[antisthenes]

This mantra gets repeated on HN and elsewhere quite often, but it is factually incorrect if only from the fact that poverty guidelines have definitely not kept up with the cost of housing and healthcare.

You could argue that people in poverty live in places where housing is dirt cheap, but those places have almost no jobs and especially no jobs for people with criminal records.

[merpnderp]

So your complaint is with the definition of poverty as a percentage of the medium income?

[duncan_bayne]

I don't know about the OP but I certainly have a problem with it myself.

It's a definition of poverty that a) means you can 'fix' poverty by making rich people poorer, and b) morally legitimises envy.