Do you understand the economic situation a family can be in? They own a computer whose net worth is about $50. At some point they bought a television. Cable--100$ a month for the fancy kind. The worth of all these things put together is far below the monthly cost of their housing, which they struggle to pay each month. They could sell or stop paying for all of those above "assets" and be in danger of not being able to afford housing and food.

There are places where housing is cheaper. Those places are inevitably situated the furthest distance from locations of economic opportunity. So car and gas and commute, the monthly costs of which dwarf the assets you mentioned.

And let's get back to your claimed 14% who have none of these things. Imagine that--I go to the local thrift store and there's old PCs there that are almost given away (I've donated plenty throughout my years as a contractor--they're barely worth the poundage cost). In American culture, not being connected to pop culture is anathema. Just as cell phone usage has exploded in the poorest countries, in America the first thing parents will provide for their children is television.

It is clear your definition of "barely surviving" is different from the author's (and mine). There's always people chiming in on discussions like this with the "starving children in Africa" argument. E.g. we shouldn't feel sorry for the people mentioned in the article because if you lift their shirt you won't see their ribcage standing out (you'll probably see a bunch of fat from their subsistence on cheap processed food). Are we really a society where that is the measure of how well we take care of our citizens? To me not feeding people is barbaric. Not providing health care to everyone is just short of barbaric. Not carving out societal resources (like public libraries) for shared use, targeted at people who slip through the cracks, is terrible.

Enjoy your data set.

The rest can turn off cable and go pay for a computer at kinkos once in a while. Last time I was in NYC, it was about $0.10/minute, so if the "struggling" man skipped one or two big macs he could afford to pay for internet service (and he'd be slightly closer to a healthy bodyweight).

There are places where housing is cheaper. Those places are inevitably situated the furthest distance from locations of economic opportunity.

You seem to be holding the mistaken belief that the poor work for a living. Please educate yourself. http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpswp2009.pdf

And as we know, everyone lives in NYC, and nobody lives in places where there aren't any Kinko's and where the closest computer place is 50 miles from their home.

Oh, and certainly everyone has to buy their own PC, it's not like there are dozens of charities and individuals donating them to poor people.

And now sarcasm free, you can get a desktop on Craigslist for $50 and a Playstation for $30. That tells you absolutely nothing about whether a family is poor or not. Most electronics are simply too cheap compared to the unavoidable recurring bills.

Cable TV is a different thing, though. I have no idea what the plans around there are like.

In my own social circle, I know the following:

1. Poor people who work for a living. 2. Poor people who can't work because they have a felony record. 3. Poor people who can't work because of health reasons. 4. Poor people who don't work because they're lazy.

I also know:

1. Rich people who work for a living. 2. Rich people whose family members don't work because they're "lazy".

You see, there's all sorts of people. Let's take the "worst" examples--the people who both poor and out of work. Personally I think even "lazy" people deserve to receive the basic care of civilized society. Why? Because "lazy" is often code for referring to people with mental deficiencies, emotional problems, histories of severe abuse, and other issues that lead to severe depression and failure to thrive.

A lot of modern American polical rhetoric centers around an idea that might be called the "virtuous poor". Which is that poor people only deserve to be helped if they are virtuous--good, salt-of-the-earth people who are struggling constantly to survive--who are savvily trimming coupons and saving every cent so they can better themselves and their children. On the other side are the non-virtuous poor. The people who spend their government check on alcohol, crack cocaine, or satellite TV.

In America, we obsess over separating the virtuous from non-virtuous poor, ignoring the self-sustaining and cyclic nature of poverty. The clear correlations between poverty and behavior problems, learning problems, health problems, etc. In our self righteous drive to only help those who help themselves, we often ignore the clear consequences.

For every self-satisfied working upper-middle class person I know, I also know someone who has similar intelligence, similar drive (or lack thereof), but wasn't lucky enough to be ushered into college by their well-to-do parents--who wasn't lucky enough to be offered this and that entry-level position by their well-to-do connections. And yes, such a person doesn't become the virtuous poor we all like to help, such a person becomes the dirty, yucky poor that we want to forget about--the poor people who aren't constantly fighting to better themselves.

You can throw out statistics--all of your statistics will show a predominance of this and a dearth of that, and in the end, your rounding errors will still cover millions of people. And your response to the plight of those millions of people is that we can help them with "a small, targeted program." If only we'd thought of that sooner--here we were trying big, untargeted programs, when all we needed to do is shrink and target them.

You clearly didn't read even the first paragraph, which shows that just under 80% of the poor don't work (by choice). You can even read further and discover that a big chunk of the working 20% work only part time (also by choice).

In America, we obsess over separating the virtuous from non-virtuous poor...

No, we don't. We throw money and services wantonly at anyone who wants them.

If we really wanted to target the virtuous poor, we'd cut all welfare programs and replace them with a guaranteed low paying job. It's perfectly targeted, since by showing and working a poor person proves their virtue.

If you want to argue that we should give money to people who refuse to work so they can buy alcohol, crack cocaine and satellite TV, be my guest. I just refuse to describe such people as "struggling" or "barely surviving".

Wow, talk about spin-doctoring. That 80% figure is people outside the labour pool, including children (specifically stated in the first paragraph), sick, and elderly people.

https://hackernews.hn/item?id=2130441

The net result either way is that the poor choose not to work at a disproportionate rate.

- firstly, you've said nothing so far about comparing poor people to anyone, you've just said "80%" flat out, no comparison to anyone wealthier

- the "80%" does change, because the numbers you drew that from - 10 million of 40 million - is 10 million labour force out of 40 million individuals. Anyone in that 43 million that is not of working age or ability decreases your magic percentage. You are trying to paint your 80% as "percentage of people who could work, but don't" whereas it's actually "percentage of poor people in the labour force, including children and the infirm"

- the overall labour force for the US is 65% of the total population. Using this number against the 40 million for those in poverty would suggest ~26 million potential labour force instead. Throw in children, mentally ill, and similarly overrepresented demographics and that number reduces again.

- your linked comment mentions this interesting metric "FTLFPR", used to vilify the poor... which when googled shows only a handful of results which are a combination of typos, random character pages, and your comment. Even chasing your linked comment to a quoted paper about participation a few comment up doesn't exhibit that acronym.

- Even assuming that your acronym is a real measure, it's hardly suprising that people who can't get enough work are poor. Those people who are classed as unemployed are going to be dragging that acronym down signficantly - and almost one in ten of the labour force is unemployed in the US.

- You make the gross mistake of assuming motive. Since the GFC hit, the US unemployment rate doubled from 4.5% to 9%. By your reckoning this means that one in twenty workers in the past few years has decided to just refuse work so they can "buy alcohol, crack cocaine and satellite TV"

http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000

When it comes down to it, yes, there are some people who game the system. So what - that happens at all levels (try getting tax loopholes fixed...). The real problem is that you are painting the poor as little short of demonic layabouts, which is a grossly exaggerated misrepresentation.

Another thing your 'shame the poor' position doesn't allow is for people to receive hand-me-downs, or merely to have previously been in better conditions when they could afford luxuries and now have no cashflow or liquid assets. Hell, I've given away about four old laptops (two I inherited free) and have made and given several free-of-charge desktops, two with monitors included.

This is where social conservatism and libertarianism gets you coming and going - "Look - voluntary charity covers the cracks"... then they turn around and admonish the poor for daring to have such items - "You have a 'computer', therefore you're not struggling"

If you disagree, please tell me which essential goods and services you feel the US "poor" lack.

Note that I live in India right now, so I'm likely to laugh at you if you start mentioning consumer goods that even the upper middle class over here don't have.

If you disagree, please tell me which essential goods and services you feel the US "poor" lack.

Empathy.

If they really need to find some way to amuse themselves besides staring at the wall all day, they can walk their fat asses two blocks down the street to borrow a book and improve themselves at this place called the...

Oh, right.