Air Conditioning, Cable TV, and an Xbox: What is Poverty in the United States Today?

It is simply relative to where the bar is set and the bar has to be set in relationship to the area being looked at. It is not possible to set the bar for poverty where it is set in some other country. In fact it is not possible to set the bar at the same level even within the same country as different areas within a country have different standards of living.
So while the article has some value the writer is comparing apples to oranges. The standard that the government is using is simply a standard that covers all of the US without dealing with individual areas. There are those in the US who should and do fall into what is considered poverty within their culture. I would guess it is probably somewhere in the 10 to 15 percent range if an area by area evaluation was done and more if an over all evaluation is done. By the way I believe this is going to grow very fast in the coming months until the scale is tipped to about a 90 to 95 percent poverty level.

 

Agree that the nature of poverty has changed in the civilized countries. Our owners realize that the get more work out of us if we have some small minimum of health and comfort.

Poor people have every sort of consumer goods the rich people do but at a much lower quality. The BIG advantage of being rich is one doesn't have to stand in lines.