Yes, poor people have color TVs

[Recursion]

I started down this road in a different thread and kind of wanted to muse on this for a minute.

First off, yes: poor people in the US have color TVs. Poor people in Dharavi have color TVs (they're more common than water taps). Wherever people have electricity, they tend to get color TVs.

Nielson estimates that 115.6 million households (out of 115.8 million) have television sets. But color TV is a luxury, right? Not really. When the US switched from NTSC to ATSC in 2009, the barebones analog signal black and white TVs used to use (the color information is sent in a sideband modultion that black and white TVs don't know about) went away, meaning that now any black and white TV has to have the ATSC converted to NTSC and then converted to analog -- a process that is often more expensive than the original TV itself. New black and white consumer TVs are essentially not manufactured or marketed. Poor people have color TVs because that's what's manufactured and sold.

But that particular explanation ignores a larger point, which I think conservatives get exactly backwards. Color TVs used to be a luxury because they were expensive to make. They're very cheap to make now. The US doesn't make them much anymore (I think Zenith was the last US-owned major TV manufacturer, and LG bought it a while ago), but other industrialized countries do (and the US makes the machinery that they use to make them, so there's that). TV manufacturers saw an available market, and produced an affordable product for it. This is a good thing, and one of the few things capitalism does pretty well. As manufactured goods get cheaper and more plentiful, real standard of living increases (not that the color TV is a great example of improving standard of living, but it is definitely a small example of that). This leads to what seems paradoxical to a lot of conservatives: how can you call somebody "poor" when their quality of life is in many ways much better than that of a rich person a few decades ago? Color TV! Smartphones! etc.

Well, take smartphones, come to think of it. 10 years ago, there were Blackberry's and Treo's, and that was about it (and 10 years before that there weren't either of them). If you were very rich or had a job that required them, you had one; otherwise you didn't. Now you can go to a Boost Mobile outlet and pay $100 for a decent Android phone with a pre-paid plan.

Ah, there it is: a pre-paid plan. Androids are sometimes seen as "poorer" than iPhones, possibly because of that. Poor people can often afford the iPhone itself, but don't have the credit needed to get a postpaid plan from AT&T or Verizon. Which gets to my larger point:

The gap between the wealthy and the poor in industrialized countries is less about manufactured goods bought than it is about services consumed. There are still obviously some fantastically expensive "status" items, but for the most part most people have mobile phones, televisions, and computers (something like 99%, 98%, and 85% of households, respectively). A sign of richness now is having a good gym membership, bespoke clothes, eating at fancy restaurants, etc... all things that specifically don't get cheaper with automation (or at least not much cheaper).

This, I think, is a first hint of what poverty in a post-scarcity economy looks like. The ability to afford many of the same physical things the rich do without the security of knowing you'll be able to keep it for very long. (When I was very poor a few years ago I would buy a cell phone used, activate it and add some minutes, use it, and then sell it on Craigslist when I needed money to eat; same with my computer).

Unfortunately this will probably only get "worse" from a conservative standpoint: more and more things are going to get cheaper and more widely available. And I think that really does bother some on the right: they want a life in poverty to be as hard as possible (from their perspective -- wrongly -- they think that will motivate people to "stop being poor" or something). Personally, like I said I think overall it's a good thing that people can now afford things that used to be out of reach.

But the services gap is only going to keep getting worse. This is part of the problem with health-care prices; it's a service-intensive industry, and hopefully ACA will do something to make health-care services more available. But there are a lot of other services that the poor are priced out of, like car repair (just keep the beater running), and particularly troubling is education (public schools aren't "free" if it costs too much to live in the neighborhood they serve, to say nothing of tutors, etc.).

But then again maybe it doesn't have to be that way. Take manicures: that used to be a service for the well-to-do only, but that's changed in the past several decades, and now if you look on any immigrant-heavy street in any city in north America, you'll see nail salons everywhere -- there was an interesting study out of California showing that Vietnamese immigrants' opening salons had resulted in a large increase in the number of salons everywhere. And, in fact, with WalMart and Walgreens opening up clinics with nurse practitioners in every store, as well as the FQHC model expanded by the ACA, an idea very like the multitude of small, low-overhead standalone nail salons may be coming to health care. Could a model like that come to education? Would we want it to?

Anyways, I just wanted to get that off my chest. The physical objects a person owns at a given moment are no longer the sure signs of wealth or poverty that they were even a decade or two ago, and they're the wrong way to understand wealth and poverty now. Services are a much more important sector to look at, imo.

[Pretzel_Warrior]

1. only hipsters have black and white TVs

[Recursion]

2. I poured Sriracha on mine to make it color (nt)

[Art_from_Ark]

10. Back in the '60s, I remember a mail-order house

that was selling a plastic transparent film that was colored red, blue, and green that someone could stick on the screen of their black-and-white TV and pretend it was a color TV.

[Pretzel_Warrior]

11. that is transparently sad

get it? huh huh. But really. When I was a child in the 70's, we were watching a tiny black and white TV (I was around 4 years old). Then one day, some deliveryman shows up and helps mom set up a large RCA color TV dad had purchased.

Yeah....it was just like the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy goes from black and white to Technicolor.

[Recursion]

12. I grew up with a black and white TV perched precariously on another, non-working, TV

The knobs had fallen off so we used a pair of pliers to change the channel. Or sometimes I'd just move the UHF knob down (remember UHF TV?) and turn the VHF tuner with that.

I wonder what ever happened to that old TV? I was shopping for a TV recently and was sad to learn most TVs don't even have tuners anymore; there's a separate box for that and the TV is just a display.

[a2liberal]

22. Sorry to go further off-topic but

most TVs do actually have ATSC tuners for over-the-air signals and ClearQAM for the few cable providers that still do that. It does look like maybe a lot of manufacturers are removing CableCARD support because the cable companies keep changing things up

[Recursion]

23. Sorry, I should have specified "in India"

There's a single broadcast channel here, and it's screwing up its conversion to whatever the PAL equivalent of ATSC is so badly that people don't even bother anymore...

[a2liberal]

24. Oh ok

Didn't realize you're in India, and also didn't realize there's only 1 channel (I feel like there used to be more? I was only 10 last time I visited though...)

[Recursion]

27. There are some pirate channels depending on where you are

And actually I should have said one broadcaster, with some number of channels in each state.

[Hekate]

32. My grandpa had one of those in the 1950s, I kid you not

He came to visit us once and bought us a B/W tv because he missed Queen For a Day. Good times.

[655351]

39. Do they even make black-and-white TV's anymore?

I cannot remember seeing a functioning black-and-white TV in... Well my whole life really. The closest thing I've ever seen is a security monitor at a gas station; it was black-and-white.

Hell come to think of it, I haven't seen a brand new VCR in ten years or better either. I still see a few old units at people's houses and at second-hand stores like thrift shops and pawnshops; the tapes are still easily found although they (obviously) are also second hand.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

3. Right-wingers love to say that poor people aren't poor due to

1) Having refrigerators and stoves (In most places, landlords are required by law to provide refrigerators and stoves)
2) Having air conditioning (Most poor people live in apartments, and driving around Minneapolis, I see that public housing and every apartment building that is standing up straight has at least window units)
3) Having DVD players (Maybe the right-winger bought his when they were $500, but they cost $30 now, and getting a movie from Redbox makes for cheap entertainment)
4) Having cars (In most parts of the U.S., public transit is lousy, so if you want poor people to work, they need cars)
5) Having cell phones (You can get a pre-paid phone for as little as $10 a month--much cheaper than a landline--and even a free smart phone if you're willing to accept a model that's two years old or so, and smart phones are desirable to have, since they give you access to the Internet without a computer.)

Another favorite sneer is that America's poor people would be considered rich in the Third World. Well, yes, if you could live on a U.S. poverty wage and pay Third World prices, you would seem rich. But poor Americans have to pay American prices.

Then there's the "I saw someone buying steak with his EBT card."

And this bothers them because...well, I've found it's news to them that if someone really were dumb enough to blow his EBT allowance on steak, he would NOT be eligible for any more funds till the next month, so it makes no difference to the taxpayers if Joe Blow spends his EBT allowance on steak and lobster or on beans and rice.

And anyway, how do you know that Joe Blow didn't finally find a job and is buying steak to celebrate?

These are the same people, by the way, who say that we don't have the right to tell rich people what to do with their money. But poor people...no, they need some middle-class scold to keep them from enjoying life too much.

[Recursion]

5. Globally the "1%" line starts at about $30K

But you said it perfectly:

Well, yes, if you could live on a U.S. poverty wage and pay Third World prices, you would seem rich.

Bingo. On a US minimum wage you could live like a king in India (not in Mumbai or Delhi, probably, but in one of the smaller cities). But the people making a minimum wage in the US don't live in India, they live in US cities and towns where they can't go get a kilo of vegetables for less than a dollar.

[pamela]

18. Someone used that "steak with an EBT card" line recently.

I responded, "Maybe it was the mother of a soldier returning from his third tour in Afghanistan and she's been eating beans for a week so she could make ths special meal for her son." Shut that wingnut right up.

[laundry_queen]

19. good one. nt

[CrispyQ]

45. Your last paragraph is spot on.

An article I read said that most Americans are trinket rich but equity poor. I thought that was a perfect phrase. We have gadgets, furniture, & cars, but very little equity, savings or cash. There was a study that found a majority of Americas would be hard pressed to come up with $2000 cash, without asking someone they know for money, or selling something they have. That's not a lot of money in today's world.

[NYC_SKP]

4. Well how are exceptional Americans going to measure success if everyone has the same consumer goods?

I jest.

K/R

[Recursion]

6. Honestly, there's probably some of that involved, too

I hate to say that, but I do think there are people who viscerally dislike the fact that it's harder to tell from possessions who "has" and who "has not". That's why Burberry can sell a bag for $4000 that doesn't do a better job of holding stuff than a similar-looking $5 bag from TJ Maxx.

[Divine Discontent]

14. lolololol... exactly, NYC_SKP. I think that's a big chunk of it right there, my friend! spot ON!

I also like the comment from the OP, "A sign of richness now is having a good gym membership, bespoke clothes, eating at fancy restaurants, etc... all things that specifically don't get cheaper with automation (or at least not much cheaper).", this is quite true. And, they have maids, and lawn care, and they buy $300 eye wear and $1000 jewelry and watches, not cheap $2 sunglasses.

I do get annoyed when my one friend asks me if I watched the latest episode of whatever, and I keep telling him, "I don't have cable" (can't afford it and don't want to sacrifice elsewhere to have it), and yet he is supposed to be poorer than I am and it's like $80 a month. lol. But that's one of their very few splurges in life. "Poorer" working-class folks can have cell phones, cable, a nice pair of shoes etc, and the rich can kiss all of our arses! It's the fact that the rich, after buying the best brands of everything the masses buy the cheapest, still have huge sums in their bank accounts, and a retirement. But, yes, I have heard the negative comments from the well to do about how poor people have this or that... well duh, it's a consumer good, they're not that expensive, and the point is, these rich folks have big incomes and vast (what I'd call) fortunes in the million plus range.




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[treestar]

31. Exactly, which is why I hate this kind of crap

when people spew it. They are only whining that what they thought is a status symbol isn't such a big one after all. They don't want poor people to have a little bit of crappy entertainment, just so they can feel superior.

[RobertEarl]

7. Rich people have maids

Poor people are maids. There are no rich maids.

If Fox news hates that some poor people have color TVs, then they have a not so smart business sense. Poor people without Tvs don't watch Fox news.

[Recursion]

8. Yeah, that was what my other thread was about

And how the increase in home health aides means middle class people will be employing people inside their households in large numbers for the first time in a century or so. But the HHA makes minimum wage (actually she doesn't even make that until 2015) so she won't be able to afford an HHA for her mom.

[Pretzel_Warrior]

13. my TV remote is a butler who changes channels for me

he also brings me beer. Ahhh...the life of the top 5%.

[Hekate]

33. FOX trades in resentment, not facts. nt

[SheilaT]

9. First off, I'm under the impression that black and white TVs haven't been

manufactured in decades.

I'm old enough to clearly recall when color TV sets were an expensive luxury. I actually only ever owned b&w until sometime in the 1980's, but that has to do with a combination of things connected to being very cheap and not buying a replacement TV for years after any sensible person would have bought one.

I also personally only have a dumb phone (but it's very kind to me and I love it dearly ) but that's the choice I've made.

Oh, and I don't have a TV or cable or a satellite dish. But I watch as much TV as I want via the internet, so again I've made specific choices that work for me.

As for manicures, the one brief (about four month time) period that I got manicures, I became horrified at the ongoing cost. That was about 15 years ago, so it's possible that the ongoing cost has dropped a lot.

But the overall point you're making is the important one: people make choices how to spend their money, and so long as on one else (like a small child) is suffering, who am I to second-guess those decisions?

And even more to the point is the fact that the amount of cash it takes in our society to have a basic standard of living is shockingly high. Cell phones, cable, internet -- these are not luxuries in today's world, but necessities. I have read the Laura Ingalls Wilder books (Little House on the Prairie, etc) many times, and one of the things that stands out is how very little cash it took for them to survive. Goodness knows, I would not want to live as she did growing up: no electricity, almost freezing or starving in very hard times, the incredible amount of physical labor it took to survive.

The modern world, with color TV, cell phones, and so on, is not going to go away any time soon.

[Art_from_Ark]

15. I have a dumb phone, and boy, is it *dumb*

It keeps wanting to call people in my address book, even at late hours! One time I caught it dialing someone at 11:30 at night, and it wouldn't shut off until I took the battery out. It must be really lonely.

[SheilaT]

50. You need to pay more attention to it.

Tell it how much you appreciate it, buy it a dinner once in a while.

[Art_from_Ark]

53. You know,

I have asked a few women to ring up my dumb phone every once in a while, to let it know that it's more than just an alarm clock, but no one has taken me up on that offer

[dimbear]

29. The last one I can think of was the Sony Watchman, last B&W models 1994.

Cool little TV.

[Pretzel_Warrior]

16. I can proudly say I've still never bought a flat screen. Still working with the 32" CRT

that we bought in 1999. And we don't have cable/satellite. Using it for watching DVD's.

[Recursion]

17. Every company I've sysadmin'd at usually had a graphic artist

I don't know enough about color composition to know why, but graphic artists hate LCDs, and will only use CRTs.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

20. Shows how long they've been spouting this nonsense.

[Historic NY]

21. I remember motels having that sign out...

now its free HBO.

[kydo]

34. Its not free hbo anymore thats the 1990's and early 2000's ...

its free wifi these days

[Historic NY]

44. LOL.

[Fumesucker]

25. I reckon about half the people in the US who don't have a TV are on the DU

Proud to be part of the .02% that don't have a TV set.

No wonder some of you think I'm from another planet.



Newton Minow famously called TV programming "a vast wasteland" in 1961, standards have not improved since then.

Watch the first 18 seconds of this video for an important message from Frank Zappa. (yes I'm actually serious this time and no you probably haven't heard it)

[rucky]

26. We have a 25-year old Zenith up in the bedroom

I've been waiting for it to die so we can get a flatscreen, but the darn thing still works as good as new.

[JustAnotherGen]

28. Glad you got that off your chest

I tend to agree with you. And I'm very frustrated with the attitude in the US that our poor aren't "poor enough".

You are in India? Something to consider (I launched 57 phones for VZW in 2006-07) about India and China . . . They have driven the affordability and accessibility of smartphones. It started about five years ago. We saw it in meetings with Nokia and LG back then. IE simple smartphones that would never even be launched in the US. It was a smart move for the manufacturers who got in on the ground floor of wireless communications in the developing world.

It also is allowing US carriers to slowly move to an unsubsidized business model. Hence, why you are starting to see the "financed" phone options from the carriers in the US.

[MADem]

30. RICH people have black and white TVs!

Go into an antique shop and try to buy one of those early "tube" sets. Some of the really good examples cost the earth!

When I was young, clothing was a lot more expensive than it is now--I am not talking about the designer "frou-frou" crap, I'm talking about going into a "department store" or "discount department store" and buying clothing "off the rack." The prices then, many decades ago, for stuff ranging from shirts to trousers to socks, were pretty close to the prices NOW. And we know the value of a dollar hasn't stayed static!

[kydo]

35. Do they even make black and white tv's anymore?

Well that are cheap. I'm sure the ones with emergency radios for storms might be black and white but those are expensive and the screen is small as its for emergencies.

I guess that helps run rings around bagger logic. But other then 2nd hand stores can you still by non flat screen TV's? Because soon baggers will realize that black and white TV's are only bought by rich people these days.

[HughBeaumont]

36. Breakfast Bugs and mud huts are the new conservative poverty bar.

Anything more than that = "Yer in the one percent worldwide!!!"

[Shankapotomus]

37. I wouldn't ascribe motives

to conservatives they don't posses. They have no desire to see the poor help themselves out of poverty with negative incentives. They just want to see a certain demographic of the population - namely minorities, single women and the young - stay poor.

Plus the whole purpose of government assistance to the poor is to enable them to live less poor. So if some of them appear not as poor as you expect them to look that means the assistance they are getting is doing what it's supposed to be doing.

This is not about fiscal responsibility for the government. This is about conservatives wanting to see poor people. They want to create that visual because it would signify the failure of government programs to help people.

[quaker bill]

38. They have indoor plumbing and electric lights too.

-- at least when they can pay the bills, and aren't homeless ---

No one here, that I am aware of, gets by through scavenging at the landfill, mostly because modern landfills don't allow it. No one lives at the landfill in huts made of scavenged scraps, a practice more common in the third world. We don't allow it.

However there are a few folks here who come by and go through my recycling for the aluminum cans every few weeks, more towards the end of the month, just before the social security checks come out. So they are sort of "pre-landfill" scavenging.

Folks here will go to considerable lengths to deny the existence of poverty. When that does not work, they disparage the character of the poor, as in this "land of opportunity", only the "morally defective" fail to succeed.

They will do anything to not admit that the system is flawed and in fact leaves many behind with intent. This is where the supply of cheap labor comes from, and at any time cheap labor gets scarce the economy is intentionally slowed to produce more of it.

[Orsino]

40. Circuses have always been made available to the poor...

...when bread is short.

[Nevernose]

41. Poor people all over the world have TVs because

And I am putting this very bluntly, but poor people have TVs because it's a one-time purchase. They could either eat for a month or forget about how shitty their lives are for at least the duration of the tv.

Those on assistance in the US often qualify for a government-paid phone, too, whether cellular or otherwise, due to a Reagan-era law.

The working poor often have smartphones because the a Internet is just how stuff gets done these days, and a cheap smartphone can be had for the cost of a monthly service, whereas otherwise they'd have to pay for cable Internet, computers they might not even understand, and a stable residence.

[FarCenter]

42. In the '60s when TouchTone and color telephones were introduced, they sold well in poor areas

When Touch Tone and color telephones were introduced by the Bell System, the state regulators adopted a policy of charging extra for these feature to cover the cost of modifying central office equipment and of manufacturing and stocking more models of sets.

The regulators thought that it was also good social policy, since obviously the higher charges would be paid by more affluent customers that could afford them.

A study was done in one metro area. It was found that color and Touch Tone sold better in the poor areas than in the affluent areas.

Having a color telephone or a push button telephone conferred status if you were poor.

The rich didn't care.

[LWolf]

43. The gap is less about manufactured goods bought than services consumed.

YES.

As for color tvs? I was an adult before I got my first USED color tv in the 80s. Today I have 3:

1. I bought on sale about 12 years ago. When I moved out of state, it was one of the things that traveled with me on the drive instead of on the moving van. I dropped it on it's face unloading it; while the screen is scratched, it still works. It's in the "guest" room.

2. It was given to me about 9 years ago by someone who wanted something smaller and more modern; a big console that sits on the floor with big speakers. Works great, except that it just serves as a cabinet these days, because

3. My son gave me his "old" (newer than anything I've got) color tv when he got hd; he set it on top of the old console and hooked it up.

I'm barely able to make the mortgage these days, what with pay and hour cuts, but I've got (3) working color tvs. I ought to give 2 away.

[Glitterati]

46. Go to ANY Goodwill in the country and buy a color TV for $15.00

They have them lined up at my local Goodwill.

No, they're not flat screens, but heck I've even seen 60 inch color TVs at Goodwill for $30.00

[JCMach1]

54. non-digital...

[Fumesucker]

55. The digital converter tuner boxes are readily available for cheap at flea markets and thrift stores

Since the converter boxes were subsidized by the government they were subject to fairly strict standards and often pick up over the air TV better than the OTA tuners built into more modern TVs which aren't subject to any quality standards at all. The TV manufacturers assume that everyone is on cable and good sensitivity and selectivity for OTA TV signals are quite far down their list of priorities when designing their tuners.

[XemaSab]

47. TVs are cheap entertainment

You can get a schmancy TV for $200.

If you keep it for 5 years, that's $40 a year, or $3 a month.

How much does taking a family of four out to dinner or to the movies cost? More than your annual cost of getting a TV that you'll have for the next 5 years.

The only thing I can think of that's cheaper is the library, and even though I like to read, sometimes vegetating in front of the tube hits the spot.

[PowerToThePeople]

48. Real estate (rent) and food do not get cheaper.

Shelter, food, and energy do not get cheaper. Frivolous items are getting cheaper. Items essential to survival have increased substantially in the last few decades.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

49. Just this morning I followed a Facebook link to a video of a 1982 news story

about a major fire in downtown Minneapolis.

The video was complete with commercials, which were almost as interesting as the news footage.

The one that struck me most in terms of poverty was an add for True Value hardware featuring ads for kitchen appliances like ordinary blenders and simple coffeemakers. The nominal prices for these items were about the same as now. However, a dollar now is worth about 1/3 what it was in 1982, so in today's terms, those were $120 blenders and $90 coffee makers.

Yet food and rent have gone up much faster. Even as recently as 1993, I was paying $375 a month for a two-bedroom apartment in a small town, and I paid about $500 for a one-bedroom near downtown Portland.

[Quantess]

51. Hand-me-down TVs

are pretty great!
For me, anyway. I don't watch all that much TV and I don't care about having the latest and greatest.

That happens a lot... people donate their old tvs to "needy" friends and family whose current tv is not as fancy as theirs. Take pity on those inadequately TV'd friends and relatives!

[gollygee]

52. They need to walk into a thrift store

Or for that matter go to a few garage sales. Color TVs are everywhere and are cheap cheap cheap.