>The usual threshold for poverty (for good reasons) is 50 or 60% of the median income in a country.
If you think half to 40% of people in the Congo are not in poverty you are delusional
If you think half to 40% of people in the Congo are not in poverty you are delusional
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty#Relative_poverty
You are free to find that delusional, but if you want to partake in the scientific discourse about poverty, it would be advantageous if you don't redefine the core concept.
"delusion: an idiosyncratic belief or impression that is firmly maintained despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality or rational argument, typically a symptom of mental disorder."
It is quite delusional to create new metrics on poverty because ones based on income or consumption don't get you to the result you like.
I mean, really, take a step back and consider these two possibilities:
a) Thousands of researchers have researched the topic for decades, and no one ever considered it problematic to directly compare the poverty in Congo and the US using the same metric. But finally, after als these decades, during a few seconds of flying over a blog link, commenter fuzz4lyfe on hn finds the error and renders decades of research obsolete.
b) You err.
What is more probable?
But the usual measure of relative local wealth, works pretty good.