alt Hacker NewsWe 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.
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"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.
What's your definition of "abject poverty"?
I find it hard to believe that half the US would meet the criteria for any reasonable definition.
The 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.
>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".
Can you define “abject poverty”?
The 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.
The poverty rate in the US is 10%.
https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2025/demo/p60-28...
> 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.
> half of the US is living in abject poverty
Anyone who believes this has absolutely no concept of what abject poverty looks like.
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the top 1% have nearly as much income as the bottom 80%
https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distr...
It'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.
I'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.