Conf Board on living standards

[Brad De Long]

>Brad De Long wrote:
>
>>Not flawed, exactly, but incomplete. It speaks to the distribution 
>>of market income, and forgets that we do have a feeble and 
>>anemic--but effective (even if in some ways less effective than it 
>>used to be)--social insurance state.
>
>You mean the EITC? But, as the article went on to say, the poverty 
>definition also excludes payroll (and sales) taxes. And as the 
>article didn't say, the poverty line is an absolute rather than 
>relative one, and so reports absurdly low poverty rates.
>
>Doug

If you got kids, the EITC dominates at the low income end. As to the 
"absolute" vs. "relative" poverty standard, that's a hard and 
different question--I favor a bunch of different absolute poverty 
lines (poor  by 1960 standards, poor by 1920 standards, poor by 2000 
standards, et cetera).

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