A recent Los Angeles Times editorial claimed that one-fifth of Americans live on $7 a day  barely enough for a trip to Starbucks. Annie Jacobsen searches for the truth behind this dubious statistic and finds a tangle of shoddy analysis along the way.
I mean, how can one go to Starbucks after reading this? In the LA Times? At Starbucks?
$7 a day? That is so sad. I wonder what other excellent information we could learn from the World Socialist Web Site?
So that’s like 20% of America pretty insistently not doing jobs Americans won’t do.
And the MSM can’t quite figure out why they are losing customers. I can understand being off statistically by a few points either way, but come on. This is so absurd that SOME editor had to ask themselves “wait a minute – can this be true?” This is more off-the-charts than the government-issued claim of 35 million Americans going to bed hungry every night, while we also have an obesity epidemic on our hands.
…even though unemployment is at about 5-6%.
Odd, that. It’s almost as if those two figures cannot survive in the same universe.
Just because you’re fat, that doesn’t mean you’re not hungry.
True dat.
(Fact checkers take note: I was able to locate William Shanley’s home phone number in about the same amount of time it took me to get the 2004 poverty facts and figures from the U.S. Census Bureau  seven minutes per fact).
VIGILANTE!
Represent!
“Just because you’re fat, that doesn’t mean you’re not hungry.”
Ha! Driving down I-4 yesterday I drove alongside a woman who was behind the wheel and had a quart of breyers ice cream open and was dipping spoon after spoon into it, bite after bite. This went on for about five miles.
This. Is. Infuriating. (After laughing at Dan’s “doesn’t mean you’re not hungry” crack.)
Note to the LA Times Editorial Board: Rather than being in a foaming rush to print a particularly provacative statistic to hype your !Poverty! rant, perhaps you should consider using a dying technique when evaluating a numerical construct called FRICKIN’ FRACKIN’ DINGLE DANGLE COMMON SENSE!!!
Let me help you out here: THE AVERAGE HOMELESS PANHANDLER HANGING IN FRONT OF AN INNER CITY MCDONALDS SMELLING LIKE HOWARD HUGHES’ TOE JAM IS LIKELY TO DO BETTER THAN $7 A DAY!!!
Great googly moogly these people piss me off!!
more willfully dishonest economic reporting. AP tool Anne D’Innocenzio does a write-up on “a preliminary sales tally by Thomson Financial” and does note this:
Of course then she bases her entire article on just the December numbers and concludes that “The poor performance raised more concerns about consumer spending, and in turn, the health of the economy.”
link
I love how Newton tries to justify the phony facts by labeling them “controversial” and “interesting”.
I think it’s interesting, and probably controversial, that Newton was spotted in the lobby of Bonaventure, dressed in an Anne Klein black silk dress carrying a Kate Spade handbag …
but don’t question my sources.
Depending on what part of I-4, and when, elapsed time could be between three minutes and an hour and a half.
When moving back to Orlando, my choice of neighborhood was predicated on me not having to ever get on I-4, for anything.
I like Annie Jacobsen. She is kind of relentless.
Darleen: I’m grumpy today so I choose to beat this like a rented goalie.
Screw the source material. Anne Jacobson, like just about everybody at PW who read this, started from a particular point. Hey, let me do a quick calculation. $7/day? 60 Million Americans? Hey, wait a minute! That doesn’t make any frickin’ sense!
It used to be that people like Newton were willing to fudge fact checking for the selling of the provacative and the controversial. That’s pretty much what we got with the Lancet Report and it’s dubious polling criteria.
Now Newton suggests that we suspend simple common sense for the provacative and the controversial in order to sell papers and get noticed.
And these maroons have the brass ones to sniff at bloggers and their lack of journalistic ethics? Bite me!
Hell, my 7-year-old survives on much less than that.
Man, I spend more than $7 a day on Slusho alone.. I mean, that stuff is delicious! I stopped by Slushobucks this morning and gulped down half a dozen slusho-macciatos and I feel like a randy sperm whale surrounded by a pod of hot sea cows. Since I got to work half an hour ago I’ve done the receptionist in the cloak room, my secretary in the copy room on the Xerox machine and that hot chick from Legal in the elevator stopped between 31 & 32… Wow, I didnt feel this good when I was sixteen! Freakin’ King Kong has nuthin on me!
Thank you Slusho!
I’m pretty sure the writer of that editorial must tell her parents she’s a drug dealer … or something … to spare them the humiliation of knowing their daughter is a journalist.
Do newspaper editors not have brains, or do they simply not use them?
I love how Newton tries to justify the phony facts by labeling them “controversial†and “interestingâ€Â
I love this new standard. I think it should be used frequently.
Well someone has to say it: I, for one, applaud these 60 million fine upstanding Americans for living on just $7 a day. Well, only if they’re doing for Gaia.
Does Patterico know about this yet? I’m sure he’d love to add it to the LATimes lengthy list of sins.
Kelly, I’m sure you are onto something. If only all of us lived on $7 a day (or LESS!) there would be much less consumed and wasted.
Top Ramen is kind of heavy on the calories, though.
I still think these numbers are bogus. How can you sustain a crack habit for just seven skins a day? It’s almost like they’re making this up.
$7 a day doesn’t sound like much but with the miracle of compound interest it’s really nothing to sniff at. Or maybe it is kinda. That’s a math problem.
I was told there wouldn’t be math on this blog.
I bet simon li could live on $7 a day, and still get regular trim.
If you could eat nothing but beans and rice and maybe some broccoli, you might be able to make it on $7 a day, provided you didn’t have to supply the pots, pans, power and/or gas, and residence.
It’s amazing how math skills can completely desert those with an agenda to hawk.
Is extra-close trim more expensive? Because I’m living on a budget, here.
I’ll go even as far as to say that simon li could buy 100 rental properties (recent shrapnel from the sub-prime explosion) no money down, of course, charge $7 a day rent to his fellow citizens of the community of human beings and still have time to service his legendary stable of sex-ponies.
That China man is dynamite!
No doubt you’re right, al. I understand that China dude gets him some tail.
But are these 60 million Americans the good ones or the ugly ones according to simone? And what if some of them wear jackboots? (Hey, do any of his sex-ponies wear jackboots?) I’ll bet none of them voted for Bush/Cheney, the blood-thirsty bastards.
I haven’t spent a dime today.
Come to think of it, neither have I! But as the response goes, “…day ain’t over yet.” Of course, that response was to the question, “Hey Curly, have you killed anyone today?”
I heard simon li is the father of the tiger that jumped the wall at the San Fran Zoo. He impregnated a she-tiger on one of his many junkets during the infancy of “the sub-prime”.
Hey, you know what I just sourced? 47 million americans are only wearing one sock. That’s right! In the land on plenty 47 million Americans are having to make do with only one sock!!!
What’s my source? Well it’s the Wahooey County Legume Society but that doesn’t matter. Isn’t that piece of information interesting and controversial?
See there? Even I can be an editor at a major newspaper. HIRE ME!!!
Geez, I’m nauseous…
Huh. I heard simon li has impregnated “10 to 15 million” she-tigers. I know that sounds implausible but, hey, with the sharp financial mind he has, you easily round off 5 million.
Top 10 ways to determine that 20% of Americans live on less than $7 a day:
10) Note: Figures given in 1938 dollars.
9) Only count income on days of the week starting with “T”.
8) Include children and other dependents.
7) Don’t count “necessities” like food or housing in the budget.
6) Include Canine- and Feline-Americans in your total.
5) Note: Figures for the US and North Korea have been combined.
4) Give those figures the “special” massage.
3) Hire Mann and Rutherford from the IPCC to write your computer model.
2) Blame your 6th-grade math teacher for that lifelong aversion.
1) Lie your ass off, hope no-one notices.
According to Wiki, the lowest quintile (i.e. 20%) of American wage-earners makes from $0-18,500 per year. Obviously, if 1/5 (aka “qunitile”) of America was surviving on $7 per day, the upper limit of this quintile would be far lower.
My *kitten* lives on $7/day.
*I* live on puppy shakes. And get power from hobo souls.
It’s all well-documented.