Well, I’m one of those. My best guess is a focus on education and 2 parent families. From my experience I just didn’t think our income was high enough to get us out of the higher poverty level. Maybe fewer single parent households with dual incomes.
I was just a little surprised to see our poverty level so low. Plenty happy about it though.
Plus I was just bragging a little as well.
There is no doubt that single parents will have higher poverty rates. Why would “you income” be a factor? Being Mormon does not prevent you from being a high earning actuary, does it?
The 10% tithe is somewhat of a factor, but average donations across Americans are at least a few %.
I meant Utah Income. I’m always hearing that incomes in Utah are low. Maybe just people in retail? There are plenty of people making bank. I hear people complaining about the fact that Utah doesn’t have a minimum wage so the federal 7.25 is the minimum wage. I figured they were complaining because they were earning that or close to it. But if that were the case, I doubt we would be that low on the poverty level. I don’t think they use average or median income to determine that. I assume they use actual incomes.
And the tithing would not come into calculating poverty, would it?
Maybe those people are still living at their parents’ home? Not sure how they are classified.
Looks like Utah is 11th in Median income Median Household Income by State 2025 and 19th on cost of living index Cost of Living Index by State 2025
Higher than average income combined with average cost of living is probably why it ranks low on the poverty scale.
Most people complain that their incomes are low, almost regardless of what they make
I get a lot of comments about the minimum wage, though I’m pretty sure no one is getting paid that now. But in the past, Utah had been known for low wages overall. Over the last 20 years or so there has been a pretty big tech boom which has brought in a lot of high paying jobs and I think that has brought up most other wages as well.
But I get what you are saying and that probably has something to do with it.
Just dont look (at the prices going) up
At last someone has figured out what causes inflation. This would be a game changer..at least a good start.
See, the fed deficit is a minor player in the money supply. The private banking sector does the heavy lifting. Every debt creates money, including you, when you use that credit card in your wallet.
When debts are used to consume or simply buy existing assets rather than CREATE new assets, it’s inflationary. More money in play, but no new products or services are there to offset that new money. It’s really simple.
This is probably one of the first major electoral mistakes that Trump has made. Its not possible to gaslight people based on the prices that they are exposed to every day. People will get angry and blame Trump (which is what is starting to happen now).
Also, for energy:
The inflation that has hit my basket of goods has been much worse this year than during the Biden years. What I am noticing going up:
What didn’t effect me during Biden:
The natural gas price one fascinates me living in Canada. The Conservatives here have convinced Canadians that more LNG exports to Asia and Europe is a good thing. They don’t seem to understand that yes it’s a great thing for the O&G industry. It’s going to Jack up home heating costs for many Canadians and electricity costs in areas where natural gas is used for energy generation.
Spending on essentials is going way up in the US now. Combination of tariffs (which affect most input costs) and higher labour costs is generally driving these increases.
This scenario still has quite some more time to run as tariff-induced price increases are still feeding through now.
Beef, produce, and paper are tariff items, but utilities and insurance would not be. My liability umbrella went up like 300% from last year based on “experience” which I found a little interesting as it feels like there could be some macro level influence on that - as in more people chasing down high payouts with lawyers.
I haven’t touched personal lines in the US in a couple of decades, but I assume that the recent increases (and the 200ish combined ratio for the industry last year) are a combination of:
Lowering the fed rate will have negligible effect on jobs. It will send asset paces even further up, but very little of the “new investments” will be any different than the investments made yesterday. The very wealthy are not all that interested in creating jobs. They like buying existing assets…land, debts, stocks, etc. buying a publicly traded stock, raising its price per share does not fill the coffers of the stock company. Maybe helps them trade their stock to acquire another company..but no new assets are created.
If you want to increase jobs, then look to the thing that EVERY business needs- customers. More customers.
I’m not sure I’d agree with you. While I agree that the wealthy aren’t particularly concerned about job creation, I do think they’re obsessed with building these days. The tech companies have massive amounts of planned capital spending over the next several years. That’s going to result in a lot of construction work and the creation of new assets. I guess the question is will those new assets have value or will the AI bubble pop and they end up near worthless.
