Earnings, Poverty and Income Inequality in San Diego County

[rinsd]

Among the county’s 995,021 full-time, year-round workers, the average annual earnings were $55,700. There were 214,160 full-time workers who earned less than $25,000 a year, while 544,536 earned less than $50,000.

http://www.onlinecpi.org/downloads/Census_Issue_Brief_2007.pdf

If the ignorant among us will take note, areas devastated by the various fires have some of the highest poverty rates in the county.

[rinsd]

1. Kick,

[Selatius]

2. You should've quoted this part:

Real median earnings for all workers in San Diego County dropped by 3.9% from 2005 to 2006,
including earnings from wages and self-employment.

San Diego County has 105,225 households living below the federal poverty level and thousands more
with incomes insufficient for the county’s high cost of living.

A new local measure shows a large income gap between rich and poor in the county. The 20% of
households with the highest incomes claimed half (49%) of all income in the county, while the lowest-
earning fifth of households got less than a 4% sliver of the pie.

[rinsd]

3. I should've....thanks for snagging it.

[MedleyMisty]

4. I think that's the underlying point beneath the flames

I'm sorry if it makes me a horrible nasty person who doesn't deserve to live, but I do think that poor people have the right to be angry with rich people.

And you can quibble about details, but it's the class war that's beneath all the flaming on here.

[ohiosmith]

5. What is "poor" and "rich"?

[DaveJ]

6. And there needs to be...

I support people who have less than I do.

I support helping people who have no health insurance (even though I have it, plus supplemental).
I support helping people who make ridiculously low wages for hard work (even though my pay is okay, now).
I support helping people who cannot afford college (even though I'm done with college).

But I really get no impression whatsoever that people with homes give a rats ass about people who can't get them. They assume that we must be ne'er do wells who make no positive contribution to society or something... not sure what they are thinking but they sure as hell don't care about us.

Sorry.

[ohiosmith]

7. What form should the "support" take?

[DaveJ]

9. Simple

Home loans should be as simple and straightforward to get as college loans. Seems the government does not mind training us to work our asses off, but when it comes to giving us some comfort in life, forget about it. So anyway, some innocent slip on some past unrelated bill should not preclude someone from getting a home loan or a reasonable interest rate. It's ridiculous that if someone owes maybe $1200 on something that this minor mistake should mean they should be homeless for the rest of their lives, and that the $1200 can't be consolidated onto an $100k mortgage.

Also, it would also help to bring property prices down to affordable levels. I know there are many ways of doing this, but nobody wants that to happen anyway.

[TahitiNut]

8. I wish folks would stop blithely quoting "average" for incomes.

A SINGLE CEO with $100 million in annual compensation causes that "average" to increase by over $100 ... while the median income is unchanged.

The statistical "myth of the average" is used to LIE about everything from income to living space.

[Stargazer99]

10. It has taken over 60 years but I finally understand.....I"m poor

and this nation doesn't give a damn about me. My feeling is about to be returned to this nation.

[DaveJ]

11. Ooooo whatcha gonna do?

I hope it's nothing bad toward yourself. I've determined a couple things regarding my own situation.

1) If things continue the way they have... me working my ass off to make others rich, doing everything imaginable to do the right thing, yet getting nothing but ignored, I will definitely NOT just quietly fade away.

2) At the same time I have ideas for building wealth myself, without depending on others, so I've put myself in a "I got nobody to blame but myself" situation, which is probably the only way from preventing the otherwise inevitable from happening. But I don't think everyone should be expected to take that self-employed path.