Are you poor?

Here is a chart everybody needs to read before they talk about military people being poor. It's the 2011 federal poverty level chart, by family size, monthly income, and annual income.

I am so tired of people saying that military personnel live below the poverty level. It's a rampant misconception among military people themselves, and of course dependents. I even remember having to school Thak on this when we first got together, and prove to him that no, it doesn't matter what everyone at work said, he does not, in fact, live below the poverty level. (At that point in time, he was a single Sergeant. One person on Sergeant's pay.... geez, if that's poor I want to know what comfortable is!)

I just had some woman tell me that for a family of four 185% of the federal poverty level (in other words, the cutoff to qualify for WIC) was $6000 a month, or $72k a year, and that since most people in the military don't make that, the pay is inadequate. I told her I don't know a hell of a lot of engineers who make $72k a year within the first few years of their career, so maybe while the military is lobbying over inadequate pay, they could join forces with the American Society of Civil Engineers because obviously engineers are the next casualty of this poverty epidemic. Forget the teachers, the mathematicians, the tradesmen, and the people who run non-profits. By this standard, they're surely already out on the street!

Sarcasm aside, people, it's not that bad. Look at the chart, and see that unless you have a truly excessive number of dependents, you're really nowhere near the federal poverty level. You probably don't qualify for food stamps either. Hell, if you keep your family size to what the Army actually calculates your housing based on for your rank, you probably won't even qualify for WIC (we don't). The military is not facing a poverty epidemic. Sure, there are some who struggle. There always will be. That's their problem, not the federal government's.

Military pay is adequate. It's not extravagant, and it's not sub-par. It's just adequate. I'm going to slap the next person who thinks they live below the poverty level and is drawing a military paycheck. Those two things are absolutely mutually exclusive.