Here's the Federal Poverty Guidelines as of 2009:
Persons in family | Poverty guideline |
---|
1 | $10,830 |
2 | 14,570 |
3 | 18,310 |
4 | 22,050 |
5 | 25,790 |
6 | 29,530 |
7 | 33,270 |
8 | 37,010 |
Do you see a pattern here? If not, let me point it out. Follow me below the fold so you can see the idiocy of the federal poverty guidelines and the changes we need to make to it.
You, if you're a single person, can make $10,830 a year before the government no longer considers you poor (of course you still will be-good luck supporting yourself on less than $1,000 a month). This means that at pre-tax income you can make $208.27 a week and still meet the federal guidelines on being poor.
However, let's decide you want to get married. Maybe your spouse is in the same boat you are. The bad economy has forced them to work either minimum-wage crap jobs or some other form of work that doesn't pay the bills. The federal poverty level for a family of two is $14,570. To qualify for government assistance, you and your spouse need to make on average, $7,285 each to qualify for government assistance, since the poverty level for a family of two is only $3,740 more than a family of one. That's even less than the insanely low poverty level for just you. Somehow, providing for a spouse becomes about 1/3 the price of providing for yourself! While on your meager salary you're probably living off the dollar menu at Burger King (good luck buying the stove, oven, pots, pans, cooking utensils, and eating utensils on your $14,000 pre-tax a year salary, let alone the insane price of groceries-you're stuck at Burger King buddy), your spouse will be lucky if they can get an extra serving of french fries because they can't cost more than $3,740 a year to maintain.
Now let's say you have a baby on the way. If you're lucky, the wife was able to get Medicaid so that the cost of delivering the child won't drive you into homelessness. After the kid is born, in order to stay under the federal poverty line and be eligible for assistance, you now have to make less than $18,310 total income, or $6,103 per person in your home. Once again, this is pre-tax income. Good luck trying to buy pampers, baby formula, and clothes that your kid is going to outgrow every six months on $6,103 a year.
Now there's going to be some clueless morons who will say things like "What about the Earned Income Tax Credit?" Yeah, you try waiting for a less than $2,000 check that comes once a year while you're drowning in debt because you're trying to feed your kid. See how that goes. Or you'll have the guy telling you "But you don't have to buy a separate house for each person, so it's justifiable that the rate only increases by $3,740 per person!" Think you can afford to make car (and auto insurance) payments on a halfway-decent car that you won't have to spend a fortune in an auto body shop on $3,740 a year AND still have enough money left over for gas and groceries? Good luck with that, buddy.
I know people that refuse to get married because of this. In these situations, one of the parent's has a job that pays around $35,000 a year and if they were married, they'd be expected to raise a family of four on this kind of money with little help. So they have the other parent (the one with a minimum wage job) declare the kids as dependents on their taxes so they can be eligible for subsidies. I don't blame them one bit for doing this-raising a family is expensive.
The truth is that we need to make drastic changes with our guidelines on the federal poverty level. Right now it's so low it's simply unrealistic. Here I am presenting some changes that can be made to make the guidelines much more reflective of our economic reality:
- Make the federal poverty level for a single person the equivalent of a full-time job set at the federal minimum wage. As of right now, that would be $15,080. It only makes sense to do so, considering this is the least amount you can legally make under a full time job. Let an honest working man get some help.
- Let states voluntarily increase, but not decrease, the poverty level in their state based on cost of living. Let's be honest. The cost of living in BFE, Alabama is going to be cheaper than the cost of living in Michigan. There's no reason why the nationwide average should cause working Michigan families to suffer. Let Michigan have the opportunity to raise their poverty level if they want to do so.
- Make the federal poverty level for each additional family member be 50% of a single person. Just because I mock someone for thinking it's possible to have a dependent supported on $3,740 a year doesn't mean I don't recognize the reality that the cost of rent/mortgage as well utilities will remain relatively static regardless of family size. So an increase of 100% per person isn't necessary. But expecting someone to live on $3,740 is just ridiculous. So let's make every additional family member be 50% of the rate of a single person. This would make the federal poverty level for a family of three $30,160. That's completely reasonable when you factor in the cost of raising a single child.
Of course there's going to be some right-wing retards that think that increasing the federal poverty level to reasonable levels is wrong. They're free to think that, and they're also free to write a diary telling everyone how well they supported a spouse and a child on the current federal poverty level of $18,310 a year. Not only are they free to do so, but I'd love to know their secret.