Re: How America Treats Its Own Children

"...the new study also supports the broader point of their book: The modern safety net seems to be fundamentally failing many families in America." I don't think that statement fits in very well with the rest of the Slate article which looks at not just how the numbers are smaller than first claimed, but that most of the people in question are childless adults, not "families," which certainly brings the figures' inclusion in the Atlantic article about children severely into question. Another thing that leaps out is that it looks at people who were under $2 for at least part of the year, which suggests that some of these individual cases are people are in the middle of some kind of transition period and that it's not necessarily a persistent financial state. It's not a given that it's all the same people in that quarter of a percent year after year. And what about counting illegal income? If we're talking about just 0.24% of households, it's not unreasonable to wonder if a chunk of them are making money selling drugs or sex on the side (which is perfectly fine in my book). And something that certainly doesn't get discussed is the rise in men leaving the workforce, whether they're gamers living in their mother's basement or experienced workers facing increasing demand for paper qualifications. Poverty numbers never look good, but the picture is always more nuanced and doesn't always point to the crazy homeless guy living in a ditch.