Economic Interests

One thing that I think gets unduly neglected in a lot of political conversations, especially conversations taking place within the left-of-center family, is that one really needs to know a lot more about a person than what his income is to know what his "economic interests" are.

For example, the median household income in the United States is $48,201. But if you compare a retired person living in Montana with a $48,000 annual income to a first year DC cop, and an average aircraft painter in Phoenix, both of whom would earn about the same amount of money, you'd find three people with rather different economic interests.

For one thing, despite their similar incomes, these three people are actually in rather different objective economic situations. But beyond that, a lot of their economic interests are very narrow and specific -- they have to do with federal retirement programs, or the state of the Arizona aerospace industry, or the DC government's decisions about funding priorities and the police department -- rather than with stuff about "the economy."

Comments

It's of course true that a salary in NYC is very different than the same salary in Montana. We all know this, but we don't have a good way of putting this into the political discourse. We can make the basic point qualitatively, but we don't have the "language" that allows us to quantify and analyze these differences, and therefore make policy decisions accordingly.

The tools exist to do this, but they have not yet gained enough momentum to become part of the discourse. (Now for sort-of-self-promotion) My wife heads up the California branch for a national project that seeks to replace the federal poverty line with a "self-sufficiency standard" that actually looks at the cost of living, county-by-county. Now, if you think that looking at the cost of living is what the federal poverty line is supposed to do, I highly recommend you go read up on the FPL--it will be obvious that the FPL is a joke.

The data for California has most recently been updated for seniors (families was last updated a couple years ago) and you can read more here:

http://www.insightcced.org/index.php?page=california-elder-economic-security-initiative

Posted by mlmitton | April 17, 2008 9:44 PM

It's of course true that a salary in NYC is very different than the same salary in Montana. We all know this, but we don't have a good way of putting this into the political discourse. We can make the basic point qualitatively, but we don't have the "language" that allows us to quantify and analyze these differences, and therefore make policy decisions accordingly.

Of course you do. You can look at consumption indicators in addition to, or instead of, income indicators, for example. Of course, liberals tend to focus on income and ignore consumption because income data is more conducive to the (false) narrative they want to tell about how the poor are getting poorer and the middle class is stagnating.

Posted by Mixner | April 17, 2008 9:56 PM

Naturally, Mixner decides that, along with torture, everybody is getting richer and better - deliberately ignoring that some people are getting MORE richer and MORE better (that's a grammar Matt should appreciate) than most others - and it's not because they're smarter, except at figuring out ways to fool people into giving money for nothing (e.g., investment bankers and subprime money people and the military-industrial complex.)

And as usual, he makes this assertion without providing any references to back it up.

Go back to arguing for torture, Mixner - you didn't need any references there, just stupidity.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | April 17, 2008 11:25 PM

Anyone with any accounting experience or even just common sense can tell you that you need to look at BOTH income AND consumption. And guess what-- when you do that the pictures looks even worse since, collctievly at least if not always individually, we are spending more than we make.

Posted by JonF | April 18, 2008 6:19 AM