[panick21_]

With the insane rates of consumtion, home ownership and car ownership, it simply is a fact. Tons of people live paycheck to paycheck and call themsevles poor, when they have an 80k truck with monthly payment as high as some peoples rent. And often credit card debt with monthly payments as well.

Yes, sometimes this is medical debt or other unavoidable things. But its also true that the consumtion rate is incredibly high and the savings rate is incredibly low, with US credit card industry making it easy to create huge debts.

So its simply a fact that a huge amount of people live in self imposed risky situations. Instead of an emergency fund, they think they can just open a new credit card.

So its of course not what is causing people to be poor, but what is does is that it makes many, many more people 'living on the edge' then there should be based on their actual incomes.