>and half of the US is living in abject poverty

Source? All the ones I know of use questionable methodology like: "being able to afford a 2 bedroom apartment at median wage".

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Folcon 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Out of curiosity, what is your expected baseline of what the average person and family in the US should be able to afford?

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gruez 2 hours ago | parent [-]

"should" is a pretty woolly concept. "should" we have to work at all? UBI proponents don't think so, and that apparently that has 45% support. What's hopefully obvious is that not being able to afford a 2 bedroom apartment at median wage is a far cry from "abject poverty".

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/08/19/more-amer...

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Folcon 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I mean fair, but not relevant?

I'm asking you the question because a statement like 50% of [population] is making a claim to some notion of what they expect society to look like

you introduced the benchmark "not being able to afford a 2 bedroom apartment at median wage", though I would expect a modern day society that makes any claim to be wealthy to be able to have above 50% of it's population to be able to support something like that as that would indicate they can support a small family

You're saying that's not a good benchmark, so I'm trying to understand:

1) Do you have a different benchmark?

2) Is your key complaint that being unable to own a 2 bedroom house doesn't mean that individual or family is in "abject poverty"? In which case fair, though I would ask what does mean abject poverty for you?

It seems like you're saying 2, but I want to be sure

	▲	gruez an hour ago \| parent [-]
		>In which case fair, though I would ask what does mean abject poverty for you? The exact number is heavily contested[1], so I know better than to provide my own. That said, the official poverty lines are a pretty good place to start, and it's pretty safe to say is that whatever the line for "abject poverty" actually is, "2 bedroom apartment on 1 person income" is pretty far away from that. That claim doesn't require me to provide a specific poverty line. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States#M...

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mschuster91 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> All the ones I know of use questionable methodology like: "being able to afford a 2 bedroom apartment at median wage".

Well, that's (at minimum) what you need to raise a family and replace yourself in the labor pool.

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sokoloff 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

In addition to that being obviously different from the line to “abject poverty”, it’s not at all obvious that a single median income should be able to support a 4-person family in a 2BR apartment or else the system is completely broken…

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gruez 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That's a laudable goal, but hardly "abject poverty"

	▲	2 hours ago \| parent [-]
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IncreasePosts 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

In the 1950s Americans were doing a good job at replacing themselves in the labor pool, and household size was larger and houses were smaller.

Why is it impossible for Americans to live with 300 sq ft per person like baby boomers did as kids, but now we must live with 600+ sq ft per person?