How poor are Americans really?

These days when people ask me how are you...how is the economic downturn affecting you???.... I usually just say something like "I'm hanging in there". I respond like this because I consider it a rhetorical question. Kind of like "How are You" or "Do you need help with your groceries".

Honestly if I wasn't reading the news than I probably wouldn't even know that I was supposed to be "hurting". I have long since exhausted my 401K two years ago when I relocated and I am blessed to have a job that I work 55-60 hours a week. I have a roof over my head and I pay my bills on time and buy my teen a few extras here and there. We have Heat, A/C, a Older Luxury SUV, Cable, Cell phones and Internet for our three computers. Does it sound like I am hurting?...No, it doesn't does it. But in the goverments mind I am "poor" or "low income".

My teen and I eat out about once a month with a coupon of course, and I buy many of my groceries at Dollar General and patronize my local fruit stand and butcher when Its in the budget. ( I refuse to shop at Walmart even if I have to pay more at Target), thats a whole nother blog, LOL. The long and short of it is , I am not poor, if anything I am blessed. I am not upset because I can't afford certain luxuries and I don't begrudge those who can, more power to them because they are the ones keeping our economy going right now.

Larry Elder recently wrote an article after he had attended the movie "Slumdog Millionaire". He makes some great points in this article, heres a couple of excerpts..

In America, we consider a family of four "poor" if its annual income falls below $21,203. And we actually undercount income — ignoring assets accumulated in prior years and disregarding non-cash welfare, such as taxpayer-funded education, lunch programs, health care, food stamps and subsidies for public housing. Only 6 percent of poor households, according to The Heritage Foundation, are overcrowded — meaning more than one person per room. More than two-thirds of "poor" Americans live in housing with more than two rooms per person. And 43 percent of America's poor households own their own homes — and the average poor person's home has three bedrooms, one-and-a-half bathrooms, a
garage and a porch or a patio.

Overall," writes Heritage, "the typical American defined as poor by the overnment has a car, air conditioning, a refrigerator, a stove, a clothes washer and dryer, and a microwave. He has two color televisions, cable or satellite TV reception, a VCR or DVD player, and a stereo. He is able to obtain medical care. His home is in good repair and is not overcrowded. By his own report, his family is not hungry and he had sufficient funds in the past year to meet his family's essential needs. While this individual's life is not opulent, it is equally far from the popular images of dire poverty conveyed by the press, liberal activists, and politicians."

Everything that "the typical American" has is considered a luxury in many Third World countries. If you want to see poor the true definiton of "poor", than read some these articles

Thousands of people have died of cholera in Zimbabwe after the country’s
left-wing dictator Robert Mugabe nationalized municipal water systems to seize
their revenue, allowing them to fall into ruin in the process.

Health workers in Zimbabwe are warning that international alarm over the spreading cholera emergency, which has claimed nearly a thousand lives, is overshadowing the Aids crisis, which is killing as many people every three days.

Nearly a billion people worldwide are starving, UN agency warns
• Rising prices mean 14% now under-nourished • Urgency over food crisis lost amid credit crunch

Who are the Poorest and Where do They Live?
One billion people live on less than $1 a day, the threshold defined by the international community as constituting extreme poverty, below which survival is questionable. That number encompasses a multitude of people living in varying degrees of poverty—all of them poor, but some even more desperately poor than others. To better answer the question of whether the very poorest are being reached, we first divided the population living on less than $1 a day into three categories according to the depth of their poverty:
-Subjacent poor: those living on between $0.75 and $1 a day
-Medial poor: those living on between $0.50 and $0.75 a day
-Ultra poor: those living on less than $0.50 a day

......a significant number of people: if all of the ultra poor were concentrated in a single nation, it would be the world's seventh most populous country after China, India, the United States, Indonesia, Brazil, and Pakistan

So I ask you, are you or do you know anyone that is poor???....probably not,. Back in 1991 the Human Freedom Index came out and proposed to us what we long already knew and that is what Heritage.org said in its article "U.N. Report Links World Poverty to Lack of Freedom"

Poor Countries Lack Freedom. The poorest countries in this index are also the least' free. America with an annual per capita gross domestic product of $19,850, ranks high on the Human Freedom Index with a score of 33. Swedes earn $14,940 on average, and their country scores a 38 on the freedom index. The British, French, Japanese and West Germans all have per capita GDPs in the $13,000s. In contrast, the least free nations produce incomes for their citizens that are dramatically lower than those in free countries. Cubans are reported to earn a meager $2,500 per annum@ and they thus predictably receive a poor score at five on the Human Freedom Index. Other nations at the bottom of the freedom list are China, with a per capita GDP of $2,470, and Vietnam, with $ 1,000. The poorest nation in the world, Uganda with a per capita GDP of $410, was even unable to be evaluated for the freedom index, because of a lack of data. No measure of freedom could hope to capture perfectly the nuances of liberty in a simple numerical figure. Thus it is not surprising that the Human Freedom Index has flaws. For example, a nation loses points if it allows the death penalty. Yet, putting criminals to death for heinous crimes like murder in no way detracts from the political liberties enjoyed by all citizens. But the weakest part of the Human Freedom Index is that it does not explicitly measure economic freedom.

So the next time you read the Lame Stream Media's report about how bad off you are, realize that the only ones that are truly "bad off" are them. Their refusal to ever due a full disclosure on any story is appalling. Yes I know many have lost savings and money they may never get back and that is an atrosity, but the ones to blame are part of the same party that is about to take office and refused to regulate these companies and hence the "demise" of the American Economy.

"All" is not lost though, if "All" was lost than we would not have our freedom and thanks to George W. Bush we still have that. According to the CIA Factbook we are roughly the 7th richest country in the world, and in my humble opinion we live in the greatest country in the world.