position is on other types. (If you believe you have a case to make from other statements I've made in the thread, go for it, but be very clear with the terms, please.)

By the way, Jesus also told parables about masters and slaves that, divorced from their context, could illustrate a capitalist and a worker. Shall we try to make preferential political points from those, too, or simply accept the contextual points about such things as prudent living and the risks associated with having wealth?

See also, to give a few quick references, 1 Timothy 6:9-11, which does not claim that having money is evil but makes is clear that coveting it IS a root of evil; James 2:1-16, which denounces preferential treatment of others based on their wealth; and James 5:1-6, which denounces the misuse of one's own wealth to opress others.

Come on, let's be realistic, all of the comparisons to the 1920's or whenever in terms of "wealth" simply don't apply. Many work the same hours at the same low wages, comparitively speaking, as they did in past ages. This article is an affront to many such people and, for that matter, I can't conceive of a bigger insult.

Comparitively speaking? Economics is not about money. The dollar is merely an accounting unit, and in the long run, you can't really compare the wages of one era with those of another. The basket of goods and services that an assistant fry chef at McDonalds can buy in 2005 includes wonders that a Vanderbilt couldn't even imagine having in 1920. If you'd rather be Jay Gatsby than a modern-day fry chef, that's understandable, but in which era would you rather work for $8 an hour (in 2005 wages)?

But forget 1920. Let's compare the poorest American wage earner in 2005 with the poorest tribesman somewhere in 10,000 BC. Hell, let's compare him with the chieftain. Our modern fry cook may not have much in terms of prestige and concubines, but I don't think it's an "affront" or an "insult" to point out that at least he's likely to live past 40. That's got to count for something, and most of us would call it progress.

I don't think Jane was claiming that the poor are wealthy compared to everyone else; that would violate the very definition. She was merely pointing out that progress, at least in a free country like America, has raised their standard of living well past that of those who were thought of as poor in ages past. A pretty obvious point, but still worth thinking about whenever you ruminate on the nature of wealth.

Don, the point about the Waltons isn't so much about whether they have a "right" to own their money. That's another thread.

It's that it's kind of ridiculous to state that the wealthy are all there because they created that much wealth for the American economy. The Waltons may be fine individuals, they may be deserving of all the tax-free largesse their Daddy wanted to give them, but don't tell me they've individually created $18 billion worth of American wealthy!

God. One superfluous value and the whole tone of your post drops to third-grade and/or illiterate.

Vowel! I'm going to bed!

Cobra,

I'm leaning towards the women and children of divorce, especially where the children are under school age, and mothers have to deal with deadbeat husbands who, like you aptly put, seek to avoid alimony and child support at all costs.
In a society where the divorce rate is around 50%, it's a lot more common than you would be led to believe.

But is a man who isn't earning anything to speak of a "deadbeat" because he isn't paying in child support what he paid last year? Or, to put it another way, would everyone brand a man a "deadbeat" if he were still married and living with his family and quit a stressful Wall Street job to work in a library or a diner or something? Why is it only when there's a divorce that quitting the high-income life (which is also the stressful life, usually) becomes deadbeatery?

What you are saying, as far as I can see, is that a divorced man ought to keep earning what he was earning before the divorce; if he doesn't, he's a "deadbeat." There is a name for that opinion, and you'll find it in the 13th Amendment.

Anony-mouse writes:

>>>Again I ask: what is the real level of systemic poverty? Not "does it exist," but how many people are actually there (and basically stuck there) through no evident fault of their own?

Posted by anony-mouse at April 25, 2005 04:44 PM

You actually ask this question to the board BEFORE Some Guy's statement. Therefore, commentary about self-inflicted poverty is certainly relevant in light of your question.

>>>By the way, Jesus also told parables about masters and slaves that, divorced from their context, could illustrate a capitalist and a worker. Shall we try to make preferential political points from those, too, or simply accept the contextual points about such things as prudent living and the risks associated with having wealth?"

I'm curious, Anony-mouse. Just how "divorced from context" is:

"Then said Jesus unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven."

There isn't much need for an interpreter there, even in the King James version. Given the boasts of avarice from many on this thread, I should hope some of you are stocking up on ice water right about now.

--Cobra

Michelle writes:

>>>But is a man who isn't earning anything to speak of a "deadbeat" because he isn't paying in child support what he paid last year? Or, to put it another way, would everyone brand a man a "deadbeat" if he were still married and living with his family and quit a stressful Wall Street job to work in a library or a diner or something?"

I'm of the mind that if a man DELIBERATELY takes a lesser job to avoid paying support to his OWN CHILDREN, he's a "deadbeat." Now, I'll take into account that maybe a court has handed out a raw deal every now and then, but does it take a liberal like me to emphasize the responsibilities of fatherhood and "family values?" We can debate the nuances of alimony judgements to an able-bodied spouse without children. I also understand your point about a man having the right to choose the profession he wishes to pursue, no matter the salary. But there are voices on the board who made this sentiment long before me...

>>>Sigh. I may be the only person around who thinks that people who are too poor to support children shouldn't have any. I guess if I was less of a heartless bastard I would think reproducing to your heart's content is a God-given right, and the rest of the world has an obligation to pick up the slack on their care without any criticism of your behaviour, and in a way that is extremely respectful of your well-earned pride and self-esteem."

Posted by Rob Leder at April 26, 2005 01:17 AM

AND....

>>>Rob, chalk me up with you on the don't-have-kids-if-you-can't-pay-for-them side. I'm not sure if this is the best way of implementing the idea, but I really feel like we should start thinking about policy initiatives like "unmarried teenage mothers can only receive welfare if they've had they're tubes tied--we'll pay for the operation, too." Might be a more elegant way of achieving the same effect, and more people we can apply it to...but people on welfare just shouldn't have kids."

Posted by Jadagul at April 26, 2005 04:15 AM

If those without resources to start with are to be demonized for reproducing, how much more "demonic" are divorced parents who don't fully support their children despite their abillity to do so?

Jamie writes:

>>>Surely, even if there's no stable goalpost for wealth, there ought to be one for poverty - such as going to bed hungry through no choice of your own some number of times per week or something?"

Excellent point, Jamie. In that aspect, wealth is regionally defined, but hunger is universal. Moreover, I think a dangerous factor not spoken about is the type of diet that goes with being poor. What kind of nutrition are the poor, especially poor children getting? How does that affect physical and mental maturity? How does this factor into the continuing the cycle of poverty?

--Cobra

Cobra & Anony-Mouse:

Just curious, are either or you Christian? As in, believe Jesus was the Son of God, pray regularly to Him, etc.? I'm not, but if you are, I totally respect your faith.

However, if you're not, I find it really amusing that you are slinging Biblical citations at each other. Are there any other ancient texts you wish to cite? Perhaps Zeus made a proclamation about wealth in the Illiad that we should mull over before deciding whether or not Alice Walton deserves her billions?

Cobra,

I'm of the mind that if a man DELIBERATELY takes a lesser job to avoid paying support to his OWN CHILDREN, he's a "deadbeat."

Well, what if it's merely his "OWN EX-WIFE"? There are not always children in divorces.

And if he were to take a lesser job while still married, would he also be a deadbeat? Bear in mind that in each case he'd be reducing his own standard of living too. I don't believe that a married man can actually be prosecuted for failing to work altogether, but divorced men have been, or so I've heard. Cobra, do you really want to try to suss out why anyone who quits a job quit? Why anyone who deliberately did something stupid so as to get fired did it? You wanna be the Career-Implosion-Intention Police? Have at it. I imagine it pays nicely (so don't get married, then divorced, and quit and do something fun!). Me, I'd rather do almost anything else.

One reason the wealthy are in denial and/or apologetic is because they so willingly swallow the guilt society has fed them on behalf of the "little man." It's not unlike survivor's guilt: allowing another's bad fortune to derail one's own potential.

One example of many: Due to public scrutiny claiming his retirement package was exorbitant, Jack Welch gave up perks he was entitled to because his two choices were (a) look like he had done something wrong or (b) look like a greedy bastard (He said as much in a recent article). I believe he--and so many like him-- chose "a" (wrongly, imo) not because he wanted to *look* guilty but because chosing "b" would've made him *feel* guilty.

Perhaps this is one reason the definition of "rich" is so tough to nail. It gets passed to the next person seeming to do better than we. No one wants the burden of that perception from the "little guy." In short, altruism.

Just my wee-hour ramblings...

Rich? The Swiss definition, being able to live off the interest of your interest.

So Fabulous asked for a number; here's a back-of-the-envelope.

From above, my definition of rich is that you can spend like someone earning in the top 10% without ever needing to earn anything by work, and reasonably expect to pass on the same to your children.

I can't find 90th percentile so I'll use 95th percentile--$150,000 in 2001. Figure that you can withdraw 4% per year safely (that's what most endowments figure)--so rich is wealth greater than $3,750,000, before earning anything from work.

The above illustrates why I shouldn't think before I've has my coffee; the income needs to be passed on to children while the parents are alive--in other words, the asset pool needs to be growing, not stable. So the $3.75 mm is the parents' endowment; they want to pass on the same to their 2 children--let's say in 25 years, and assume growth of 5% over that time. That takes an additional $2.25 mm. So rich is assets over $6 mm, before children are born--growing as they mature to $11 mm with college-aged children, then falling back to $3.75 mm once the children's assets have been passed on to them.

This calculation is assuming that there is no transactional friction like gift and estate taxes; those would increase the amounts considerably.

Many things are relative. Based on a cold, hard assessment of my mother's growing-up years (from stories from her and other relatives), her family WAS poor - her father had shaky employment at best, her mother wound up working (at a time when few married women did) to help support the family. There was a lot of "make-do-and-mend." There was a lot of "family hold back" [on taking servings of food] when visitors were there. No vacations were taken, or if they were, they were short (

And yet, I've never once heard her complain about not having some particular thing she wanted when she was growing up. I think, because her family was loving, and most of the families in her rural area were in pretty much a similar boat.

When I was growing up, my dad was a college prof. My mom did not work. We didn't take lavish vacations, didn't have expensive clothing, didn't get cable (even though it was available), eat out much, go to the movies a lot...by comparison with some of th kids in the town where I lived, we were "poor." (And some of my schoolmates were quick to point that out to me when I showed up to school in Wrangler jeans rather than Jordache). It could get kind of miserable at school, putting up with the stupid teasing about what you didn't have - again, it's all by comparison. By any realistic standards, my family was rich. My parents owned their house. We never worried about the power being turned off, or not having enough to eat, or not being able to go to the doctor when we were sick. But there was that irritant of the wealthier kids using my parents' frugalness as proof of our "poverty."

The main difference between those two situations is that my parents were richer when I was growing up than my mom's were, but we were a less-wealthy family in a very affluent area, whereas her family was not well off, but was in pretty much the same situation as everyone else where she was.

And now - I'm an unmarried (no kids) college professor. I make perhaps $42K a year before taxes. And I consider myself pretty rich, simply because I don't have a load of debt - I managed to buy both my car and my house outright (I have lived very frugally and saved a lot of money). Don't have credit card bills. Worked through college to avoid taking out loans. I have enough disposable income so I can buy books and decent food and pursue one or two hobbies. If some emergency comes up - car breaks down, plumbing problems, etc. - I have a "cushion" in savings to help take care of that.

A lot of my friends live more lavishly (big houses, big vacations, lots of expensive clothing) and they're constantly struggling to cover the credit card bills. And that seems worse to me than going without things you can't easily afford.

I think there are a lot of people in the U.S. who complain about not being "rich enough" when they're actually simply not using their resources wisely. People who, in an era when conspicuous consumption was only expected of the truly truly rich and not of more-or-less everybody, would be very comfortably well off. And not have that nagging concern about the bills they have to pay.

As for the truly poor, I pay my taxes. I'm also a pretty generous donor (money AND time) to various causes aimed at trying to alleviate poverty or at least give people what they need while they're trying to get out of it. I don't think income redistribution by force is the answer. I do think the poor will always be with us and it's an individual obligation for us to decide what we can do best to help others - for some, that might be giving money, no questions asked. For others, that might be only giving to groups that insist on people taking some responsbility for themselves (which is where I tend to come down - help 'em out, but don't enable them to keep getting in the bad situations), for some, that may mean only helping those showing progress.

The primary driver of free markets is not profit, but fear. Fear of what will happen if one cannot find a way to produce something that someone else values.

The poor serve a valuable social function - an example of how not to do it. The behaviors that keep people in poverty are not to be supported, they are to be shunned.

My husband and I have been all over the income spectrum - thank goodness, so far all in one direction. Neither of us had any financial help from parents, nor did our parents have any "connections" of any use. We started as working college students, the hubby working one (good) job, me working three (crummy) ones. Where we sit now is a place I never thought I'd be in - but still we don't describe ourselves as "rich," but rather as "the lower end of upper-middle-class" or something like that. We rationalize it by noting that we don't have different kinds of things from those we had after starting our first post-college jobs - just bigger, newer, or more of whatever they are. To an extent, it's true. We haven't added any new classes of things to our life; we've just upgraded the things. The most mat