A long winded story about the official poverty measure and a brief moment of intense patriotism
Background: TLDR: The official poverty measure is confusing as hell Upon Googling "Bernie Sanders", an interesting combination of words appeared: "Forbes.com" "Policies for Bernie Sanders" The article was a rather facile examination of the relative merits of conditional vs. non-conditional cash transfers, as in food stamps vs. cash benefits. There are better articles about this subject such as this one in the Economist and this one on a Norwegian website. But what immediately caught my eye, and what takes up the bulk of the article, is a claim that the author, Tim Worstall, makes about the childhood poverty rate, namely that it is only 2-3%. Of all the metrics that you could use to argue that poverty in America isn't as bad as some people say it is, the childhood poverty rate is probably the least likely to convince someone who has access to the official statistics. I confronted Tim about his lack of citations in the commen