And that's a good thing. Compare how the poors lived in 1950-1970 vs today. How many project apartments or leaky rural shacks you think you'd have to combine to get one household worth of (fully functional) furniture and appliances? Cheap furniture, window A/C units that cost about a day's labor. Not that they don't have problems but the cost decreases that have enabled the middle to treat things as disposable has very much enabled the less fortunate to greatly increase their standard of living.