the poverty line as the 40th percentile of income [...] was absurd. It's best understood not as a honest attempt at understanding poverty, but as a politic

the poverty line as the 40th percentile of income [...] was absurd. It's best understood not as a honest attempt at understanding poverty, but as a political manoeuvre. In the past (19th century and before), the socialist/communist tradition had a real point in that large swathes of the population were poor in an absolute sense (e.g. going hungry, cold, no adequate health-care, pension etc). The socialist/communist tradition was in some sense about abolishing absolute poverty (whether the proposed methods were helpful or not is another discussion). If you read e.g. the communist manifesto [1], that is clear. Most of socialist/communist politics centered around politicising and radicalising the absolute poor with a view towards taking them out of absolute poverty. However, modern industrialised society has (simplifying a bit) abolished absolute poverty. This leaves socialist/communist politics in a conundrum: how to continue to politicise/radicalise people to become followers. The concept of relative poverty is the answer: all the old political tools can be reused by changing what is meant by poverty. [1] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-m...