[atq2119]

This doesn't actually seem to be true based on a quick googling, i.e. Germany has somewhat higher median income.

But in addition to the raw numbers, you have to keep in mind that they don't account for cost of living and that different countries account for various services differently, especially health care.

[mc32]

Totally understand that; but it counters the assertion of “abject poverty”. Perhaps relative poverty is a better descriptor but abject poverty is someone living in cardboard tents by the riverbank. Regular poor is living in section eight housing or subsidized housing. I don’t think we have 50% of Mississippians living in abject poverty.

[officeplant]

As a gulf state resident, a whole lot of us live in shitty old shotgun houses that have been patched up hundreds of times just waiting for the next hurricane to wipe us out finally.

I would assume this doesn't account for Germans having different healthcare costs which will aboslutely wreck the average American household with how fucked our system has become.

[mc32]

Do you believe about 50% of Mississippians live in abject poverty as put forth by GGP poster? The kind of poverty you saw in Dust Bowl era workers or Weimar era Germany or 3rd would today? Sure people may not be middle class but they are not in abject poverty where they steal chickens, shit on the street, sell their relatives into servitude and barely have two changes of clothing. At least I don’t think so. What those people live would be middle class for counties where there is lots of abject poverty.

People watch too many influencers and lose track of reality -it’s not all Beverly Hills and Kardashians and Real Wives of X-town everywhere. That’s fantasyland.

[officeplant]

I find it hard to believe 50%, but we are not doing well down here. Homeless populations have increased massively and the average cost of a single bedroom apartment has gone from $500-1150 in my area since I moved here in 2008. Meanwhile the minimum wage is still $7.25/hour up from $5.50/hour in the 2000's.

Gentrification has also bought up a lot of the older areas and created what feels like faux poverty aesthetic gated apartments and over priced eateries with random shit sprinkled in like Axe throwing places. (Please someone where did all of these axe throwing places come from)

Things are also different down here because you see a massive loss in land/homes lasting families for generations due to petro-chemical and now data center companies buying up whole towns to bulldoze and built into pollution centers.

I'm seeing a lot more cars with doors, bumpers and windows missing because people just need their scrap heap of a car to continue to get them to work across town. We don't have walkable cities and even homeless people sometimes have cheap bicycles with scrap weedwacker motors bolted on because they can't afford a car or the time to get a license.

Someone else brought up the real truth, a lot of us are living paycheck to paycheck and entirely beholden to how much room we still have on various credit cards to buy food after paying bills. Eternal debt slavery is becoming extremely common.

It's not abject poverty, its just dire circumstances for a huge number of everyday folk.