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Snigger

It brings a much needed sociological method and rigour to an issue

We can use that as the dictionary definition of oxymoron, can’t we?

The paradox in the title has dogged politicians for generations: why does the wealthiest country in the world also have the highest rate of poverty among industrialised nations?

It doesn’t. So much for rigour then, eh?

It does have more inequality, which might mean that inequality is a necessary part of being richer. But actual poverty not so much.

When properly compared, after taxes and benefits, including goods and services in kind, and at PPP FX rates, the bottom 10% of Amerians have an average living standard higher than the bottom 10% of Swedes or Danes. So, they’ve not got more poverty, have they?

Yet one in 10 Americans is officially poor. According to the US Census Bureau, the official poverty rate in 2021 was 11.6%, with 37.9 million people in poverty (an example definition being a family of three with income below $21,559).

That, of course, is measuring things before most of what is done to alleviate poverty. So much for rigour.

Anyone care to measure European poverty rates before welfare and benefits?

Rank suggests that America’s anaemic welfare state – including an anomalous lack of universal health care – can partly be explained by the interplay of race and poverty.

Werid, innit? The poor are the one group of Americans who do have universal health care. Called Medicaid.

So, consign this to the usual pile of tossers then.

17 thoughts on “Snigger”

  1. I do seem to remember someone commenting that Africans were astonished that the poverty stricken American proles would drive to a food bank to get their handout.

  2. The Poverty Paradox: why is there still so much economic hardship in the US?

    I guess we’ll never solve the mystery of how importing over 50 million impoverished unskilled labourers somehow failed to increase wages for American unskilled labourers.

  3. But lots of Americans have no health cover. Often middle class Americans.
    Life expectancy is 4-6 years higher in Sweden than the USA. So that must say something.

    I found this website article, that claims the Swedes, Danes and Fins have lower poverty in reality than the USA.
    https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2015/11/11/9707528/finland-poverty-united-states

    It is important to not be offensive on political websites. I will be polite.
    I have a associate who described Gary Lineker in unsavoury language, when he just wants to help the vulnerable.
    I have a enemy who described the Hello Gillian twitter account as boring and creepy. That is mean. Sorry Mippy.
    Another enemy described the Welsh Labour Party as communists.
    Who would say that about another person or party?
    The Labour Party are not communists. They are centre left, not far left.
    Another associate said Starmer would bring us into another war. When Starmer was against the Iraq War.

  4. “Another associate said Starmer would bring us into another war. When Starmer was against the Iraq War.”

    Oh come on! Obama said he was against war and went on to bomb seven countries.

  5. @Steve Crowler: “ But lots of Americans have no health cover.”

    Not true. The Affordable Care Act makes it an offence not to have medical insurance and failure to comply leads to fines. Those unable to get insurance on the private market for whatever reason, are eligible for Medicaid, Federal funded insurance ‘free’ and covering (in 2022) 85 million Americans.

    Life expectancy is higher in Sweden because unlike in the US young people don’t kill each other in such numbers – particularly young Black men.

  6. John B,
    The penalty aspect of ACA got ditched, so there’s no fines.
    The only people in the US without health insurance are those who literally refuse to pay a paltry amount (after ACA subsidies, which are astonishingly generous) for coverage. By paltry, I mean ~$50/month.
    As for life expectancy – US has a large number of gangbanger murders and drug overdoses. Control for that, and it’s similar to other countries. But ultimately this is a free country, so people are free to do stuff that is bad for their health.

  7. ‘But ultimately this is a free country, so people are free to do stuff that is bad for their health.’

    I do sympathise with that attitude Henry.

  8. @Steve Crowler – a word of polite advice; Vox is generally not considered a valid reference point.

    And I say that as one who’d prefer to be poor in Sweden than in the USA. Although that might be a different story in a decade’s time.

  9. “Life expectancy is 4-6 years higher in Sweden than the USA. So that must say something.”

    Yes it does, Americans are lard arses.

    Average US adult male weight, 90kg. Average Swedish adult male weight, 82kg. Thats a stone and quarter heavier on average. And I’d be prepared to bet the percentage of the population that is morbidly obese is far higher in the US than Sweden too.

    Data here:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_body_weight

  10. Being a lard arse doesn’t reduce lifespan – being overweight rather than normal increases lifespan. (If you like to take observational data at face value). Even being slightly “obese” is good.

    It’s being a land-whale – very morbidly obese – that shortens life, or being too thin.

    The interpretation of the data might be open to discussion but the data themselves are not contentious (unless you are a pirate at Harvard Medical School).

    Here’s a first hand account of fighting the pirates.
    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0033062021000670#bb0145

  11. Not sure about those figures, Jim. One thing I noticed while being in the States was how generally solid Yank geezers can be. Big necks, carry a lot of muscle. I’d imagine it’s a product of the sort of sports they play at school/college. Gridiron & that. Rather than the girl game Europeans play. You get similar with rugger-buggers, don’t you? Inevitably (it would seem) that can end up under a layer of lard later in life. Whether that has any health dis-benefits is another matter.
    Dunno. I may be selecting for blue collar white because that’s the sort of person hang with. But on the other hand, that’s most Yanks, isn’t it?

  12. Life expectancy is higher in Sweden because unlike in the US young people don’t kill each other in such numbers – particularly young Black men.

    But the Swedish government is trying very hard to level the playing field, by importing lots of black and brown men. Very egalitarian of them, I say.

  13. If anyone would like a quick summary of the results, herewith:

    Hazard ratios (HRs) of all-cause mortality (i.e. compared to “normal weight” viz BMI between 18.5 and 25).

    0.94 for overweight (i.e. BMI between 25 and 30)
    0.95 for grade 1 obesity (i.e. BMI between 30 and 35).

    Pleasingly plump is preferable if avoiding mortality is your measure of merit.

    I have at least one reservation on computing hazard ratios for obesity classes 2 and 3: that is an open-ended interval, i.e. simply >35, whereas normal weight, overweight, and Class I obese are defined by closed intervals.
    Is suitable allowance made for this distinction? I don’t know. When I was young only a loonie would trust medics with any sort of statistical calculation so you had to hope they had a competent statistician among the authors who had power of veto over the contents of the paper. Have things improved? That may be equivalent to asking “Has doctors’ conceit decreased?”

  14. BMI/mortality risks’s have to be nonsense. My current is somewhere in mid-range of normal. But when I was working & carrying a couple of stone more of muscle I would have been overweight. On the other hand my mortality risk would have been elevated by the ever present possibility of falling 6 floors off a roof or electrocuting myself. Not to mention the dangers of being offed by some road raged effnic in the traffic

  15. When the feral underclass in the US that refuses to get with civilization is excluded, the US numbers for mortality, homicides and just about everything else puts the US in very favorable position compared to the rest of the world.

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