If any of you saw your local newspaper or favorite national news outlet this morning, you might have come across an article by Hope Yen of the Associated Press called Census Shows 1 in 2 People Are Poor or Low-Income.  In it, the reader is subjected to what are meant to be frightening facts and figures about the state of poverty in the United States; how we have some how devolved back into post-Industrial Revolution England as street urchins out of a Charles Dickens novel grovel in the streets next to super-rich textile barons wearing diamond-encrusted cufflinks.

The article explains that low-income is typically defined as those earning between 100% and 199% of the poverty level.  With a little bit of research, it isn’t hard to discover that in 2011, the poverty level for a married couple with two kids was $ 22,350, meaning that this typical household would be considered low-income if it was earning $ 45,000 per year.  To put that into perspective, such a family would be in the top 1.72% of income in the world.  It would be richer than 983 out of every 1,000 households on the planet. That is how we are defining low-income now.

Only in the United States can you rank in the top 1.72% of global income, enjoy heating, air conditioning, two cars, cell phones, video game systems, and high definition televisions and be considered low-income.  Only in the United States can a member of the press, in sincerity, publish an article that essentially states the median family with a near median income in one of the richest nations in the history of the world is low-income.  The sense of historical, and global, perspective is entirely lacking for two reasons: Envy and Ignorance.

When most reasonable people hear about low-income or poverty households, they think of struggling senior citizens who can’t afford heat in the winter or a single mom with three kids holding down two jobs just to keep her family from going hungry.  That is poverty.  That is the sort of thing we need to protect against as a society.  That is why we need to create upward ladders of social mobility and downward safety nets of social protection such as food banks, shelters, and work training programs.

By reclassifying such a large percentage of the population as poverty-stricken or low-income, the psychology of what will happen is not a mystery.  Familiarity and donor fatigue will kick in and the middle and upper classes, seeing that “poor” people are able to afford things like the occasional Playstation or Disney World vacation will have less of a problem ending those important social programs.  The “why should I work while they get the benefit” mindset will kick in and, in some cases, it will be justified.  Meanwhile, the true poor, the people who might be shivering under a blanket on nights when the windchill is -10 degrees Fahrenheit or who haven’t eaten in two days, suffer the most, getting lost as collateral damage.