Wisdom Teeth Pulled
In article >,
> US Bureau of Economic Analysis published a study that provides exactly that
for 2010. Combined with World Bank data for the same year, these datasets show
that the poorest 20 percent of US households have higher average consumption
per person than the averages for all people in most nations of the OECD and
Europe:
>[>>>Click on the URL for comparison chart, the poorest 20% of Americans have
higher consumption levels of goods/services than "wealthy" nations such as
Canada, Sweden, UK...]
>The high consumption of America?s ?poor? doesn?t mean they live better than
average people in the nations they outpace, like Spain, Denmark, Japan, Greece,
and New Zealand. This is because people?s quality of life also depends on their
communities and personal choices, like the local politicians they elect, the
violent crimes they commit, and the spending decisions they make.
>For instance, a Department of Agriculture study found that US households
receiving food stamps spend about 50 percent more on sweetened drinks,
desserts, and candy than on fruits and vegetables. In comparison, households
not receiving food stamps spend slightly more on fruits & vegetables than on
sweets.
>Nonetheless, the fact remains that the privilege of living in the US affords
poor people more material resources than the averages for most of the world?s
richest nations."
></Every dataset is only as good as its cross-section. If Americans living
below the poverty line were excluded, statistical analysis would indeed
conclude that poor people consume more than analogous folks within the same
socioeconomic bracket in developed nations. However, plenty of Americans cannot
afford any of the items mentioned in this study: mobile phones, microwaves,
computers, automobiles, etc. If they can, they are often of much poorer quality
than middle-class Americans can afford.
Therefore, two issues are fundamental he the poverty level included in this
economic study and the quality of goods consumed by the poorest people.
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