> For the former, anyone who uses such an argument has in some form or fashion accepted the belief that some jobs should not pay a livable wage... What's a "li

> For the former, anyone who uses such an argument has in some form or fashion accepted the belief that some jobs should not pay a livable wage... What's a "livable wage"? The whole point of assessing whether people are "living beyond their means" is precisely to figure out if they're keeping their expenses within that 'livable wage' threshold. I think you'll find that most people with money-related issues ("poverty" in this context should be reserved for actual, true deprivation, which is vanishingly rare in the US! Social exclusion/marginalization is real, but it's a very different problem, with different ways of addressing it) are in fact not doing enough to keep their expenses in check.