July 14, 2008
City Says More Residents are Living in Poverty
Yesterday, weather apparently prevented Mayor Bloomberg from giving a speech at the NAACP convention in Cleveland yesterday, but, in his place, Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs said the city found 23% of NYC residents are living in poverty, above the 19% the U.S. Census Bureau found.
The city's numbers are higher because the Bloomberg administration opted to use a different measure taking into account NYC's high living expenses. For instance, the federal formula doesn't include things like housing, child care, and clothing in its calculations. The federal formula uses $20,444 for a family of four as the cut-off, while the city's formula uses $25,138 for a family of four. The city will use its findings to "recalculate the distribution of certain city benefits"
Bloomberg's prepared text had him remarking, "So in Washington, while there's a never-ending debate about how to confront poverty, there is hardly any clarity on who is actually poor. I spent most of my career in the private sector, and I'm a big believer in the saying, 'If you can't measure it, you can't manage it." The city wants to share its model with other cities in order to spur changes in how poverty is measured.
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I use a quick glance on Craigslist, my rent bill, and my paycheck as a metric of how poor I am.
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the city does nothing to help this situation. all they seem to do is increase taxes and fees on us constantly, dropping more of us into poverty who are struggling to get by.
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I don't need the Mayor to tell my how poor I am I already know
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he's telling us this at the end of his second term?
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Bloomberg sure didn't help matters when he approved the MTA hike and wanted congestion pricing. Don't get me started on all the new high rise luxury condos going up as well.
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This is a nationwide problem and will become much worse before it gets better. The middle class is shrinking, and more and more are falling into the poor category because of the rising cost of healthcare, education, and the cost of owning a home. If you have the time and you really want to learn why this is happening, listen to this lecture by Elizabeth Warren. It's long, but really f*cking scary.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVL7QY0S8A
The numbers she gives are eye openers. I was most shocked by the fact that there are more children growing up in families who have declared bankruptcy than children with divorced parents but no one is talking about it because of the shame involved and you can't hide a divorce.
Anyway, I wish everyone would take the time to hear her lecture. Unfortunately there is no written version to send around (that I know of.)
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I've been calling this for the past few years. I agree with mihow when he/she thinks it is just going to get worse before it gets better.
I'm going to one up mihow, and proclaim that crime will soar, rents will go down, and the city will become what it was in the '70s.
I've come to this conclusion because a look at our money supply has shown huge inflation, much greater than the 2.7% annualized rate the government says it's at.
As money continues to increase due to our easy monetary policy, the effects are eventually going to have to be felt. The housing bubble is the first of many bursts that have affected the nation, and will soon affect NYC, too. Foreign investment into NYC will help; the cache of NYC is one thing most of America doesn't have. But you can't make up for the loss of production in the city that will happen as the warehouses in BK and Queens go under, and when the next ibank crashes.
But the prices of housing not falling like the rest of the nation due to foreign investment will be what brings this city to its knees. When tax revenues become smaller and smaller as fewer people move to the city and pay its exorbitant taxes because there are fewer jobs and housing is too high for the market, everything else will suffer. Thousands of bureaucrats will be jobless. Schools, which are already crappy, will be hurt first.
High unemployment and poor education will lead to crime and drugs.
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The above points about him not helping the matter are all extremely valid, but he gets points for acknowledging the failures of the Federal Poverty Guidelines. Most importantly, as Bloomberg says, the formula does not take into account current spending patterns; the formula itself has not been updated since it was created in 1963 and continues to rely solely on the cost of foodstuffs, without adjusting for the difference in what percentage of a household's expenditures those foodstuffs constitute (it continues to assume that food is 1/3 of necessary expenditures). Put it simply: the formula essentially presumes that the costs of everything on which we must spend our money went up at the same rate as food since 1963.
In the FAQ on the poverty guidelines, the Dept. of Health and Human Services website even acknowledges that the "food share used to develop the thresholds does not represent today's consumption patterns."
Okay, I'm done with that, but this is a pet peeve of mine.
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#6 it's not just an collapse of the Middle class, it's a total implosion of the economy (total collapse) and this will affect everybody on a Global scale.
#7 The difference between what happened to NY in the 70's and how it is now is that presently when the coming economic collapse happens The Government will implement Martial Law.
They know what's coming and they know what is going to lead to, they been training and militarizing the police force nationwide for years. The will instilled a high control grid, it won't turn out like the 70's.
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One may argue that the middle class has been the group in charge of keeping the economy strong all along for several reasons if not only because it's always been the largest group. Not so much anymore.
Chicken/egg, Shinobi Shaw.
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#6 it's not just an collapse of the Middle class, it's a total implosion of the economy (total collapse) and this will affect everybody on a Global scale.
I completely disagree.
The world is slowly moving off of pegging against the dollar. And they're going to stay strong when the US becomes second rate because they can still produce goods. We don't produce goods, only services.
Sure, everyone will hurt a little when the US falls, but Asia, especially, is going to take off when it happens.
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I'm definitely living in poverty. I'm just off the cutoff line of where Whole foods will deliver to me.
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No matter how bad things might get, NYC will never go back to the depths in the 1970's. The idea the middle class can avoid all the social problems (like crime) by moving to the suburbs is over. Drugs, gangs and overwhelmed police departments have made some small cities, rural areas and suburbs far more dangerous than NYC.
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Does this mean Bloomy will be sharing some of his bucks with us? Because I feel poorer.
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#12 I agree, China and some other Asian countries (like the UAE) will not be that greatly affected, but that does not mean that the world won't feel the aftershocks of a superpower crumbling to its very knees.
We should all just hop on a aircraft right out of here!
Move to Melbourne, Singapore, Dubai, anything!
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"The idea the middle class can avoid all the social problems (like crime) by moving to the suburbs is over."
You can than illegal immigration and section 8 housing for that.
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thank
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#13, your wealth has nothing to do with why Whole Foods won't deliver to you.
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"Bloomberg sure didn't help matters when he approved the MTA hike and wanted congestion pricing...."
"What the hell? Congestion pricing would've raised a huge amount of money for mass transit. If you commute into Manhattan by car, you're not poor. Because that got shot down, now there's a budget shortfall for transit that may have to be remedied by more fare hikes. At least rich people from Westchester can still drive down into the city without paying tolls, though."
I agree JMH
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"#6 it's not just an collapse of the Middle class, it's a total implosion of the economy (total collapse) and this will affect everybody on a Global scale.
#7 The difference between what happened to NY in the 70's and how it is now is that presently when the coming economic collapse happens The Government will implement Martial Law."
Someone been watching too much V for Vendetta? Good movie, but you sound like Mel Gibson in Conspiracy Theory. Also a pretty good movie incidentally...
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#7 The difference between what happened to NY in the 70's and how it is now is that presently when the coming economic collapse happens The Government will implement Martial Law."
Someone been watching too much V for Vendetta? Good movie, but you sound like Mel Gibson in Conspiracy Theory. Also a pretty good movie incidentally...
What happened in the '70s is pretty much what's going to happen around 2010. We though we could pay for the guns and butter of the Vietnam War, but you can't. The closing of the gold window in 1971, and the excessive printing helped lead to a stagflation.
The same thing is happening now on the larger scale, and will affect NYC, too, though we're largely autonomous due to the huge city tax and additional excises taxes exclusive to NYC.
And I've never seen the movie.
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I've never watched any of those films (there was a movie with the actual name of 'Conspiracy Theory?').
And I don't see how a looming Economic Collapse (plenty of evidence if you look for it) and how the government has been finding 'solutions' to deal with what will probably be total chaos (more evidence as well!) is seen as 'Fantastical' or 'Conspiracy.'
The US right now is similar to how the WEIMAR REPUBLIC was just before Nazi Germany.
And the Weimar Republic was one of the most freedom oriented nations in Europe and then it gradually evolved into Nazi Germany.
My my my, history repeats itself does it not?
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When you look at net spendable income, New Yorkers have been impoverished for decades. And like so many other americans, we've been making up the difference with credit. That's why The Fed is so worried about financial institutions. The risk of a catastrophic, cascading collapse of banks is real. When credit subsequently dries up, then we'll see the real picture and it ain't pretty.
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More and more of us would not be living in poverty if yuppies would stop thinking our homes are trendy hotspots for destruction, people like the Economakis' need to leave us be.