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Comment by bmmayer1 | Hacker News Reader

This article boils down to one point: that the basis of the LA Times article's claim is California's sky-high real estate prices. If it wasn't including house prices, poor Californians would be doing 'just fine.' That's like saying a laptop works perfectly fine if you ignore the fact the screen is busted.

Why shouldn't housing prices be looked at when determining how poor a population is? Obviously it's a significant component of cost of living, which directly impacts how much purchasing power individuals and families have.

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That's your interpretation of the article. I don't believe that's how the article was written.

Author acknowledge the high housing cost but states that the metric that was used only account for a few things and it ignore other metrics which can skew it towards a certain argument.

Author also stated that the other person lied about how large state employment for California is. Author actually normalize/standardize it per capital instead of a having stating this is a large number.

You and the article can argue whatever yall want but it's just an opinion until yall do factor analysis or some sort of algorithm to figure out what's the right combination of metric is.

Imagine you're a one of Apple's (very stable) geniuses. Would you rather hear someone say "My computer doesn't work, fix it" or "I can't use my computer because the screen is busted." Yes, high housing prices are a component of poverty in California, but if you make poverty the story, you're burying the lede. The real story is housing housing housing, and that the housing crisis is creating more poverty.

This back and forth of complainers and defenders reminds me of old time raps --where someone came out with a rap and then someone would have to come back with an answer rap.

I bet if the state were controlled by different parties, Mother Jones and LA Times would have a different takes. This is politics at work.

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