Americans Can't Believe How Rich They Are

"need to earn to avoid poverty? According to the Census Bureau, $32,130. But what if it were really $140,000? Late last month, the investor and Substack writer Michael Green advanced this attention-grabbing claim, which implies that a majority of Americans are living in poverty today. He argued, further, that families earning $40,000 to $100,000 were stuck in a "valley of death" because "benefits disappear faster than wages rise.""

"But collapsing the distinction between the actual poor and the lower-middle class obscures more than it helps. And talking about poverty as intractable or unfixable is a kind of demotivational speaking. Green's miscalculations start in an understandable place: his bewilderment when he realizes that the American government's official poverty line is arbitrary. As the War on Poverty was beginning in the 1960s, the federal government needed to properly define the enemy."

A family-of-four poverty threshold sits at $32,130, while a claim that it should be $140,000 would label most Americans as poor. The claim posits that families earning $40,000–$100,000 fall into a "valley of death" because benefits phase out faster than wages rise. Empirical examination finds significant miscalculations and overreach. A broader rhetorical trend favors maximalist portrayals of social problems, which blurs the line between the genuinely poor and lower-middle-class households. That conflation undermines targeted policy responses and can demotivate practical reform efforts. The official poverty line originated in the 1960s from food-cost estimates and assumed spending shares.

Read at The Atlantic