The Heritage Foundation cites the proliferation of electronic goods among the poor as evidence that poverty has been exaggerated. Yglesias counters:
Over the past 50 years, televisions have gotten a lot cheaper and college has gotten a lot more expensive. Consequently, even a low income person can reliably obtain a level of television-based entertainment that would blow the mind of a millionaire from 1961. At the same time, if you’re looking to live in a safe neighborhood with good public schools in a metropolitan area with decent job opportunities you’re going to find that this is quite expensive. Health care has become incredibly expensive. The federal poverty line for a family of three is $18,530 a year.
In response E.D. pines for healthcare pricing transparancy:
[M]y daughter got a piece of ribbon stuck up her nose that my wife could not get out. So we took her to the pediatrician, and moments later all was well. The ribbon had been removed. No expensive surgery was necessary, no medicine, no materials, and only a handful of minutes of the doctor’s time. The doctor then asked the billing person to bill us for the cheapest procedure they had.
The bill came back a couple weeks later for $250. In what sane world does this cost $250? We have such a ridiculously mangled healthcare system. In a sane world we would have been able to go down to a nurse’s office where we would have been told upfront the cost of the procedure. We could have called around to five different offices, or checked on their websites to comparison shop. We would have paid $20 to have the two minute procedure done, and we wouldn’t have bothered to bill it to insurance. In fact, insurance would be reserved for big costs and emergencies, while low-cost, simple procedures and check ups would be cheap and come out of our pocket.
The Dish 