In a viral Substack post in November, he took particular aim at the federal government’s poverty line, which traces back to the early 1960s and was calculated by tripling the cost of a minimum food diet at the time.
The poverty line’s narrow focus on food leaves out how much other expenses are now sucking up incomes and lowballing the minimum amount Americans need to get by.
Green estimated that food makes up just 5% to 7% of household spending, but put housing at 35% to 45%, childcare at 20% to 40%, and health care at 15% to 25%.
Base something on a single metric, and it doesn’t take long for it to become pointless…
Because that’s the only thing anyone is paying attention to.
Calories are cheap, and subsides for shit like corn syrup is hurting more than it helps. But it pumps the calorie count up which trades short term starvation for slightly longer term health issues.
It’s nothing new, different demographics have been trying to raise the alarm for decades, generations even.
Everyone just ignored it till it hit the suburbs, and now want to act like it’s brand new.
Green estimated that food makes up just 5% to 7% of household spending, but put housing at 35% to 45%, childcare at 20% to 40%, and health care at 15% to 25%.
Yeah that tracks. For my family we spend about $500/month on groceries, around 35% of our income on housing (call it about $1600/mo including utilities), and until our vehicle was paid off around 25% of our income went to that.
We got lucky in that we had a family member willing to babysit for us while I went back to college then when they started getting too toxic I snagged a job making just enough for my wife to be a stay at home mom. We absolutely could not have afforded kids if it weren’t for either of those factors didn’t work out. We’d probably still have my wife and I working opposing shifts and both being just sleep deprived enough to be biting each other’s heads off and possibly divorced by now (we had the opposing shifts thing going when we got married, and when she had a week off for her wedding, we both started getting good sleep again and stopped fighting and I had a second honeymoon phase as I was like “oh yeah I remember why I fell in love with you again!”)
Base something on a single metric, and it doesn’t take long for it to become pointless…
Because that’s the only thing anyone is paying attention to.
Calories are cheap, and subsides for shit like corn syrup is hurting more than it helps. But it pumps the calorie count up which trades short term starvation for slightly longer term health issues.
It’s nothing new, different demographics have been trying to raise the alarm for decades, generations even.
Everyone just ignored it till it hit the suburbs, and now want to act like it’s brand new.
Yeah that tracks. For my family we spend about $500/month on groceries, around 35% of our income on housing (call it about $1600/mo including utilities), and until our vehicle was paid off around 25% of our income went to that.
We got lucky in that we had a family member willing to babysit for us while I went back to college then when they started getting too toxic I snagged a job making just enough for my wife to be a stay at home mom. We absolutely could not have afforded kids if it weren’t for either of those factors didn’t work out. We’d probably still have my wife and I working opposing shifts and both being just sleep deprived enough to be biting each other’s heads off and possibly divorced by now (we had the opposing shifts thing going when we got married, and when she had a week off for her wedding, we both started getting good sleep again and stopped fighting and I had a second honeymoon phase as I was like “oh yeah I remember why I fell in love with you again!”)
If they took my average Costco bill, ported it over to Whole Foods prices, then tripled it, I could retire.