For me, having one's needs met kind of equates to not being poor. (I am aware that the official definition of being poor is just some percentage of the average income - that is not a very interesting category imo).
It seems rather to me looking at marginal improvements or as you call it would pose a better explanation. If you know that if you work really hard, you can afford a house and a nice car, it might motivate you to work hard. If all that working harder gives you is money for an extra bottle of beer, the motivation is not quite that great.
The jobs mentioned in the article are not really set up to changing anything fundamental about the guys situation. You can't get rich by donating blood.
Also there seem to be other problems he had, like depression, that prevented him from seeking a better paying job (also his age, of course).
How old are you? After a certain age you begin to notice that working actually tends to take a toll. So you think twice about trading your health for money.
If by "poor", you mean people who's needs aren't met, we just don't have very many of them in the US. The author of this article certainly was not poor by that definition.
As for aging, that was an issue in the past, particularly when most work was manual labor. Luckily, the present and future are much better - projections suggest most old people will be capable of working well past 65. Here is the hot paper:
Perhaps the 60-year old poor veterans have their miserly needs met, but from what I understand, I don't think it's because the marginal rewards to earning that's holding back the US's poor.
How long were you homeless? How long did you go unemployed with neither savings nor education, being turned away for even the lowest things, like shelf-stacking in supermarkets? It's hard to judge another man without walking a mile in his shoes.
One of the most valuable things youth have is option value: you don't know how much they'll amount to, how good they'll end up being. It gets other people to take chances on them. Come 60, you have a lot less of that; you're a known quantity.
How long did you go unemployed...being turned away for even the lowest things, like shelf-stacking in supermarkets? It's hard to judge another man without walking a mile in his shoes.
It's not that hard, thanks to the power of statistics. For four of every five poor people, the answer is less than 26 weeks. Of the poor who spent at least 27 weeks/year searching for work, the answer is also less than 27 weeks.
More than 9 in 10 of the poor who actually searched for a job for at least 27 weeks found one - just over half of worked full time, one quarter voluntarily part time, and one quarter involuntarily part time [1].
[1] The precise numbers are in this report: http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpswp2008.pdf
I cite 2008 because the 2009 report isn't yet released, and 2010 isn't over.
[edit: Hi downmodders. Sorry for injecting facts into this discussion.]
I don't think you can derive the conclusion from that that if only the other ones had searched longer, they would also have found jobs. (Haven't read the report, just your comment).
They might have had good reasons for assuming they would not get a job, for example. Or maybe the searched 40 weeks in vain in the previous year and didn't have it in them anymore.
Of the 20% or so in the labor force, less than 10% don't find a job. 10% of 20% is 2%. So of the poor people not in the labor force in 2008, only about 2% could possibly have been poor and unemployed in 2007.
There may be an additional source term of people who were unemployed but not poor in year N-1. But since the number of people in poverty remains roughly stable over time, this source must also be balanced by a sink of people who were poor in year N-1 but not poor in year N. I.e., for every person who becomes unemployed and enters poverty, there must be another person who leaves poverty (the exact balance varies a bit from year to year). Numbers on this are somewhat harder to come by (most surveys don't track the movement of individuals throughout categories).
(Again, rough numbers, these fluctuate a bit from year to year. )
Furthermore, if you search for work too long and don't find it (I believe 12 months?) The BLS classifies you as a 'discouraged worker' and removes you from the labor force. (You become 'marginally attached')
This has the effect of juicing the BLS statistics over time by reducing the unemployment by definition. (i.e. if you've been unemployed long enough, you're no longer considered a part of the labor force, regardless of what efforts you may be making to find a job.)
It would have taken you about 20 seconds with google to discover this is false.
"Persons are classified as unemployed if they do not have a job, have actively looked for work in the prior 4 weeks, and are currently available for work."
""Discouraged workers" are a subset of the marginally attached. Discouraged workers report they are not currently looking for work..."
Sorry, been a while since I looked @ all these definitions and I was typing from memory.
A discouraged worker is one who has looked for work at some point in the last 12 months, but is no longer looking because they believe there is no work to be found. (and are often correct in aggregate)
Where the BLS further skews the statistics is that discouraged workers who have been discouraged longer than 12 months just drop from the labor force completely, they are a hidden statistic. (I believe this definition was changed under the Clinton Administration)
The poor have their needs met. Once you reach that level, why spend precious leisure time just to become marginally wealthier?
So that when you are too feeble to care for yourself, you can afford care that doesn't involve turning you into a blob by overfeeding you or conveniently killing you off with a negligently spread staph infection after years of soul destroying institutional care by the embittered and underpaid. Becoming marginally wealthier than poor wouldn't do this, but I suspect this is the real goal of most 9to5for40 life plans in the US.
Pretty much all of this is predicated on him being a senior citizen i.e. retired, he just made choices with his savings over the course of his live. It is a fair assumption that he paid far more in taxes than he consumed in poverty at the end of his life.
The poor have their needs met. Once you reach that level, why spend precious leisure time just to become marginally wealthier?