[dantheman]

What are you talking about? The US has one of the most progressive tax systems, and like 50% of people don't even pay income tax. The government wastes money and the medical establishment is corrupt -- but that has nothing to do with rich people living off of the poor. The poor in America are far richer than the poor in most other countries.

[Eumenes]

Correct, the top 50% of tax payers pay 97% of income revenue

[virtualritz]

> The poor in America are far richer than the poor in most other countries.

You probably mean the US/Canada. 'America' includes South America for which this is not generally true.

However, replace 'America' in your sentence with any developed country and the statement is indeed generally true. And thusly of little value to this discussion.

Specifically it doesn't change the fact that the poor in the US are much poorer that the poor in most (possibly all?) developed countries. [1]

And I do not mean this solely in the sense of pure numbers as in e.g. [2]. But rather what it means to be poor.

I.e. how dignified or undignified a life do the social support systems of a country and the view of the resp. society on the poor allow you to live, should you fall in that bracket?

[1] https://confrontingpoverty.org/poverty-facts-and-myths/ameri...

[2] https://data.oecd.org/inequality/poverty-gap.htm#indicator-c...

[yamtaddle]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States

> The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America

> Demonym(s) American[b][8]

Pretending not to understand this is tiresome.

[virtualritz]

It's more tiresome that US citizens claim the term and do not understand the issue with it. [1]

As a European traveling to South America frequently it is very obvious to me why all my friends there take issue with this. As a European this is also not my fight but I do take sides nevertheless.

From my post getting three down votes, two of which I must assume stem from this topic at least, I dare only conclude that the sensitivity is mutual.

So probably worth understanding and showing some consideration. Beers!

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/06/what-do...

[dfee]

> You probably mean the US/Canada. 'America' includes South America for which this is not generally true.

Whether you like the colloquial usage or not doesn’t change its colloquial usage nor (on review) one of it’s formal definitions.

Curious why this is a crusade you’ve joined, though.

[RestlessMind]

> the poor in the US are much poorer that the poor in most (possibly all?) developed countries.

My source[1] disagrees with your source. It seems fairly close to Italy/Spain and slightly better than the much vaunted place on HN (Japan).

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/233910/poverty-rates-in-...

[virtualritz]

> My source[1] disagrees with your source. It seems fairly close to Italy/Spain and slightly better than the much vaunted place on HN (Japan).

Err, nope, they don't because you're looking at the wrong data. This was about poverty gap [1], not poverty rate.

I though this was obvious from the very sentence of mine you quoted. I.e. it pertained to the third column of the table in the link I posted.

According to that table, the only developed country with a higher poverty gap than the US in 2019 was Italy (US: 39.8, Italy: 40.8).

Since they were close and I didn't find current data for 2022/2023, I wrote "possibly all?" with a question mark.

As you can see in [1], in 2021 the US moved up from 2nd from last to 8th from last. I.e. better but the point still stands.

[1] https://data.oecd.org/inequality/poverty-gap.htm

[TinkersW]

In English America refers to the US. If this was Spanish you would be correct, but pretty clearly English is the language being used.

If you want to refer to both North & South America just add an 's', Americas.

[boc]

In the English language America, American, Americans all refer to the country and citizens of the United States.

I don’t know why people from other continents think it’s some sort of gotcha to say otherwise. It’s incorrect.