How do you figure?

The poor in the United States are defined as those living under the poverty line which is $19,500 per year income (before taxes) for a family of four (including welfare and other government benefits).

So if you are married and you have 2 kids, and between you and your wife you earn $20,000 per year before taxes, you are wealthier than about 41 million Americans, and the government does not consider you poor.

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Look at how much a poor person earns in africa, asia, latin america, etc. They make pennies on the dollar vs a poor person does in the US. A poor US citizen also has government assistance available to them whereas the others in the rest of the world do not.

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Cost of living is also vastly lower in those places. But if you're going to compare the US to Africa and Latin America, then yes it's true that the poor here are better off than the poor in those places.

But if you are going to compare the poor here to the poor in Europe or some Asian countries (Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea), the poor in the United States are worse off.


Most countries around the world give government assistance to poor people.

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my experience on X5world when I spend too much
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I'd agree in the fact that even a person making minimum wage can have a good, although not materialistic, life in the United States as opposed to most other countries.

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We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

The majority of the poor in this country own a TV (or two), VCR, DVD player, Microwave, Nike shoes, maybe even a car. I'm sure the poor in latin america can not afford such luxuries.

If you factor cost of living, I don't think that's entirely true.

I don't honestly know about latin America, but I know you'd be surprised at all the gadgets you can find in the middle of nowhere in Africa.

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No, most of the people you are referring to are not considered to be poor by the government. The people who are in that 13% include those who are homeless, or living in shelters, living 5 people to a one room studio apartment, people who do not have enough food to eat so they walk around hungry. Their kids go to school wearing ripped dirty clothes that look like they came from the garbage. Etc.

My girlfriend is a 5th grade teacher in the Bronx, and I she can tell you stories about how poor some of these families are. Last year she felt bad and bought winter coats for 2 of her students (from her own money) because they did not have any.

The people you are referring to are those who are typically collecting public assistance and live in decent size apartments (usually in bad neighborhoods) in the inner cities, and they misspend their public assistance money on stuff like nice clothing or a television. These sort of people are not in the lower 13% that are considered "poor" but are around the 20th-30th percentile. If you remember the old television show "good times", that is probably what you are referring to as "poor". While I agree they are poor, our government does not consider them poor.

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my experience on X5world when I spend too much
time posting in political threads in the lounge...

amazing as it may be i'm with him on this one

I'm referring to the 13% of the people considered "poor" by the census bureau.

"Most of America's "poor" live in material conditions that would be judged as comfortable or well-off just a few generations ago. Today, the expenditures per person of the lowest-income one-fifth (or quintile) of households equal those of the median American household in the early 1970s, after adjusting for inflation."

For many other statistics on "Understanding Poverty in America":

<http://www.heritage.org/Research/Welfare/bg1713.cfm>

Obviously, there is a wide gap among the "poor"; but it is a very small percentage of the 13% that are living in the conditions you describe.