Overwhelming Evidence that Half of America is In or Near Poverty

By Paul Buchheit

March 23, 2014  |  The Charles Koch Foundation recently released a commercial [3] that ranked [4] a near-poverty-level $34,000 family among the Top 1% of poor people in the world. Bud Konheim, CEO and co-founder of fashion company Nicole Miller, concurred [5]: "The guy that's making, oh my God, he's making $35,000 a year, why don't we try that out in India or some countries we can't even name. China, anyplace, the guy is wealthy."

Comments like these are condescending and self-righteous. They display an ignorance of the needs of lower-income and middle-income families in America. The costs of food and housing and education and health care and transportation and child care and taxes have been well-defined by organizations such as the Economic Policy Institute [6], which calculated that a U.S. family of three would require an average of about $48,000 a year to meet basic needs; and by the Working Poor Families Project [7], which estimates the income required for basic needs for a family of four at about $45,000. The median household income [8] is $51,000.