I think the author is missing the point: Wealth relative to a previous century is cold consolation when you're facing eviction, when you've lost your job, when

I think the author is missing the point: Wealth relative to a previous century is cold consolation when you're facing eviction, when you've lost your job, when your car, hardly a luxury in auto-obsessed America, is repossessed, and you lack health insurance. In fact, the ability to purchase an iPad is comparing a consumer trifle to the kind of precarity the poor live with.