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The New York Times metro section today runs on its front page a remarkably naive dispatch under the headline "Family Needs Far Exceed The Official Poverty Line." The story appears to be based almost entirely on a report by something called the "Women's Center for Education and Career Advancement," and it makes the claim that "getting by" or "meeting bare bones needs" in New York City costs far more than the federal poverty line. In Queens, the report claims, an adult raising two children needs $46,836 a year to just get by or meet "bare bones needs." In southern Manhattan, "the same family would need $74,232, without budgeting a dime for a movie or a restaurant meal."
This is all reminiscent of the Times' Sunday story about that $90,000-a-year family that was having trouble "making ends meet" -- that is, affording a big-screen television. But today's dispatch is even more silly, if such a thing is possible. First off, New York is expensive, but it's just hard to credit the claim that you can't afford to live here on less that $74,232, or that anyone making $74,232 and living in Manhattan has gone the entire year without either going to a movie or consuming a restaurant meal.
(Note, by the way, the preciseness. It's not $75,000, but $74,232. This is a classic technique used by professional study-writers to lend credibility to these sorts of cornball studies.)
The claims start to break down when you examine some of the specific cases. The first sob story cited by the Times is that of Carol Williams. She is supposed to be a sympathetic figure, an administrative assistant earning $24,000 a year, with three children "squeezed into a one-bedroom, $600-a-month apartment in the Bronx." She is "broke," the Times tells us, "scrambling to buy food," and there is "nothing wrong with her budgeting skills." But wait a minute. The Times glosses lightly over Ms. Williams' "car payments" and "car insurance." For all the talk of "bare bones" budgets and skipping movies and restaurant meals, the first poor-family sob story the Times can muster well-developed public transportation systems in the world and has her own car. We're supposed to feel bad for this woman? The Times doesn't tell us what kind of car she drives, but we can only imagine. (Later in the story, we learn that the car is "needed" to get to a job in Westchester, and that the down payment on it was covered by a "tax refund.")
The next sob story the Times trots out is Robbin Davis. She "often helps feed her family by bringing in leftovers from the lunches she prepares for the elderly for $7 an hour at a settlement house." She is "still trying to work her way off welfare." She lives in a public housing apartment and she gets food stamps. Yet if you look carefully at the photograph of Ms. Davis on the front of the metro section, you can discern in the background what looks to be a microwave oven and a washing machine.
The Times story reads like a press release for the Women's Center, which helps women get jobs, apparently by first getting them "unpaid internships" at PaineWebber. Sounds like PaineWebber is getting a pretty good deal on free labor thanks to this Women's Center.
It just so happens that the editor of Smartertimes.com lives in New York City and doesn't own a car or a washing machine or a microwave. It wouldn't bother us one bit if Ms. Davis or Ms. Williams wanted to take their own money and spend it on Cadillacs or microwaves or washing machines or even, perish the thought, those items defined by the Times and the Women's Center as luxuries, "a movie or a restaurant meal." What is bothersome, though, is that the money we earn and that we would otherwise would be able to keep and spend ourselves on a car or fancy appliances is instead being paid in taxes to the government. Those taxes then end up subsidizing the lifestyles of people like Ms. Williams and Ms. Davis. And this is after we've supposedly reformed the welfare system.
Typically, the Times story quotes the executive director of the Women's Center and the supposedly poor women, but it includes not a single quote from a conservative expert on welfare, work or poverty or even from a government official who has been supportive of welfare reform. And left unsaid is the reason for conducting a study showing that it costs $74,232 to live in Manhattan for a year without eating out or watching a movie. The study will be used as a tool to lobby for the expansion of welfare programs and for increases in minimum wages, both of which would probably have the long-run effect of increasing poverty and dependence.