Rich Today, Poor Tomorrow
About 7.6 million more people are soon going to be poor who aren’t poor today. I wonder if they’ll get a postcard welcoming them to the club.
The Obama administration is recommending for the first time in 45 years, an update to poverty definitions in America in order to accommodate more modern components like healthcare.
Of course this illustrates what I think was brilliantly (and entertainingly) covered in The West Wing episode “Indians in the Lobby“…namely that we don’t spend enough time thinking about operational definitions for our terms. In other words, most of us probably knew that there is a “poverty line” below which folks are officially poor and above which folks are…well…non-poor (probably not necessarily rich), most of us probably didn’t know what the actual definition of poverty was.
Anyone besides me surprised to learn that healthcare costs weren’t included? WTF?
You may be asking “Gosh, Geek…this is sort of passingly interesting, but why should I give a rat’s ass?” Well I’m glad you asked. Because it turns out that treatment is different, benefits are available differently, perception is different…based on the labels we apply. What are the ramifications of a label of “poor” for someone who was previously “non-poor” (working class?)?
Go forth and define your terms, y’all.
~Geek~
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Comments
No comments yet.
Leave a comment