zipskinny

Post by **Dale** » Mon Oct 08, 2007 7:01 am

Cool, for American citizens: www.zipskinny.com

gonzo914 · Post by **gonzo914** » Mon Oct 08, 2007 7:16 am

Way cool. I can see my house.

mutepointe · Post by **mutepointe** » Mon Oct 08, 2007 7:31 am

i added this to my favorites. my zip is doing way better than i thought.

Wanderer · Post by **Wanderer** » Mon Oct 08, 2007 7:44 am

Hah, my zip code is not in their database.

CountryKitty · Post by **CountryKitty** » Mon Oct 08, 2007 8:33 am

Ah-HAH! Population 6069---I KNEW there were more dogs or cattle or deer here than people!

WyoBadger · Post by **WyoBadger** » Mon Oct 08, 2007 6:59 pm

We have no Pacific islanders. I was afraid of that.

emmline · Post by **emmline** » Mon Oct 08, 2007 8:06 pm

Kind of cool, I guess.
My brother-in-law knows a guy in Boulder, Colorado who--if you just toss a zip code at him, from anywhere in the U.S.--can name the area and most likely tell you something about it. Kind of a weird savant character.

Walden · Post by **Walden** » Tue Oct 09, 2007 1:13 am

How does 24% below the poverty line compare with the U.S. average?

anniemcu · Post by **anniemcu** » Tue Oct 09, 2007 8:50 am

Hmm.. mine nets a StandUp Comedy events calendar... ... which is good comedy ... must not know my zip area very well at all.

anniemcu · Post by **anniemcu** » Tue Oct 09, 2007 8:55 am

Walden wrote:How does 24% below the poverty line compare with the U.S. average?

Ouch. gives one pause... again...

BillChin · Post by **BillChin** » Tue Oct 09, 2007 5:15 pm

Walden wrote:How does 24% below the poverty line compare with the U.S. average?

This census dept link from 2003 says about 12% of the country's population is below the line.
http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www ... 02484.html

Keep in mind poverty in the U. S. is a relative measurement and was around $9,300 for a single person, $19,000 for a family of four.

This Wikipedia link has a list of countries for global poverty lines, which they define as families living on less than $2 USD a day ($720 per year) and the severely poor at less than $1 USD per day ($360 per year).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... in_poverty

To the 20% of the world that lives on $1 per day, the U.S. poverty level of $9000 per year is an unimaginable level of affluence.

Jack · Post by **Jack** » Tue Oct 09, 2007 5:46 pm

My hometown is 35% below the poverty line, 97% white, and only 38% has a high school degree. I had read that my hometown (a small town in West Virginia) was one of the poorest in the nation, actually comparable to many third-world countries, but I'd never seen numbers like that before. It really brings it home.

Jack · Post by **Jack** » Tue Oct 09, 2007 5:54 pm

BillChin wrote:To the 20% of the world that lives on $1 per day, the U.S. poverty level of $9000 per year is an unimaginable level of affluence.

I'm studying this in a socio-economics/religion class (it's a strange class) right now. What you're talking about is the phenomenon called relative poverty. To American families living on $9,000 a year, the poverty feels the same and has the same emotional, societal, and spiritual effects as the $1 per day poverty has on the Asian and African families.

Wikipedia's page on "poverty line" has more information. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_li ... ve_poverty

DCrom · Post by **DCrom** » Tue Oct 09, 2007 6:36 pm

Cranberry wrote:
BillChin wrote:To the 20% of the world that lives on $1 per day, the U.S. poverty level of $9000 per year is an unimaginable level of affluence.
I'm studying this in a socio-economics/religion class (it's a strange class) right now. What you're talking about is the phenomenon called relative poverty. To American families living on $9,000 a year, the poverty feels the same and has the same emotional, societal, and spiritual effects as the $1 per day poverty has on the Asian and African families.

Wikipedia's page on "poverty line" has more information. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_li ... ve_poverty

Though one major difference is that in the US at that income level there's much better security for basics like food, emergency medical care, etc.

Doesn't mean that being poor in the US is fun, at all.

But there's a big difference between being poor in the US, living in run down house or apartment, buying cheap bulk food with food stamps, and getting around by foot or bus, and being poor in Haiti or Bangladesh.

"Relative poverty" is a real phenomena. But I'd far rather be living in a first-world country at "lower-middle-class", or even "borderline-poverty" level and anything other than "wealthy" in most third-world countries.

And the lifestyle expectations and experiences for the current "lower-middle-class" in the US would have been "upper-middle-class" 50 years ago. Sometimes we forget how lucky we are.

Jack · Post by **Jack** » Tue Oct 09, 2007 6:41 pm

We must keep in mind that there are many people living in the US at under $1 a day as well. We speak as though the "really, really poor" live only in other countries just out of reach of us when the truth is that the poor are everywhere.

Mother Teresa said many things about being poor, but one thing in particular has always stayed with me:

The Blessed Teresa of Calcutta wrote:When a poor person dies of hunger, it has not happened because God did not take care of him or her. It has happened because neither you nor I wanted to give that person what he or she needed.

I would hope we all feel convicted every hour of every day by her words. Even ignoring the religious part entirely, her point (that we, those living in privilege, can and should do more to help the poor) is still true.