I get you’re saying that they adjust the 1963 cost for inflation. (vs tripling today’s cost of food) I can’t agree if that was enough in that time, because how would I know? But sure, let’s say it was. It doesn’t follow that adjusted for inflation it would be enough now.
As the author wrote, there seems to be significantly more inflation in other expenses than in food. Doing the math on what we think are reasonable expenses can show what a “real” poverty line is.
I think we agree. The poverty line wasn’t “enough” in 1963 either, it was instead a line below which it wasn’t possible to really live without assistance. I agree with the author of the article that the poverty line is misused as standing for what’s “enough” when it doesn’t represent that (edit: and I also agree that it doesn’t seem to have tracked some of the actual increases in costs of living). I just took issue with their misrepresentation of the math of how it’s calculated and what it means. I also think there’s a more interesting conversation to be had about why the inflation metric (CPI) misses the perceived increase in costs of living, but this article did not discuss that. Yes it explained that various things had gotten more expensive, but not why those aren’t being tracked by CPI (which includes housing costs, etc).
I get you’re saying that they adjust the 1963 cost for inflation. (vs tripling today’s cost of food) I can’t agree if that was enough in that time, because how would I know? But sure, let’s say it was. It doesn’t follow that adjusted for inflation it would be enough now.
As the author wrote, there seems to be significantly more inflation in other expenses than in food. Doing the math on what we think are reasonable expenses can show what a “real” poverty line is.
I think we agree. The poverty line wasn’t “enough” in 1963 either, it was instead a line below which it wasn’t possible to really live without assistance. I agree with the author of the article that the poverty line is misused as standing for what’s “enough” when it doesn’t represent that (edit: and I also agree that it doesn’t seem to have tracked some of the actual increases in costs of living). I just took issue with their misrepresentation of the math of how it’s calculated and what it means. I also think there’s a more interesting conversation to be had about why the inflation metric (CPI) misses the perceived increase in costs of living, but this article did not discuss that. Yes it explained that various things had gotten more expensive, but not why those aren’t being tracked by CPI (which includes housing costs, etc).