I know we talked about this in class already but I just read an article about it today by Arnold Kling. In this article Kling describes how much better off the lower class is now than in 1970 by comparing what percentage of households in 1970 did not have "certain basic middle-class necessities" (like a telephone or refrigerator) to the percentage of households currently without these items. He also compares the percentage of households then and now that own(ed) items considered to be luxury items in 1970 (a dishwasher, clothes washer, clothes dryer). Kling's examples demonstrate that the quality of life of the poor is substantially better now than in 1970. While I agree with Kling's main point, that the lower class is better off now than in 1970 I don't agree that this point can be illustrated by the ownership of these items. Many of the luxury items listed are considered necessities by our current culture and all of the middle class necessities are considered to be necessities for anyone except the extremely poor, by our standards. (How appalled would we be to discover that one of our friends does not have complete plumbing?) But how much debt has our lower class created in acquiring these items? In 1970 households didn't have most of these items because they chose to spend their money on basic necessities. Now people see these items as basic necessities and pay for them on credit so they can have them. I know many people who qualify for subsidized housing and/or Medicaid who can still afford cell phones, satellite t.v. and newer cars than what I drive. This article asks "Are many of the families you know worse off (than in 1970)?" Many of the families I know have more stuff than in the 1970s but less money for basic needs like food and health care, possibly because they can get assistance for food and health care.
4 comments:
Ooh, this is a tough one.
It is absolutely true that today's poor have more (generally) than the poor in 1970 (or even the middle-classes in most other developed countries). But then we get into more gray areas.
One is the distinction between necessities and luxuries, or needs and wants. I am not thrilled with the idea that society changes what it views as poor by reclassifying luxuries as necessities or wants as needs. To me this seems to be both subjective thinking, and weak to boot. The problem is that using a fixed list of items to classify someone as poor or not, in an environment where the economy slowly and steadily grows, is eventually going to lead to very few people being poor. This is great, and probably a factual description, but there will still be people that will feel poor. What do we do then, tell them their feelings are wrong? Or that they are selfish?
As to people not having enough for necessities in a country with food stamps and so on, this probably reflects a third-party-payer problem. If someone else subsidizes your purchases, you will want to buy more, or alternatively spend less of your own money. The latter is what is described in the post, while the former is problematic if there is a limit to the willingness of the third party to pick up the tab.
Adam Smith already had a concept of minimal decent living standard. In his days, it was the "clean linen shirt" and other basic clothing items that were necessities. With technological and social progress, the standard gets upgraded. (Why otherwise are we toiling 40+ hours weekly? To barely recreate the standards of our forefathers?)
But as good as the documented progress has been (which I'm not disputing on principle), these numbers must be taken with a grain of salt. There is a considerable "underclass" in the US that eludes proper "documentation". It includes, among others, people who don't have a permanent address (homeless, "drifters", etc.) and illegal immigrants. Because of the nature of this, it is hard to put numbers on that group.
There are also other groups where I'm not sure whether current surveying methods inadvertently bias against them -- people without telephone, those who are isolated from "mainstream" society, or don't speak or read English. For example, what about Native Americans living on reservations? Even if such people are in the census and can technically be reached by surveys, their response rates may be low.
I agree with the comment that people are generally better off today than they were in 1970. Most people today have most of their needs covered, and the majority have many of their "wants" as well. I also agree that the list of needs does change with time. People definitely do have different needs today, but I do think that those needs, for the most part, are fulfilled.
Spelling mistakes in Kavindavis' and Metromut's comments.
Thomas Sowell has a book called The Vision of the Annoitted. In it he discusses how the two classes in our society are now 1) the people who judge things by how good they are (the annoitted), and 2) the people who judge things on a cost/benefit basis.
The problem as he sees it (and me too) is that the annoitted say things like "I want to alleviate poverty". The problem is, who wouldn't? I'm in favor of more puppies for everyone too. People in the second of Sowell's groups say "Great. How would you like to reduce poverty?". Once you get to that second question, you have to ask how to define poverty, and it seems clear from the comments that there isn't even a reasonable way to start.
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