↪Athena I’m not contesting that humans are having a negative impact on nature or advocating that we just destroy nature to build hones willy-nilly. I love my hometown because it’s so close to nature. I’m just pointing out the human-caused problems that are independent of that. There are lots of empty homes up for sale in my town, but you have to be rich to be allowed to live in them, and the homeless or underhoused locals are obviously not rich. And nationally, there are more unoccupied houses than homeless people. Without doing any further development, we could house (and feed etc) everyone. But we don’t. So there being too many people isn’t the cause of poverty. We could fix poverty just with what we have built already. — Pfhorrest

Are you referring to our banking system creating an artificial economy? I think that is something we could look at. Oh wow, I just got a cell phone and if I could learn how to take pictures and put them on the internet I could post some very powerful pictures that are in a 1916 book "Poverty and Riches". This book speaks of $768 a year of earned wages, providing a decent living for a family of six. He uses numerals to make a point that 7/10 of the workers earn less than $750 and that these people do not have a decent wage. Today, not even a single person could live decently on $750 a month. Our rents are higher than that. Why in a little over 100 years has our money been so devalued?

However, 7/10 of people below the poverty level is 70% and that is huge compared to today with the states with the highest poverty percentage just below 20%. In the past, only 20% of the people were middle class, and 10% were wealthy. About 50% of our population is middle class. Another site says our upper class is 1% to 2%. That does not work. If 20% are below the poverty level, and 50% are Middle class and only 2 % are upper class we are missing 28%. Help can anyone explain that?

I think that says we are doing something right because those living below the poverty rate has decreased the middle class has increased. However- the relative deprivation is greater. To just function in today's society requires a substantial amount of money and that was not exactly so in the past. Check this graph below to see the growth in the cost of property, and consider people homesteaded in the west for free. Not only did they get large parcels of land free, and build homes with free trees, but they could live off the land in many places. Now they can't even find a free place to put a bedroll, they can not hunt year-round, and they can't even pee without being fined. Until the west was filled, people could escape the poverty of industrial cities and the plantation economy of the south. Now they have no place to go and if we are intelligent we will do something about this.

100-Year Housing Price Index Graph

100-year history of U.S. real estate/housing prices
U.S. Housing Price Index (1900 - 2012) — Observations

However, 7/10 of people below the poverty level is 70% and that is huge compared to today with the states with the highest poverty percentage just below 20%. In the past, only 20% of the people were middle class, and 10% were wealthy. About 50% of our population is middle class. Another site says our upper class is 1% to 2%. That does not work. If 20% are below the poverty level, and 50% are Middle class and only 2 % are upper class we are missing 28%. Help can anyone explain that? — Athena

Definitions of economic class vary and some are more useful than others. By some sources the poverty line is defined at the bottom quintile, so by definition 20% of people are always below it no matter what, which obviously isn’t very informative about social wealth distribution. I don’t know where your other figures, 50% middle class and 1-2% upper class, are from, so I can’t comment on them. I do know from memory that about 75% of people presently make an income below the national mean personal property income (i.e. GDP per capita, what you’d get if you added up all incomes and divided by population). The median personal income, which 50% of people are below by definition, is about half of that mean income: around $25k/yr as opposed to around $50k. The mode income, the group with the most people in it, is barely over half of that, at around $15k/yr.

As I would define them, lower class is anyone whose rent and interest expenses are higher than their income from the same, middle class is anyone where they’re equal (so their only expenses are their own consumption and all their income is earned), and the upper class is anyone whose income from rent and interest is higher than their expenses on same. By those definitions, almost everybody is lower class, and almost nobody is middle class, because it’s way easier to move from middle to upper class than it is from lower to middle.

Definitions of economic class vary and some are more useful than others. By some sources the poverty line is defined at the bottom quintile, so by definition 20% of people are always below it no matter what, which obviously isn’t very informative about social wealth distribution. I don’t know where your other figures, 50% middle class and 1-2% upper class, are from, so I can’t comment on them. I do know from memory that about 75% of people presently make an income below the national mean personal property income (i.e. GDP per capita, what you’d get if you added up all incomes and divided by population). The median personal income, which 50% of people are below by definition, is about half of that mean income: around $25k/yr as opposed to around $50k. The mode income, the group with the most people in it, is barely over half of that, at around $15k/yr.

As I would define them, lower class is anyone whose rent and interest expenses are higher than their income from the same, middle class is anyone where they’re equal (so their only expenses are their own consumption and all their income is earned), and the upper class is anyone whose income from rent and interest is higher than their expenses on same. By those definitions, almost everybody is lower class, and almost nobody is middle class, because it’s way easier to move from middle to upper class than it is from lower to middle. — Pfhorrest

I don't know if I will understand what you said better in the morning? I have an idiot math IQ and as important as I think math is for defining truth, I am not good at it. However, because math is essential to defining truth, I want to develop my ability to think with math and communicate with it. I get from what you said, not only must our figures agree but so must our terms agree. At this point in time, we (all of us) do not have the communication system we need to understand anything about our economic reality and homelessness.

How might we begin creating a dialog about homelessness that makes sense? In "Poverty and Riches" Scott Nearing, Ph.D. states the cost of living and then speaks of wages.

I am using information for my area from this site https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/

Rent Per Month

Apartment (1 bedroom) in City Centre 972.73 $ 800.00-1,150.00
Apartment (1 bedroom) Outside of Centre 821.78 $ 700.00-1,000.00
Apartment (3 bedrooms) in City Centre 1,700.00 $ 1,600.00-1,800.00
Apartment (3 bedrooms) Outside of Centre 1,421.88 $ 1,200.00-1,600.00


Average Monthly Net Salary (After Tax) 2,574.85 $

The minimum wage is 11.25 so that is $1,800.00 for 40 hours work.

Childcare
Preschool (or Kindergarten), Full Day, Private, Monthly for 1 Child 936.00 $

So if a single parent pays the $972.73 for rent and $936.00 for child care, that leaves the parent $108.71 for everything else, if I did the math right. There is no problem with that is there? Unless the car breaks down.

What does your community look like?

How can I copy a picture in my email and paste it here? Or send it from cell phone to the forum?

I don't know if I will understand what you said better in the morning? I have an idiot math IQ and as important as I think math is for defining truth, I am not good at it. However, because math is essential to defining truth, I want to develop my ability to think with math and communicate with it. I get from what you said, not only must our figures agree but so must our terms agree. At this point in time, we (all of us) do not have the communication system we need to understand anything about our economic reality and homelessness. — Athena

I wouldn't quite say that, but the communication we need is nuanced and sometimes difficult to understand. There are a lot of similar but importantly different things we could be talking about, and keeping them properly differentiated is hard. Some of those things are:

What defines an economic class? Is it:
-Being in a certain percentile of incomes?
-...of wealth?
-Having sufficient income to meet certain goals?
...or sufficient wealth?
-etc

If relevant, what is an "average"?
- Mean? (Add together all the figures and divide them up evenly)
- Median? (Line all the figures up in order and pick the one halfway down the line)
- Mode? (Group all the figures into similar classes and then pick the biggest class)

And if we're averaging, what are we averaging?
- Household income?
- Personal income?
- Household wealth?
- Personal wealth?

What you usually hear people talk about is median household income. But even then, it's not consistent whether economic class is being defined by being in a certain percentile of household income (like the poverty line is usually defined), or by having sufficient household income to meet certain goals.

On top of that, I think that personal figures are more useful because household size can vary so those household figures might be divided over one person or six (on average it's about two, so household figures are usually about twice personal figures).

And I think mean and mode figures are just as important to be aware of as the median, if (as is the case) the mean is way above the median, and the mode is way below it, which means that wealth is really concentrated at the top, so the mode or "typical" person (one who falls into the biggest group) makes way less than the median, while the mean or "average" person (one who has an even-sized slice of the pie) makes way more than the median. In our case, the "typical" American makes about 30% of what the "average" American makes. That fact is lost when all we talk about is what the median two-person household makes.

And on top of all of that, I think it's way more useful to talk about wealth than income. That mode ("typical") income is about what I spent to live a quite comfortable life, and it's about what a full-time minimum-wage job would pay. But because I lack wealth (such as a home of my own) and so have to borrow (rent) it from others while also saving to buy my own so I can stop doing that some day, I'm working my ass off to bring in that mean ("average") income that's more than three times what I need to fund my comfortable level of consumption. Someone who inherited a house could be living a lifestyle better than mine on less than a third of my income, but if all we look at is income figures, I look fantastically rich compared to them, while they have already realized my lifelong goal that I'm not sure I will ever manage to realize.

What does your community look like? — Athena

Rent Per Month
Apartment (1 bedroom) in City Centre 2,200.00 $
Apartment (1 bedroom) Outside of Centre 2,000.00 $
Apartment (3 bedrooms) in City Centre 3,500.00 $
Apartment (3 bedrooms) Outside of Centre 2,800.00 $

Numbeo doesn't have figures for my town's income, but for the closest other one:
Average Monthly Net Salary (After Tax) 3,933.33 $

Preschool (or Kindergarten), Full Day, Private, Monthly for 1 Child 900.00 $

How can I copy a picture in my email and paste it here? Or send it from cell phone to the forum? — Athena

Only subscribers can upload photos to the site directly, but if you upload the picture somewhere else (like http://www.imgur.com/ or such), you can put the URL to the picture inside of img tags, like this but without the spaces:

[ img ]https://i.imgur.com/ms2mozp.jpg[ /img ]

and it will show up like this:

OMG Pfhorrest, I don't think I could feel more ignorant than I do at the moment! Like perhaps seriously brai

Pfhorrest
714
I don't know if I will understand what you said better in the morning? I have an idiot math IQ and as important as I think math is for defining truth, I am not good at it. However, because math is essential to defining truth, I want to develop my ability to think with math and communicate with it. I get from what you said, not only must our figures agree but so must our terms agree. At this point in time, we (all of us) do not have the communication system we need to understand anything about our economic reality and homelessness.
— Athena

I wouldn't quite say that, but the communication we need is nuanced and sometimes difficult to understand. There are a lot of similar but importantly different things we could be talking about, and keeping them properly differentiated is hard. Some of those things are:

What defines an economic class? Is it:
-Being in a certain percentile of incomes?
-...of wealth?
-Having sufficient income to meet certain goals?
...or sufficient wealth?
-etc

If relevant, what is an "average"?
- Mean? (Add together all the figures and divide them up evenly)
- Median? (Line all the figures up in order and pick the one halfway down the line)
- Mode? (Group all the figures into similar classes and then pick the biggest class)

And if we're averaging, what are we averaging?
- Household income?
- Personal income?
- Household wealth?
- Personal wealth?

What you usually hear people talk about is median household income. But even then, it's not consistent whether economic class is being defined by being in a certain percentile of household income (like the poverty line is usually defined), or by having sufficient household income to meet certain goals.

On top of that, I think that personal figures are more useful because household size can vary so those household figures might be divided over one person or six (on average it's about two, so household figures are usually about twice personal figures).

And I think mean and mode figures are just as important to be aware of as the median, if (as is the case) the mean is way above the median, and the mode is way below it, which means that wealth is really concentrated at the top, so the mode or "typical" person (one who falls into the biggest group) makes way less than the median, while the mean or "average" person (one who has an even-sized slice of the pie) makes way more than the median. In our case, the "typical" American makes about 30% of what the "average" American makes. That fact is lost when all we talk about is what the median two-person household makes.

And on top of all of that, I think it's way more useful to talk about wealth than income. That mode ("typical") income is about what I spent to live a quite comfortable life, and it's about what a full-time minimum-wage job would pay. But because I lack wealth (such as a home of my own) and so have to borrow (rent) it from others while also saving to buy my own so I can stop doing that some day, I'm working my ass off to bring in that mean ("average") income that's more than three times what I need to fund my comfortable level of consumption. Someone who inherited a house could be living a lifestyle better than mine on less than a third of my income, but if all we look at is income figures, I look fantastically rich compared to them, while they have already realized my lifelong goal that I'm not sure I will ever manage to realize.

What does your community look like?
— Athena

Rent Per Month
Apartment (1 bedroom) in City Centre 2,200.00 $
Apartment (1 bedroom) Outside of Centre 2,000.00 $
Apartment (3 bedrooms) in City Centre 3,500.00 $
Apartment (3 bedrooms) Outside of Centre 2,800.00 $

Numbeo doesn't have figures for my town's income, but for the closest other one:
Average Monthly Net Salary (After Tax) 3,933.33 $

Preschool (or Kindergarten), Full Day, Private, Monthly for 1 Child 900.00 $

How can I copy a picture in my email and paste it here? Or send it from cell phone to the forum?
— Athena

Only subscribers can upload photos to the site directly, but if you upload the picture somewhere else (like http://www.imgur.com/ or such), you can put the URL to the picture inside of img tags, like this but without the spaces:

[ img ]https://i.imgur.com/ms2mozp.jpg[ /img ]

and it will show up like this:


7 hours ago
123
8 — Pfhorrest

n damaged. :lol: That is a little humbling considering I normally think of myself as a pretty well-informed person, but I can not wrap my head around what you said. This youtube is fun and helpful but it will take a while to sink into my thick skull https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=explaining+average%2C+meidum%2C+mode&page=&utm_source=opensearch If I had a magic wand I would make it possible for us all to think like this, because this is the first step to understanding our social problems and possible solutions. The way we are talking about "those homeless people, just isn't helpful. I think you are a real blessing to all of us because of what you know.

The stats for your community could give me a heart attack. My monthly income is $783. That is what people with Social Security and SSI get. :lol: That might give you an idea of what my rent problem is and why it is my intention to use my new cell phone to post on-line and hopefully inform people of our reality and what will be their reality if they work for low wages and can never afford the wealth of which you speak, or if they become disabled before making it to retirement. If they make it all the way to retirement on low wages, their reality won't be much better than mine. They might be able to afford nicer restaurants while they haul everything around in a shopping cart. :rofl: If you can help me talk math to make the point, that would be a real blessing! :heart: It is a terrible wrong to do city planning with those kinds of stat's I am sure that results in decisions that do not include all the low income and our economy depends on them. Wealth is made by paying the laborer the least wage possible and charging the renter the most the market will bear. We are creating a terrible problem and seem to blind to that fact while we pat ourselves on the back for being so wealthy. :joke: We are not getting- things do not add up right. Rows of homeless people camped on our streets is what happened in India, not the US.

I am trying to establish an account with http://www.imgur.com/ but that isn't going so well. I will keep trying.