Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Ignorant statistician

CBPP: Government benefits and taxes cut the poverty rate from 26.3 percent to 14.3 percent in 2015.  Among children, they cut the poverty rate from 26.8 percent to 16.1 percent (see chart).  This analysis uses the Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM), which counts various government non-cash benefits as income, as most analysts favor.

No, you idiot, there were not 27% of child poverty in Jan 2015 and suddenly 16% in December.  No, what he means is  the programs transfer that much money.  

If the transfers were stopped and everyone were as stupid as the posting author, then we would have much more poverty.  But we are all  not as stupid as the author, and most of us adapt quite well with the lowered government transfers.

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