A Thanksgiving Day editorial by the NYT focuses on the "safety net" for the poor - a typical holiday topic and framing of the issue made more topical than usual by the current economy.

And while nothing the editorial writer says is wrong exactly, this kind of exhortation of our federal government to improve the measurement of poverty won't accomplish much.

Yesterday's posting - Poverty - We Need a New Goal More Than a New Measure - turns out to be a sort of unconscious anticipation of the Times sympathetic but misguided commentary.

At The Mobility Agenda, we track media coverage of poverty proposals.

For example, this Manhattan Institute article, Getting Poverty Wrong, and the media followup is a good reminder that we will not achieve the policy results we seek (note the list of Obama proposals attacked in the article) with a conversation that makes people think in the usual way about poverty.

When we use this lens on the issue, we inevitably get a response from our opponents that goes straight to the place Bill Cunningham (a very popular radio talk show host) does in this interview:"...they're poor because they lack values, morals, and ethics."

At another spot in the interview he argues that "...unlike many countries in the world...we have fat poor people. We don't have skinny poor people. Ours are fat and flatulent."

A third interview lowlight:

"CUNNINGHAM: Steve Malanga -- the article is "Obama's counterproductive war on poverty." The war on poverty was declared in the 1960s. It was lost in the 1970s. The funding continued for poverty. You know, people are poor in America, Steve, not because they lack money; they're poor because they lack values, morals, and ethics. And if government can't teach and instill that, we're wasting our time simply giving poor people money."

Once you're in this discussion, there's no getting out of it in a good way. And there's no way to talk about poverty without ending up in this argument.

Plus, as noted yesterday, changing the measure, and even cutting poverty rates using an improved measure, is a very low bar to set for ourselves.

Instead, we need better goals addressing well-being and inclusion, leading to more and better jobs, creating stronger communities, and strengthening our democracy and economy.

As a new set of federal policymakers gets ready to address the current economic crisis, academics and advocates are proposing changes to the official measure of poverty.

Unfortunately, as long as we keep talking about "poverty", this is much ado about almost nothing.

Earlier this year, a similar discussion ensued in Congress. At the national level, that new proposal would move the bar ever so slightly, so that being poor equals household income of less than $21,818 for two adults with two children, up from the current $20,444.

To be sure, a new measure would likely be a better reflection of the rate of material deprivation in our nation than the current one. And Brookings' Rebecca Blank proposes a very thoughtful approach.

Why is this even necessary?

Today's measure still uses a formula based on 1950s household expenditures - before housing and transportation costs went up and two-income households became the requirement, causing average child care expenses to soar. In contrast, the proposed new measure would allow for regional reflection of differences in the cost of living and would count some federally-funded employment benefits as income for the first time.

Yet, it's important to note that we aren't really accomplishing what we desire with this goal - even with a more accurate formula. This is especially true since this high-level reconsideration of the formula is occurring at a time when there are numerous calls for a national goal to reduce poverty by 50 percent over the next ten years.

What's wrong with expending a whole lot of energy on this discussion?

First, it's only a proposal to measure income and not the other resources that communities need for a strong economy and full participation in our democracy and civil society. The proposal isn't about quality education or clean air or reasonable housing costs or access to health care or reducing prejudice.... and so on. (Although, notably, Blank's long-term proposal goes much further.)

Second, a if we want a measure of income, a relative measure would be a much more useful test of how well our nation is doing at making sure all residents can contribute to a strong society. As higher income earners do better, low-wage workers must see increases in income relative to the higher earners - otherwise poverty increases. As one leading newspaper said of a new relative measure:

Third, while we do need a better standard for measuring progress as a nation on income deprivation, we're not likely to succeed in achieving the goal of better policy outcomes if we insist on maintaining a subsistence standard. Indeed, if the goal is based on any measure of "poverty" as it is currently understood in this country - material deprivation blamed on immoral or ill-considered personal choices - we should not expect much policy progress on efforts to strengthen our economy.

At The Mobility Agenda, we're engaged in a conversation about developing a goal that is more consistent with widely supported policy proposals - which tend to go way beyond income deprivation and include paid time off at work, worker voices at the table for establishing workplace policy, fair wages, and access to affordable health insurance.

When we put the poverty headline over these policy options, policymakers face real resistance created by the widely-held public beliefs about causes of poverty. We cannot change these beliefs by adopting a goal to end or reduce poverty - no matter which formula we use to define the term.

Of course, we should adopt a more current measure of income deprivation, but only as part of  larger goals related to well-being and inclusion.

Unfortunately, we're not doing so well on the policy front as it is, and changing the poverty formula will not have much of an impact on this reality. Progress on policy requires a different goal and new measures for testing our progress toward that goal. Moreover, we'll need to have a different conversation altogether - one that isn't about "poverty".

Cross posted at The Mobility Agenda.