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We have one of the worlds most prosperous economies, and half of the US is living in abject poverty while quality of life for everyone is decreasing.
by dozerly 3mo ago
We have one of the worlds most prosperous economies, and half of the US is living in abject poverty while quality of life for everyone is decreasing.
- taeric 3mo agoI'm going to go on a limb and say half of the US is not living in abject poverty? Nor can I get behind the idea that quality of life for folks is on the down trend.
- dheera 3mo agoIf you have negative net worth and the bank's money, not yours, is buying your food and housing, you are in abject poverty, just that the system is propping up your survival for a while. A lot of the US looks like they're doing great but fits into the category above. Non-poverty would look like: * You make enough money to pay for your own food, housing, and transportation in full, with enough buffer for emergencies, without needing to borrow a cent * You make enough money to be on trajectory to save up to pay for your own food, housing, transportation, and medical expenses in retirement when you are physically unable to serve the workforce
- jmye 3mo ago> You make enough money to pay for your own food, housing, and transportation in full, with enough buffer for emergencies, without needing to borrow a cent So you're saying I'm in poverty because I couldn't buy my house and my car outright? > and medical expenses in retirement You're saying I'm in poverty because I understand and intend to use Medicare? These are trivially poor definitions.
- dheera 3mo agoMedicare is a different thing, the government should be providing medical care for everyone to begin with, regardless of what they make. My definition is if you need to borrow money to put a roof over your head, at the minimum renting, you're in poverty. There are huge chunks of the US population borrowing money to pay for rent. If your locality doesn't provide adequate public transit, then a car is a necessity, and the onus is now on the locality's economy to make sure everyone can access that; if your locality doesn't pay high enough to afford that car without borrowing money, then yes, you're in poverty. Alternatively, the locality can choose to provide adequate, safe public transit, and the bar of poverty would change. Most of the US doesn't think this way because they're delusional and have been conditioned to feed the financial system and pay for things with money they don't have.
- ifyoubuildit 3mo ago> So you're saying I'm in poverty because I couldn't buy my house and my car outright? I think this isn't as unreasonable as it seems to everyone living it. It's like water to the fish. We are conditioned that everything should be fueled by more and more debt, and your dollars should constantly be devalued so you can't stop grinding. The little people can never be allowed to just work enough to accumulate what they need and then take it easy.
- skulk 3mo ago> Nor can I get behind the idea that quality of life for folks is on the down trend. There is a pretty clear down-trend post-COVID here. https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2025-economic-well-being-of-us-households-in-2024-overall-financial-well-being.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2025-economic-we...
- digitaltrees 3mo agoI own a Medicaid home care agency in 13 states. We serve low income families and our caregivers, who earn $12-18hr which is higher than minimum wage, absolutely struggle. We have created food banks and housing assistance because even working people are a few sick days or one car repair away from homelessness. I would encourage you to go work with average Americans in average towns. The facts on the ground are stark and eroding.
- logicchains 3mo ago>I own a Medicaid home care agency in 13 states. We serve low income families and our caregivers There's an extreme selection bias there. If you run an agency that works with low income families you're not going to see a representative sample of the overall population.
- jancsika 3mo ago> There's an extreme selection bias there. Maybe. Unfortunately, what digitaltrees wrote here is ambiguous. It could also be read as this: Our caregivers serve low income families. Those caregivers, who are our employees, earn $12-18/hr which is above minimum wage. Our employees absolutely struggle. Our employees are the ones using food banks and housing assistance because many are one car repair away from homelessness. digitaltrees: which interpretation is correct?
- dmoy 3mo agoI think the latter interpretation is correct. As in digitaltrees runs a business that does not pay its employees a living wage, who then have to rely on food banks and housing assistance.
- digitaltrees 3mo agoWe don’t set the Medicaid reimbursement rate so we have no control over wages either. We work to be very disciplined about unit economics and fixed costs so as much money goes to caregivers as possible but if Medicaid pays $22hr you can’t pay $20 because you won’t cover the payroll taxes, workers compensation insurance, or required clinical and other admin expenses.
- jzb 3mo agoI think “abject poverty” is probably overstating the case a bit. I do think quality of life is trending downward given the fact that housing, food, gas, medical care costs are all increasing while wages are stagnant or worse.
- gruez 3mo ago>I do think quality of life is trending downward given the fact that housing, food, gas, medical care costs are all increasing while wages are stagnant or worse. ??? https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N Note this is already inflation adjusted, so "housing, food, gas, medical care costs are all increasing" is already accounted for.
- mynameisbilly 3mo agoThat chart doesn't make the case you think it does. Real median household income rising can be explained by things like more dual earner households (more women working since the 70s), more hours worked, etc. The household income can rise while the wages can theoretically remain flat or even fall. The more relevant statistic is that median real wages have only grown by about 29% across 40+ years (~0.6% per year) Since 2000, medical care costs have risen by 121.3%, hospital services by 275%, college tuition and fees by 196%, compared to consumer goods by 86.1%. Things like TVs and electronics went way down in costs while the essentials have absolutely skyrocketed. The cheap stuff drags the average down. You need a lot more than a single graph to argue against the quality of life going down for Americans.
- gruez 3mo ago>That chart doesn't make the case you think it does. Real median household income rising [...] Where are you getting household income from? It clearly says "Personal Income"
- mynameisbilly 3mo agoYou're right, I was mixing up the related charts. Still, this makes my case even stronger since personal controls for adding more earners to a household. If real median personal income only rose from ~$28k in 1974 to ~45$k today, that's a 60% increase. Median personal income rising by 0.9% every year over 50 years compared to healthcare rising by 3-4% every year since 2000 is not a gap you can ignore. Necessities grew at nearly 3 to 4x the income rate. So the case that quality of life is trending downward is still completely valid and shows why you can't just point at a single graph and say "see? line go up therefore quality of life fine"
- mc32 3mo agoMississippi, the poorest state, has similar median income to Germany. I’m pretty sure 50% of the people there are not in abject poverty.
- atq2119 3mo agoThis doesn't actually seem to be true based on a quick googling, i.e. Germany has somewhat higher median income. But in addition to the raw numbers, you have to keep in mind that they don't account for cost of living and that different countries account for various services differently, especially health care.
- mc32 3mo agoTotally understand that; but it counters the assertion of “abject poverty”. Perhaps relative poverty is a better descriptor but abject poverty is someone living in cardboard tents by the riverbank. Regular poor is living in section eight housing or subsidized housing. I don’t think we have 50% of Mississippians living in abject poverty.
- officeplant 3mo agoAs a gulf state resident, a whole lot of us live in shitty old shotgun houses that have been patched up hundreds of times just waiting for the next hurricane to wipe us out finally. I would assume this doesn't account for Germans having different healthcare costs which will aboslutely wreck the average American household with how fucked our system has become.
- mc32 3mo agoDo you believe about 50% of Mississippians live in abject poverty as put forth by GGP poster? The kind of poverty you saw in Dust Bowl era workers or Weimar era Germany or 3rd would today? Sure people may not be middle class but they are not in abject poverty where they steal chickens, shit on the street, sell their relatives into servitude and barely have two changes of clothing. At least I don’t think so. What those people live would be middle class for counties where there is lots of abject poverty. People watch too many influencers and lose track of reality -it’s not all Beverly Hills and Kardashians and Real Wives of X-town everywhere. That’s fantasyland.
- olivierestsage 3mo agoSorry but you’re smoking crack if you don’t think quality of life is deteriorating in the US. The anxiety and misery is literally palpable.
- bongoman37 3mo ago[dead]
- micromacrofoot 3mo agothe top 1% have nearly as much income as the bottom 80% https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/chart/#quarter:146;series:Net%20worth;demographic:income;population:all;units:levels https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distr...
- gruez 3mo ago>the top 1% have nearly as much income as the bottom 80% >link for "Distribution of Household Wealth in the U.S. since 1989" income =/= wealth
- digitaltrees 3mo agoI don’t think that makes the argument you think it does. Wealth concentration is even more extreme.
- gruez 3mo agoThe point is that his original claim is either incorrect, or is not supported by the source he cited.
- digitaltrees 3mo agoThat doesn’t logically follow. If the claim is 1% control 80%. And the counter argument is wealth is different than income the implication is that wealth inequality is 1) lower than income inequality and 2) more important for some unspecified reason. But if wealth inequality is more extreme then that means 1% control GREATER than 80% of wealth. So point 1 is false. And point 2 is most likely irrelevant because greater concentration likely means whatever harm from one category would track the other category
- porridgeraisin 3mo agoBigger picture truths don't justify smaller picture lies.
- 3mo ago
- gruez 3mo ago>and half of the US is living in abject poverty Source? All the ones I know of use questionable methodology like: "being able to afford a 2 bedroom apartment at median wage".
- Folcon 3mo agoOut of curiosity, what is your expected baseline of what the average person and family in the US should be able to afford?
- gruez 3mo ago"should" is a pretty woolly concept. "should" we have to work at all? UBI proponents don't think so, and that apparently that has 45% support. What's hopefully obvious is that not being able to afford a 2 bedroom apartment at median wage is a far cry from "abject poverty". https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/08/19/more-americans-oppose-than-favor-the-government-providing-a-universal-basic-income-for-all-adult-citizens/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/08/19/more-amer...
- Folcon 3mo agoI mean fair, but not relevant? I'm asking you the question because a statement like 50% of [population] is making a claim to some notion of what they expect society to look like you introduced the benchmark "not being able to afford a 2 bedroom apartment at median wage", though I would expect a modern day society that makes any claim to be wealthy to be able to have above 50% of it's population to be able to support something like that as that would indicate they can support a small family You're saying that's not a good benchmark, so I'm trying to understand: 1) Do you have a different benchmark? 2) Is your key complaint that being unable to own a 2 bedroom house doesn't mean that individual or family is in "abject poverty"? In which case fair, though I would ask what does mean abject poverty for you? It seems like you're saying 2, but I want to be sure
- gruez 3mo ago
- vdqtp3 3mo ago> half of the US is living in abject poverty Anyone who believes this has absolutely no concept of what abject poverty looks like.
- idiotsecant 3mo agoThis is quickly going to devolve into 'nobody suffers unless their suffering as at least as bad as the worst suffering that exists', so let's just go ahead and get that out of the way and move on to something less pointless.
- scottyah 3mo agoHave you looked up the definition of abject poverty? It is "the most severe and hopeless form of human deprivation". It's the subject of the conversation, how is that pointless?
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- win311fwg 3mo agoWhile you are able to look up someone's definition of abject poverty, the only definition that is relevant in this context is the one held by the author of the earlier comment. It is unlikely you can look up his definition (before he replies to those who have asked for the definition in force).
- jmye 3mo ago> the only definition that is relevant in this context is the one held by the author of the earlier comment. This is absolute nonsense. We use common language to refer to common things in understandable ways in order to communicate with each other. You don't get to just handwave baldly incorrect statements as "well maybe he just has a different personal definition" without basically rendering literally all conversation moot and pointless. "Yeah, I know he said 2+2 is 5, but you don't know he defines 5" is just as patently silly.
- sfdlkj3jk342a 3mo agoWhat's your definition of "abject poverty"? I find it hard to believe that half the US would meet the criteria for any reasonable definition.
- zer00eyz 3mo ago> half of the US is living in abject poverty while quality of life for everyone is decreasing. The 350 million Americans looking at the top of the US economy and crying need to turn around and take a look at what's behind them. There are something like 7 billion people behind them, worse off.
- Avicebron 3mo agoThis isn't relevant to this discussion. You're welcome to go complain on a message board in Mumbai about wages in the US.
- logicchains 3mo agoIt absolutely is relevant to the discussion. Many Americans are ungrateful and envious of the Americans wealthier than them, in spite of the fact that their own living standards are still far far better than the majority of humans on the planet. And some of those hypocritically think that the wealth of richer Americans belong to them, but would never consider giving their own wealth to people across the globe who are poorer than them.
- scottyah 3mo agoThe people who want money from people richer than them never want to give up their own to the people who look to them with the same eyes.
- jodrellblank 3mo agoThat is a false claim. Voting for taxation to support the less wealthy is almost a defining feature of what it means to be 'left'. Voting for taxation to support international aid and outreach and healthcare is very common. The 'left' supporting colonial- and war reparation payments is common. Donating money to charity, tithing, nationally and internationally is common across the board. > "from people richer than them" You may want to spend some time reflecting on where that money came from. How much lobbying and market manipulation, employee abuse, bullying, exploitation, wage theft, government (taxpayer-funded) grants and infusions of cash, bribery, corruption, dark patterns, law-breaking were involved, and how much tax avoidance and evasion was involved.
- Avicebron 3mo agoIt's amazing how few people are willing to admit there is a problem. Spend 45 minutes driving around the state I live in talking to random people and it's painfuly obvious this is reality that some. I suppose it's mostly epstein sympathizers who are pushing the narrative that everything is perfect and nothing needs to be done.
- Fernicia 3mo ago[Citation needed]
- win311fwg 3mo agodozerly. "We have one of the worlds most prosperous economies, and half of the US is living in abject poverty while quality of life for everyone is decreasing." Hacker News, 30 Jun. 2026, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48734916 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48734916
- legitster 3mo ago"Abject poverty" is currently defined as living on less that $3 a day and dealing with things like chronic hunger and exposure. The best approximation would be the homeless population in the US (about 500k people), but even then most homeless would not even qualify. "Half" is a gross exaggeration.
- digitaltrees 3mo agoThe homeless number under estimates people with unstable housing that aren’t on the streets. I assure you that when your basic housing and nutrition are uncertain and missing even a few days of income will result in cascading effects of hunger and homelessness, the underlying stress is overwhelming. It doesn’t have to be this way, we don’t let bullies steal all the toys on the playground and destroy the very ecosystem that they want to have fun in, why are we letting capital accumulate in the hands of the most effective capitalists at the risk of destroying the very markets that let them succeed. I say that as a capitalist, if we lose the system because we allow unchecked Monopoly and wealth concentration, we won’t get it back.
- legitster 3mo agoI agree with all those things, but if we start making up numbers and definitions we're at risk of undoing actual progress. Maybe it feels good to say "actually everyone is a victim of capitalism", but it muddies real necessary work when it comes to determining whether to prioritize how resources need to be allocated between a disabled person living on the streets vs a graduate student who is currently just a little underwater on their credit card payments.
- digitaltrees 3mo agoThat’s a reasonable perspective. I would ask though, whether the fear of muddying the discussion is weaponized to create the impression of complexity, a broad range of intractable causes that lead to the conclusion that any solution is futile. The forces that benefit from the status quo deploy this quite effectively
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- dismalaf 3mo agoThe poverty rate in the US is 10%. https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2025/demo/p60-287.html https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2025/demo/p60-28...
- marcusverus 3mo agoIt's actually far better than that! When people hear "poverty rate", they think "the percentage of people living in poverty". That's not what the census data on poverty is reporting, though. The census data is based on income only. It excludes in-kind welfare (Food Stamps, HUD, and Medicaid) and even excludes some welfare that is paid out in cash (like refundable tax credits). In other words, the census data is reporting that 10% of Americans earn under the poverty line. The number living under the poverty line is far, far lower.
- jandrewrogers 3mo agoThe BLS and Federal Reserve both have data showing that the median American household has >$1,000 left over every month after all ordinary expenses, including housing, healthcare, and iPhones. Any definition of "abject poverty" that includes a comfortable lifestyle and $12-15k excess income every year is not a serious definition.
- dcrazy 3mo agoCan you define “abject poverty”?
- marcusverus 3mo agoThe United States doles out >$30K/year in welfare spending for each person (not household, each person) under the poverty line. And that's just HUD/SNAP/Medicaid. The idea that any significant portion of the US is living in "abject poverty" (let alone half!) is hysterical in every sense of the word.
- bongoman37 3mo ago[dead]