Nevada County – economic disaster area

George Rebane

The more that wealth gets redistributed, the less wealth there is to redistribute.

This morning’s (27aug19) lead article in The Union by reporter Cory Fisher (here) informs the reader an awful lot about our community that most of us did not know.  It turns out our county is an economic disaster area with more working people than ever going hungry and having problems making ends meet.

According to local reports, “1 out of 7 Nevada County residents” (14.3%) were “food insecure” (term of art for hungry?).  Across all US counties 13.3% were food insecure, only 11% were in such dire straits in LA County, the country’s individual rate is somewhere around 12.5% (1 of 8), and all this in a land where over one in three of us are mysteriously fat. (more here)

Then we learn that the hunger rate in our county is not only high but screaming upward.  At the Food Bank the increase has been from 800 in May, 1,000 in July, and 1,200 in August – in other words our calorie calamity is reported to be growing at about 150% annually.  We are told this is causing our non-profit food distributors financial hardship for two reasons – increase in the county’s hungry population and a reduction in charitable contributions because of Trump’s new tax law.

Somehow the truth about the tax law and its restrictions on charitable giving is completely opposite.  The standard deduction has more than doubled to $24K for joint filers and it does not limit giving at all.  All it has done is caused more people to take the standard deduction instead of itemizing deductions such as their former charitable gifts.  This little feature has induced many people to then just skip the giving, not because they have less money, but because there is no need to give to get the tax benefit. (more here) But that’s not what the article impugns.  Somebody forgot to include that character still counts, even under the new tax law.

And the overall problem of falling income making it hard for our county’s residents to make ends meet – it then appears that our workers did not share in the country’s benefit from the tax cuts that increased lower and middle class household incomes by an average of $2,000.  (More here) When you factor in the doubled tax credits for kids, the average family has even more dollars to spend.  And here is a summary of the real impact of the Trump tax cut.

So, while the rest of the country is enjoying historically low unemployment, rising wages, and paying lower taxes, in Nevada County our poverty rate is estimated to have started increasing again after Trump was elected.  He even caused a bump in climate change that started more wild fires, which then raised county residents’ insurance rates that forced some of them to move.  The takeaway is clear, it’s only California’s enlightened public policies in housing, homelessness, education, fighting capitalists’ greed and global warming that have somehow kept body and soul together.

In the real world "Americans in the bottom 20 percent of income-earners buy more consumer goods and services than the national averages for people living in most of the wealthiest nations of the world, including those in Europe." (more here)  How can this be?  Well, for all of you who have consumed the media-delivered poverty rate for Americans, Cato’s ‘Reassessing the Facts about Inequality, Poverty, and Redistribution’ may shed some new light on reality.  All said and done, the piece did make me wonder why Nevada County is under the reported curse.

Comments

[Todd Juvinall]

The county is screwing a project trying to build 350 senior houses in south county. Eight years now. The project would pay its way and supply 500 million in property taxes over the next fifty years. It would infuse a couple hundred million into local coffers and employ hundreds. But the county bureaucrats just can't help themselves and delay after delay and EIR after EIR. If there was ever a bunch of rock heads our county employs them. And my guess on the new County Counsel is she will bring those Mendocino values to Nevada County. We are screwed.

[Bob Hobert]

We started taking the standard deduction when our mortgage was paid off, long before Trump. We still give to our worthy causes because tax deductions were never our motivation. The non-generous have already figured out that giving a dollar to get 15-25 cents back on taxes is not financially sound. Giving is the motivation. We have as much or more available to give now under Trump's tax changes. Only the accounting and people's perceptions have changed.

Now here's a surprise:

"Since the food bank recently publicized the fact that clients don’t have to be destitute to receive supplemental groceries, the nonprofit has seen an uptick in working individuals earning low wages."

[Scott O]

The bud trimmers showed up early this year.
Competition must be setting in.

[rl crabb]

Yes, it's awful living here in this ghetto town. Just trying to get groceries in the Glenbrook area without being attacked by hordes of homeless brain-eating zombies is a real chore. At least that's how some locals make it sound when I scroll through the posts on Nevada County Crime Watch on Facebook.
In reality, I've never had problems there or anywhere else in these parts. It's a shame so many are having problems making ends meet, but it's not exclusive to here or most other cities and towns.

[Russ]

Here in Lincoln, there is an active support program for the homeless and the hungry. I spoke to the leader of that group. He said they were making progress until the word went out that Lincoln had a useful program for dealing with the problems. As a result, they were flooded with new hungry, homeless people looking for some of Lincoln “excellent services.” The result was a decline in overall support as the “excellent system” was overwhelmed. Success was an attractor.

[Bill Tozer]

Whatz food insecurity, bro?

“So, with all this talk about what it is, how do we actually measure something like food insecurity. Food Forward and most other hunger-relief nonprofits rely on measurements that the USDA conducts annually. Every year tens of thousands of households respond to their short survey, which is added onto the census.

“There are only 10 questions, and an additional 8 questions for families with children. The questions ask about various indicators of food insecurity, ranging from the least severe (“We worried whether our food would run out before we got money to buy more”) to the most severe (“In the last 12 months did you or other adults in your household ever not eat for a whole day because there wasn’t enough money for food”).

“Once the answers are collected, the USDA groups households into the 4 classifications of food security: high food security, marginal food security, low food security, and very low food security. Households are considered to have low food security if they reported experiencing 3 or more indicators of food insecurity. Households are considered to have very low food security if they reported 3 indicators of food insecurity AND some degree of eating less than they should / skipping meals.”

Hmmm. In the last year, did you ever........ Well, I call those stretching it out times “eating rice and beans”, then switching to beans and rice, but just me.

https://foodforward.org/2017/10/what-is-food-insecurity/

Chart
https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/charts/79789/adult_450px.png?v=7743.7