this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2025

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255

Is $140,000 the New Poverty Line for Americans? (www.vice.com)

submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by return2ozma@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

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[–] coolcat1711@lemmy.dbzer0.com 45 points 6 days ago (3 children)

I highly recommend that you read the actual substack article.

The claim is based around how the original poverty line was the cost of food multiplied by 3. This assumes that food is 33% of your spending and that your other expenses are approximately the other 67%.

The $140k value is based around the fact that the ratio has shifted immensely. Food is cheap in the US relative to the other goods/services required to live in society. If you take the new ratio and extrapolate it out, the multiplier is over 10x the cost of food to account for the other components of spending.

Even if you want to debate the actual number itself. The poverty line is laughable and anyone living at it is legitimately destitute, not just in "casual poverty"

[–] Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)

The issue is... how do you accurately determine the poverty line without just taking some number and multiplying it. Because not only do costs vary by location, so does their ratio. So you really need a set of costs per location added together, then averaged based on the density of population in the area the costs were pulled from. And of course at that point the finaly number is probably true nowhere. So what is the use of it anyway. Each specific area needs it's own poverty line. The smaller the area the more useful and accurate the number will be. But you can't just say "fine, we will do it by zipcode". Because zipcodes have significant variation of sizes. It needs to be done intelligently and constantly as things shift. So in the end, there simply is no reasonably accurate poverty line unless a human calculates it for a specific address.

[–] Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world 3 points 6 days ago (4 children)

Take how much it takes for a living wage in the most expensive part of the country.

And that's it. If you try to shrink wrap it down to where it's bare subsistence anywhere, you trap people in places where everyone with the means leaves. Sure, the cost of living is low, but there's no jobs because everyone with money left. So it becomes impossible to get by, let alone amass the funds needed to relocate.

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[–] TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 4 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (2 children)

The poverty line is about 32K for a family of four, and 15K for a single person.

fed minimum wage full time is a income of 15K per year. this of course, varies by state, w/ CA min wage becoming 36K a year.

[–] SoloCritical@lemmy.world 6 points 6 days ago

I truly feel for the people that are in that boat..

[–] ChexMax@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Which is nuts, because a two bedroom (hope your kids are the same gender) place is gonna be 24k of that. So 8k left over for insurance (car, life, home, and medical) food, childcare, all other bills, taxes, Christmas, school supplies, children's clothes and shoes. It's way below the number that would cover half of that.

[–] AA5B@lemmy.world 1 points 6 days ago

Plus in all too many places you’re practically forced to buy a car

[–] skisnow@lemmy.ca 2 points 6 days ago

ISTG there are more commenters up in here who obviously didn't read the article than ones who did.

[–] lukaro@lemmy.zip 14 points 6 days ago (2 children)

If $140,000 is the poverty line can I please make poverty wages?

[–] Jyek@sh.itjust.works 9 points 6 days ago

This calculation is for a family of four. Please read more than the headline and comments.

[–] Triasha@lemmy.world 4 points 6 days ago

If my wife and I both made 70k I think we could comfortably raise 2 kids.

As is? We would need some serious help.

[–] NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip 8 points 6 days ago (1 children)

The substack is well worth the read.

[–] ATS1312@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 6 days ago

Math that a lot of us educated poverty-livers have done before. Its refreshing to see one of the econ-bros validate it.

[–] AA5B@lemmy.world 3 points 6 days ago

Yes. That as a household income is not actually that far from two median individual incomes. As someone in a high cost of living area, I can see you’d be very restricted on less than that, and it’s tough to see how you’d ever afford to own a home.

[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 4 points 6 days ago

Maybe. Depends on where you live. If you live somewhere relatively inexpensive it's not bad. However, I'd have to caution that this sounds like gross income (I did a search and the article didn't say), and if it is, this isn't great. Taxes, medical, any union dues, and hopefully a significant chunk going into a retirement fund will eat this up quickly. This is in the 24% fed tax bracket - not including child credit or any pre-tax deductions for something like a 401k, and no State tax taken. 140k take-home would be pretty good.

[–] Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world 3 points 6 days ago

Like there is a figure low enough for either party.

[–] AcidiclyBasicGlitch@sh.itjust.works 5 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

“laughable,” arguing that you can’t declare the majority of Americans impoverished because the suburbs they choose to live in are expensive, which is what Green did when he used the middle class suburb of Caldwell, New Jersey, as his median.

"My plastic surgeon said smiling is a waste of Botox, but I can't help but let out a boisterous ha cha fucking cha at the absurdity. If poor people don't want to spend so much money on cost of living they should just go live in the places nobody lives because there are no jobs or resources."

"Poor people are just so bad at managing money. That's why they have to blindly trust everything we say. We know how to spend money wisely, and we know what's best for the economy and them."

"Get out of the way Plebs! We're betting it all on AI!"

"Oh my! Well, that was unfortunate but also completely unforeseeable. I guess the only thing left to do is brush ourselves off, pat ourselves on the back for being such altruistic utilitarians, ignore the screams from the plebs and go again."

"So where's our bailout? Time is money."

[–] skisnow@lemmy.ca 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

“laughable,” arguing that you can’t declare the majority of Americans impoverished because the suburbs they choose to live in are expensive, which is what Green did when he used the middle class suburb of Caldwell, New Jersey, as his median.

Yeah you're right, this is verging on dishonest. The whole point of him picking Caldwell, NJ was to find an extremely median place to live and avoid accusations of cherry-picking San Francisco or Manhattan prices. Essex county is 13th out of 21 counties in NJ for income, NJ is the 11th largest state by population. I'm sure you could find something more mundane, but not that would affect the final numbers to any significant degree unless you were cherry-picking in the other direction.

Sure there's lots of states with much lower property values, but you have to weight it based on where people actually live. Telling poor people to move to Buttfuck, ID and get a job there instead doesn't work.

[–] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

as income, that is quite a bit above middle income. unless you living in very rich neighborhoods, its still affordable in places even with hcol.

<100k is considered low income though in HCOL.

[–] GaryGhost@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago

God I wish that were me

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