Because we keep changing the measure for "poverty".
It's much better to be in "poverty" today than 50 years ago. If you aren't that old, read a book about the time period. Life will never be perfect but it is tremendously better.
- (signed) A guy who, in the late 60's rode his bicycle from the "good" side of town across the RR tracks to the "bad" side of town to hold a part-time job at a grocery store that catered to and employed people of all races and creeds.
No I did not: I got a job ASAP and have worked ever since. You're the one who's spouting horseshit.
There are many in poverty today who don't really have it better than 50 years ago. They're living under bridges, bouncing from shelter to shelter as they can, barely managing to get enough food to eat.
There are many others in poverty who do, indeed, have it "better" in some senses (for instance, they may have a smartphone—some of the time, in between times when it gets stolen, or broken, or they can't pay for the service), but who are still in desperate straits. They're living in their car, working three part-time jobs just to be able to continue to live in their car as opposed to on the street like the first category. Or they're couch surfing, relying on the patience of the last couple of friends who haven't already kicked them out while they apply to job after job after job and continually get ghosted even for fast-food positions.
Just because "poverty" in the 21st century doesn't look like the stereotypical Dickensian picture of starving children with nothing but a stick to play with doesn't mean it's not real poverty, and it doesn't mean we shouldn't be trying to end it.
If poverty is defined as percentage of people in the bottom 20%, then this must always be fixed.
https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
> It's much better to be in "poverty" today than 50 years ago.
And if there was something justice and fair treatment, it would be EVEN better. So that argument is worth exactly nothing.
Huh? Global income inequality has been falling for quite a few decades now.
A single line of average real wages wouldn't do much, and also doesn't actually show any decline.
There's an infamous chart that seems to show that real wages lag behind productivity. Alas, that chart uses different measures of inflation for the two lines in that chart. Thus it's completely useless.
You can have a look at https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LABSHPUSA156NRUG for the 'Share of Labour Compensation in GDP': if you are only interested in inequality, you don't need to worry about inflation, you can just divide total nominal labour income by total nominal gdp to cancel out the price level.
The labour share of GDP in the US has been remarkably stable. FRED has data since 1950, and the labour share has stayed between 58% to 65% in that time.
(If you want to dig deeper: the capital share of GDP has been mostly constant. It's the share that goes to land that has increased.)
In any case, as I said above, the average income from labour has done just fine. It's the difference between workers that might be interesting to look at: eg CEO vs burger flipper.
CEO vs burger flipper seems to be the lion’s share of the difference.
See https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckdevore/2015/07/22/piketty-...
To avoid paywalls:
the first one, the productivity and compensation is very misleading.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/25/wage-stagnation-much-m...
Libertarians love that one. Get ready for the chart where TVs are cheaper.
I can understand the political differences, but there’s something else at play here. The American ethos of “anything is possible”, which is very much alive in the private sector, stands in stark contrast with the collective civic apathy. So if not for a lack of imagination and creativity, it must be something else. Bootstrapping myths? Unawareness of how bad these issues really are? Helping the poor means less money for oneself? The poor needs to be punished for being dumb? A need to feel better about oneself relative to the poor? Fear of socialism? Lack of trust in government? Exhaustion from a perpetual two-party stalemate?
The US is a country that I love dearly but keeps harming itself in ways I can’t understand.
so, poor people today don't do what my parents did, put the TV in hock for months at a time and borrow an old little one from their grandparents?
No we don't.
> It's much better to be in "poverty" today than 50 years ago.
No it's not.
> Life will never be perfect but it is tremendously better.
No it isn't.
Mr. Vibrating: Yes it is.
Man: No it isn't. It's just contradiction.
Mr. Vibrating: No it isn't.
Man: It is!
Mr. Vibrating: It is not.
Man: Look, you just contradicted me.
Mr. Vibrating: I did not.
Man: Oh you did!!
Mr. Vibrating: No, no, no.
Man: You did just then.
Mr. Vibrating: Nonsense!
Man: Oh, this is futile!