> "My point is that "access to a full kitchen" is not part of the federal government's definition of poverty" But it contributes directly to the definition, de

> "My point is that "access to a full kitchen" is not part of the federal government's definition of poverty" But it contributes directly to the definition, despite not explicitly being named. Because the definition is tied to CPI, which is tied to housing costs, which are more likely to include the cost of a full kitchen now than in the past especially for people near the bottom. I would argue that for someone in that position, having a full kitchen is better than not. Yet the CPI-based measure treats the cost of having a full kitchen as a negative (inflation), without treating the benefit of the full kitchen as a positive! You keep misrepresenting my position (and asking questions that depend on your misrepresentation). I'm not saying that people now are not poor. I'm not saying the CPI-adjusted threshold is "wrong" for defining who is poor. What I'm saying is that people who are poor now and people who were poor in the past are not directly, numbers-to-numbers comparable. It's meaningless to say that 1.2% more people are poor now than then, because there are meaningful, relevant differences in conditions between now and then that account for far more than a 1.2% difference. The noise washes out the signal.