From CQ:
Poverty has always been a judgment call, relative to a standard of living that serves as a mean for comparative purposes. In America, the system most often used is the one Rector employs for his study -- a relative comparison naturally based on income. He takes the bottom quintile of households based on income and looks at the living conditions -- and finds that the Dickensian images evoked by the word poverty does not apply in the US, at least in most cases.
The poor in America live in the following conditions:
* 43% of the poor own their homes, and the average home is a three-bedroom house with a garage and 1.5 bathrooms
* Over two-thirds of households have two rooms per occupant, which belies the notion of overcrowding
* 80% of the poor have air conditioning
* Almost 75% own one car; 31% own two or more
* The average living space for the American poor is larger than the average space for all people in Paris, Vienna, and London, among other cities in Europe
Rather than Two Americas, what we find is that the poor resembles the middle class in living standards. Even nutrition appears similar to the middle class. Both groups get more than their daily needs, although the poor report more short-term shortages than the middle class, but only 2% of the poor report that they "often" do not have enough to eat.
That 2% of the bottom 20% of income earning households represent the real poverty in America. It exists, without a doubt, but on a much smaller scale than the political class would lead people to believe. The Census Bureau data shows that the US has successfully implemented an ownership standard based on the liberty of private property, a system that almost everyone in the US can access.
I think I just became Ebenezer Scrooge. Maybe this is the reason for leftist relativism. If it weren't for relative poverty, they wouldn't have anything to talk about.
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