Neil Freiman

And then that's when you go to chat GPT for help.

OK, this landed like a grenade.

Let's walk this through one by one.

Let's go over his argument and then we can go to the broad refutations of those of his argument, because economists don't agree on a lot of things.

They generally agree that this was a really bad poverty analysis.

But I think there's generally a lot of interest in this type of report because a lot of people want to understand why Americans are feeling so bad about the economy, want to understand this unaffordability crisis at a time when

Most people are doing OK.

Real inflation, which is a real incomes, which is incomes adjusted, adjusted for inflation are at a record high.

OK, so walking through his argument, he said that the poverty rate is is calculated right now by tripling the cost of a minimum food diet at the time.

He said everything that was back in 1963.

He said everything has changed between 1963 and 2024.

Housing costs have exploded.

Health care became the largest household expense for many families.

Child care became a market.

That market became ruinously expensive.

So in his math, he's saying food is not even a big part of the budget anymore.

It comprises just 5 to 7 percent of household spending.

And he put housing at 35 to 45 percent, child care at 20 to 40 percent, and health care

at 15% to 25%.

He does this line item of how much it costs a family of four to just get by these days.