The source data linked in the article are a bit fishy. On page 36, you see where (I assume) the author derived his consumption data, though the source is by household and somewhere along the line he converted it to per-capita. In that source table, organized by quintile, the consumption for the highest quintile is about twice that of the lowest. But in the same document, on page 35, the income by quintile shows the top 20% earning 10x the income of the lowest 20% (including government benefits). So the wealthiest 20% earn ten times as much, but spend only twice as much? Where does the rest of the money go? It seems highly unlikely that both tables are accurate.

To savings...?

That would be a lot of savings. :-) The actual savings rate is less than 10% (https://www.statista.com/statistics/246268/personal-savings-...).

> when your only source is yourself, that's a red flag

The article includes links to world bank data and OECD that support the article's assertions. They aren't in MLA or APA formats, so you won't see them listed out at the bottom however.

> But making reductionist blog posts on the internet in an attempt to justify your own urge to write people off as morally bankrupt solely based on their finances

The author's intent is to highlight the errors in a NYT video. He's not attacking poor people.

> He's not attacking poor people.

I may have made a leap with that statement, but if you look under "Why Is the U.S. So Much Richer?", he practically lists out the entire Republican platform as corollaries from this one point. Given his unabashed political agenda and the overall point he's trying to make here, it's not a huge jump to assume that he sees the problem of poverty in America as overstated, self-inflicted, and generally not worth making a coordinated public effort to solve beyond proselytizing his personal lifestyle choices including reversing "changing attitudes toward sex [and] marital fidelity" (???).

I'd state that both sides are fishy. NY Times is supposed to be the newspaper of record, but abuses that position daily and to an amount only surpassed (AFAIK) by the Washington Post. Generally research on the homeless is spotty at best.

And what constitutes to riches when you make no income? Does the burger you eat out of the trash mean you're better off than someone who can only stuff dirt in their mouth? Yes, but which nations are actually full of poor doing that? And is the available food waste for consumption really a good and valid indicator of relative poverty?