Edit: source https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Poverty_in_th...
Any less than that, and people who make their living off providing free stuff to the "poor" will get annoyed. Any more than that and too many people will start questioning whether someone with a $30K income is really "poor".
I certainly wouldn't want to live on $22K per annum. Though now I come to think of it, I was living on less than that, in a more expensive place than the vast majority of America, just a few short years ago as a PhD student.
Certainly we can say that in terms of absolute need, someone at the "poverty line" in America is incredibly wealthy compared to the vast majority of people who have ever lived. In historical terms, if you're not starving, you're pretty rich.
"...the typical household considered "poor" by census officials has a car and air conditioning. For entertainment, the household has cable or satellite TV, two color televisions, a DVD player and a VCR. If children (especially boys) are in the home, they have a video game system such as Xbox or PlayStation. In the kitchen, the household has the ordinary conveniences: refrigerator, oven, stove, microwave.
Half the poor now have a personal computer. A third have a widescreen TV (plasma or LCD); a quarter have a digital video recorder such as TiVo."
They do not, unlike the (European and American) middle class take foreign holidays, drive foreign cars, take trips to the movies, go to theme parks, go on school trips, shop at nice places, eat healithly, etc...just because they have a bunch of cheap electronics crap stuffed inside their homes it does not make them rich.
Seriously, what do you think life is like for the European middle class? In rich Europe, it's extremely comfortable.
Actually, they do, apart possibly from take foreign holidays, and even that's a suspect difference. Remember, they that they live in the US, so visiting Texas from CA, which they do, is comparable to visiting Italy from the UK.
The presence of a social safety net, meaningful employment, food security, quality education, access to health care and the ability to save for the future are vastly more important considerations for determining poverty.
European living standards are different, but quite high if you ignore silly stuff like sq footage and consumer electronics and instead focus on real things that matter like healthcare and education.
US poor have free healthcare and education. (Actually, everyone does.)
The free healthcare or education isn't unlimited in the US, but it isn't free&unlimited anywhere.
Some combination of (1) Lack of poverty, (2) you don't like the free care, (3) you don't know what's available.
Are you poor? If so, medicaid is available (or the state equivalent).
Are you a child? If so, there's a program whose name I forget.
And, there's also the local county hospital.
That said, you may prefer the care that you get by paying, but your choice doesn't imply that you couldn't get free healthcare.
Huh? 2 (medicaid and the children's program) out of 3 are federal; that's most in my book (The state versions of mediad, such as MediCal, are state/federal partnerships.)
Besides, since every state (and territory) has them, why is it relevant whether they're state or federal?
> And some of those are kinda flimsy
Huh? No, they won't do everything that you could possibly want, but neither does any other healthcare system, anywhere in the in the world, govt paid or not.
If you want to argue about the specific things that they won't do, you get to do the relevant research, including on the programs that you think are acceptable.
> like even if I could convince a family member to pay
I'm not suggesting skipping out on a bill (although that's also an option if you can't pay).