[CLUE-Talk] Bowling for Columbine

[Sean LeBlanc]

On 12-01 12:13, David Anselmi wrote:
> Sean LeBlanc wrote:
> [...]
> >
> >"There are 30 million Americans living without enough food."
> >
> >Huh? How many Americans are there? 350 million? So, according to this
> >statement (without a cite, I noticed), there are just under 1 out of 12
> >people without enough food? I don't mean to whitewash the issue, but that
> >sounds just a *tad* inflated. And I thought conservatives were resorting to
> >hyperbole when they said that the media always seems to "discover" the
> >homeless and hungry in this country whenever there is a sitting Republican
> >president...
> >
> 
> 2000 census: 281.4 million Americans
> 
> I'm not sure how to read the poverty level numbers.  It seems to say 
> 33.9M (12%) of individuals are below the poverty level.  Poverty level 
> is an income on the order of $20k/year.  Does that mean those people 
> don't have enough food?
> 
> Lies, damn lies, and statistics.

Exactly. Giving 20K as the poverty line across the board is intellectually
dishonest. Where I grew up, for example:

http://perry.extension.psu.edu/countyinfo.html

...you can live fairly well on 20K. Seriously. I invite you to surf real
estate web pages for house prices in that area. Zip code of 17040 and
surrounding areas should give you an idea.

My point is, to be even close to fair, you'd have to declare what "poverty"
is county by county, maybe even township by township. If I made 50K in some
parts of California or in NYC, I'd be barely keeping my head above water. If
I made 50K in Perry County, PA, I'd be living pretty high on the hog...and
if I made 10K, I wouldn't be starving, either.


On a different tangent: I noticed the library doesn't have "Roger and Me",
so maybe they won't get Bowling for Columbine, either. Of course, it might
be because "Roger and Me" is not on DVD yet...I only saw the VHS version
available for sale. Having a huge catalogue of VHS doesn't make much sense
for the library, due to the limited lifetime....

-- 
Sean LeBlanc:seanleblanc at americanisp.net  
http://users.americanisp.net/~seanleblanc/
Get MLAC at: http://sourceforge.net/projects/mlac/
When I gathered flowers for my girl from the top of the plum tree the lower 
branches drenched me with dew. 
-Kakinomoto No Hitomaro