And you'd be wrong. In any event, again, your expensive illnesses are not representative, and many people in Washington at half the median income would be gett

And you'd be wrong. In any event, again, your expensive illnesses are not representative, and many people in Washington at half the median income would be getting along suitably well. That same stat in Arkansas may be a very different story. It's at least hypothetically possible (and I don't have a great deal invested in the thesis) that industrious upstanding people in the bottom quartile are actually better off in Japan than in the US, and that could be precisely because of those virtues. The author takes it as a given that being in the bottom quartile is poverty everywhere and concludes those virtues don't matter (see, both countries have lots of people in the bottom quartile -- those Japanese virtues don't make them better off). But because half the median income means different things in different places, I cannot make it there. Not, at least, without more information.