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Comment by dheera | Hacker News Reader

If you have negative net worth and the bank's money, not yours, is buying your food and housing, you are in abject poverty, just that the system is propping up your survival for a while.

A lot of the US looks like they're doing great but fits into the category above.

Non-poverty would look like:

* You make enough money to pay for your own food, housing, and transportation in full, with enough buffer for emergencies, without needing to borrow a cent

* You make enough money to be on trajectory to save up to pay for your own food, housing, transportation, and medical expenses in retirement when you are physically unable to serve the workforce

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> You make enough money to pay for your own food, housing, and transportation in full, with enough buffer for emergencies, without needing to borrow a cent

So you're saying I'm in poverty because I couldn't buy my house and my car outright?

> and medical expenses in retirement

You're saying I'm in poverty because I understand and intend to use Medicare?

These are trivially poor definitions.

Medicare is a different thing, the government should be providing medical care for everyone to begin with, regardless of what they make.

My definition is if you need to borrow money to put a roof over your head, at the minimum renting, you're in poverty. There are huge chunks of the US population borrowing money to pay for rent.

If your locality doesn't provide adequate public transit, then a car is a necessity, and the onus is now on the locality's economy to make sure everyone can access that; if your locality doesn't pay high enough to afford that car without borrowing money, then yes, you're in poverty. Alternatively, the locality can choose to provide adequate, safe public transit, and the bar of poverty would change.

Most of the US doesn't think this way because they're delusional and have been conditioned to feed the financial system and pay for things with money they don't have.

> So you're saying I'm in poverty because I couldn't buy my house and my car outright?

I think this isn't as unreasonable as it seems to everyone living it. It's like water to the fish.

We are conditioned that everything should be fueled by more and more debt, and your dollars should constantly be devalued so you can't stop grinding.

The little people can never be allowed to just work enough to accumulate what they need and then take it easy.

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