The poor in America are rich compared to the rest of the world

The New York times is condemning the US because it has a poverty rate of 18% which is much worse than that of 36 rich developed countries.

The problem is that the analysis doesn't look at how much money the poor in America have just at how much they earn.  The study ignores income sources such as:

• Medicaid and free healthcare provided by clinics
• Food Stamps, school lunches, school breakfasts, soup kitchens, food pantries etc
• Rent subsidies, utility assistance,and homeless shelters

Additionally it's been established that the poor underreport their income. When all this is taken into account it shows that the lowest 20% of the US population is significantly better off than the lowest 20% of people in those other 35 countries:

While this doesn't mean that we shouldn't work on improving the status of the poor in America it does conclusively show that the US, not the European countries so beloved of by leftists, is doing the best job at helping the poor.

Now it's possible that the different cost of living in the US could negate this conclusion but by looking at what the real lifestyle of the poor is in America we can see that's not true; they're not living in misery.

We've known for a long time that the poor in America aren't as bad off as the left says that they are.

• 80% of the poor have air conditioning; when the War on Poverty started only 12% of household had air conditioning
• Nearly 3/4s have a car or truck, 31% have more than one
• 64% have satellite or cable TV
• 50% have a computer

No one wants the poor to suffer but it's obvious that the hard working Americans who pay the bill for the poor aren't being too stingy. But that goes against the lefts desire to take more and more of your hard earned money so they're going to lie about it.  They know that the more of your money they take the more government workers who earn much more than you there can be and the more powerful big government leftists become.

We all want to help those who are truly in need but for people who aren't poor because of physical or mental issues do we really want to tax lower income Black families so those "poor" people can have satellite TV?