Now and then, you stumble upon a metric so obviously broken that it forces you to re-evaluate everything you thought you knew about how America works.
The latest in a line of such relics is the poverty line. This benchmark, which determines who’s “poor,” who gets benefits, and who supposedly counts as “middle class,” is based on a formula from the early 1960s.
As explained by Simplify Asset Management Chief Strategist Michael W. Green, the official poverty line is literally three times the cost of a bare-bones food budget in 1963, adjusted for inflation. That’s it. No housing. No healthcare. No childcare. No transportation. No nothing.
Just: food × 3. A math trick that may have made sense in the early Cold War era. Yet this relic has distorted the national conversation for decades. Policymakers repeat the number like it’s gospel. Economists use it to declare victory.
Meanwhile, anyone living in the real world in 2024 knows the truth: you can be making “good money” and still be drowning. The vibes aren’t off — the benchmark is.
The Right Multiplier
Green revisited the original poverty-line calculation and highlighted the key economic shift …