Minor: Given the examples depend on healthcare and childcare, people aged 65 and older (Medicare, outside average child raising age) fall outside this analysis, and currently a significant part of us population.

(And Medicare, even without additional supplements would have significantly better health outcomes than 1960s)

And if you take the average social security benefit being $48k per household/year, subtract those 2 expenses, either the $31k poverty line is way off or social security is way off

So if you think that the poverty line should be delineating that income below which a household is subject to major systemic risks and has no clear path to retirement, it does appear that the poverty line as currently defined is wildly inaccurate.

If you rule of thumb just looking at $2k/mo housing and $2k/mo for health insurance for four, it implies that a living wage for such a household is some number well above $60k, and potentially as high as $105k w/ my napkin math. This, IMO, suggests that there is a level of accuracy to the article, even if the $140k it suggests is high.

You could just Google it.

- There's https://www.census.gov/topics/income-poverty/poverty/about/h... which does say that the Official Poverty Measure is indeed based on food expenses multiplied by three.

- On the other hand, there's also https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2021/demo/pove... which says that there are now two measures: the Official Poverty Measure and the newer Supplemental Poverty Measure that's intended to address some of the problems of the former.

Mention of the Supplemental Poverty Measure doesn't seem to appear in the submitted post using a quick Ctrl-F. Draw your own conclusions.

My experience over a few decades and several home ownerships is that debt plays an outsized role. You are paying a bank first with your mortgage payment, and that csn be 80-90% of your housing cost, which is partially defrayed by a tax writeoff. And the banks basically have a license to print money. We are all working for the banks to some extent. Could this change in the future? You bet it could... but we have to make it happen.

Nitpicks and writing style aside (who posts charts without context?), the napkin math checks out to me as legit.

Here’s the thing all the detractors keep missing by nitpicking one data point or another: this author is talking systems, not products. Sure, the technologically inclined could get their phone cost down to that of an MVNO and a refurbished Android handset for $30/month, but most people aren’t that capable. Most people pay AT&T, Verizon, or T-Mobile - it’s why they’re the “big three”, after all. Same with home broadband, which nitpickers ignore in that $200 estimate the author makes; even if you qualify for subsidized internet, the waffling of the FCC combined with the hostility of carriers means most folks won’t even be able to get it or keep it.

And this is why I’m ultimately disappointed that the article is flagged, because for all the specific nitpicking done here in the comments, the author pre-empts those nitpicks in the piece. When you talk about systems at scale, you abandon precision for ranges, specifics for patterns, details for trends. Any idiot can point out that ahkshually, rent is only $R amount in this specific town that overbuilt two-bedroom units, and ahkshually, you can save on phone costs by using an MVNO, and ahkshually the government uses figure $P to measure poverty now.

The author lays out the most compelling argument yet of the brokenness of America as an economy. It drags the fiscal cliffs of poverty out into the daylight for all to see, with hard numbers of income versus expense to drive home how fucking impossible it is to survive and thrive in America today. It makes a compelling argument out of data and systems analysis that not just corroborates my own math, but also my lived experiences with poverty. He rightly calls out how the present system points to fancier phones, nicer cars, bigger homes, and bigger paychecks while yanking the rug out from under the working class in the form of crippled social services and non-existent price controls, leading over time to the modern era where the survival essentials are too expensive even on six figure salaries in most cities and towns. He doesn’t even pitch a solution, knowing that would detract from the argument (“SHIT IS BROKEN BY DESIGN”), leaving that to readers to figure out.

Look, most of HN think themselves as armchair savants, but we’re emphatically not. We’re also not particularly special, either, just lucky. The present system does not reward hard work, it punishes it. It is absolutely infuriating to see others receive aid and assistance for working less than I do, until I realize they’re also simply surviving by avoiding the cliffs that would tilt them to ruin. I wasn’t mad because they got help, I was mad because I didn’t.

That, I think, is what the author was trying to shift perspective on. Even if you make the big bucks, unless you’re a single income pulling down $200k+ outside a major metro area (which, let’s face it, HN readers represent a disproportionately large amount of said individuals), you’re still struggling. We’ve built a system around erroneous benchmarks that have gone unchecked and unaddressed for so long that everyone has optimized against them to keep more for themselves at the expense of others, and there is no pretty way out of it.

The core premise (benchmarks are broken), might be correct, but the poverty benchmark he uses is a bad example. The OPM and SPM (supplemental poverty measure, developed in 2009-2012), disagree by less than 10%; and the latter takes into account many of the criticisms in the article.

The author uses MIT Living Wage numbers to argue that should be the new "poverty" benchmark - an absurd proposition. Those might be reasonable middle class numbers. He also implies that the benchmark historically represented what is now covered under that $140K calculation - also false; it took ~$9000 in 1966 to cover a "basic standard of living" for a family of 4 with 1 earner; inflation adjusted, that's around $90,000 today. If you add in SS/Medicare taxes (3% then, 15% today), that puts you at ~$100K-105K.

Using the same MIT Living Wage numbers and taking Essex-Princeton NJ as the area (roughly what the author used), you end up with $99,922 as the living wage for a single earner, 4 person household - almost exactly the same as the household back in 1966.

Were there more jobs in 1966 that paid $9000/year versus jobs that pay $100K today? That's the real story you're looking for.

I think it’s mostly bullshit, and a misunderstanding of what poverty is.

Poverty doesn’t mean you can only afford bare minimum stuff and can’t take any vacations or buy luxuries. It means you are struggling.

People in poverty do not have childcare costs, or healthcare, or even housing and transportation (they could be homeless or live with relatives, and either take buses, walk, bike, or get some kind of free ride to work)

Food is truly the only thing people really need. For that, the original amount seems accurate.

Ridiculous to say $100k is the new poverty line. Get a grip.

I feel like the author addresses most of your points well with his comparison of a survival line vs a crisis line.

But re the "people in poverty don't have" a few caveats, in comparison to the 60s, "public" transportation is generally of lower availability and higher priced, single earner households were the norm, and housing was cheaper (addressed).

And while <$100k is pointed to as the line of dimished marginal benefits, in the context of the US median household income being $66k is an indictment of a broken system.

From TFA: "In 1963, she observed that families spent roughly one-third of their income on groceries."

He's not saying the average person who was homeless, or living with relatives in 1963 was spending roughly one-third of their income in groceries, it was explicitly families.

You've just No True Scotsmanned your way into redefining what is being discussed. Please read article and firmly secure yourself :)