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America's poor actually live pretty durn well [View all]
At least, according to the Heritage Foundation. This LA Times article does a great job of debunking their BS.
Heritage Foundation: America's poor actually live pretty durn well!
Michael Hiltzik
Los Angeles Times
September 25, 2014
They also deliver some of their statistics with a thick, candy-colored shell. Let's take a look.
Here's the essence of the Heritage case (the bullet points are theirs):
Eighty percent of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, at the beginning of the War on Poverty, only about 12 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.
Nearly three-quarters have a car or truck; 31 percent have two or more cars or trucks.
Nearly two-thirds have cable or satellite television.
Two-thirds have at least one DVD player, and a quarter have two or more.
Half have a personal computer; one in seven has two or more computers.
More than half of poor families with children have a video game system such as an Xbox or PlayStation.
Forty-three percent have Internet access.
Forty percent have a wide-screen plasma or LCD TV.
A quarter have a digital video recorder system such as a TIVO.
Ninety-two percent of poor households have a microwave.
Mercifully, Rector and Sheffield dropped their observation, last made in 2011, that the median poor household had a refrigerator, as though it would be a hallmark of real poverty to have to bury perishables in a hole in the yard.
snip>
Among the flaws in this analysis, last pointed out by the Center for American Progress in 2011, is that all these appliances and devices put together don't represent usable family resources. A family could sell its used microwave for maybe $45, for example, and buy three days of food for a family of four. (And then it wouldn't have a microwave to assist in food preparation.)
Here's the essence of the Heritage case (the bullet points are theirs):
Eighty percent of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, at the beginning of the War on Poverty, only about 12 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.
Nearly three-quarters have a car or truck; 31 percent have two or more cars or trucks.
Nearly two-thirds have cable or satellite television.
Two-thirds have at least one DVD player, and a quarter have two or more.
Half have a personal computer; one in seven has two or more computers.
More than half of poor families with children have a video game system such as an Xbox or PlayStation.
Forty-three percent have Internet access.
Forty percent have a wide-screen plasma or LCD TV.
A quarter have a digital video recorder system such as a TIVO.
Ninety-two percent of poor households have a microwave.
Mercifully, Rector and Sheffield dropped their observation, last made in 2011, that the median poor household had a refrigerator, as though it would be a hallmark of real poverty to have to bury perishables in a hole in the yard.
snip>
Among the flaws in this analysis, last pointed out by the Center for American Progress in 2011, is that all these appliances and devices put together don't represent usable family resources. A family could sell its used microwave for maybe $45, for example, and buy three days of food for a family of four. (And then it wouldn't have a microwave to assist in food preparation.)
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-heritage-foundation-americas-poor-20140925-column.html#page=1
88 replies
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