Well, a lot of the people you're addressing here are the ones benefiting, so I don't know what sort of answer you're expecting.

You can expect people to have empathy and be self-aware. It doesn't mean your expectations will be met, but it's a sad world we live in where you dismiss this as unrealistic.

Everyone in the US is benefiting from this.

People in the US are so comfortable they don't seem to have a clue what real hardship actually is.

Well, at the very least the ones who die from exposure in the winter because they don't have a place to live, the ones who die because they can't afford medical care, and so on have a clue what real hardship is.

"In the United States: 6,660 people died from hypothermia or exposure to cold from 2006 to 2010, an average of 1,320 deaths a year." [1]

It isn't split up along poverty vs. accident lines, but this is not a major cause of death in the US.

[1] http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr076.pdf

The deaths amongst the homeless are underrepresented in the statistics for obvious reasons. But ignoring that...

> this is not a major cause of death in the US.

Wait, so people dying due to poverty isn't something that deserves attention just because it isn't common enough?

This discussion is if the United States has an issue with poverty, and the answer is: no it does not.

A tiny fraction of people dying from cold is not an indication that the US has a poverty issue.

Sure help them, no one is disputing that, but that's also not what's being discussed here.

Yes, that's why the life expectancy of the US, the richest empire in history, is ranked 51 out of all countries, just below Cuba and above Albania.

The United States has the highest median income in the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income

If we look at the income level of the poorest 10%, the United States ranks 16th—not as good, but still among the 10% best countries: https://ourworldindata.org/poverty (click on the Table tab)

> The United States has the highest median income in the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income

Only because it's unique among developed countries in seeing healthcare costs as disposable income.

Economists thought of that; the US is still very high income "after taxes and transfers" and most healthcare costs in the US aren't out of pocket anyway.

> Economists thought of that; the US is still very high income "after taxes and transfers"

You only have to look at the definition in their link to see that US healthcare costs don't get adjusted for.

> most healthcare costs in the US aren't out of pocket anyway.

Right, most people pay health insurance in a way that's indistinguishable from paying taxes in practice (although the US system also comes with significant out-of-pocket costs, so just including insurance costs wouldn't tell the full story). But that "disposable income" metric is defined in a way that considers US-style health insurance voluntary and therefore money spent on that is disposable income (even though it never actually hits someone's bank account in practice), whereas in a country with tax-funded healthcare or mandatory health insurance (unless it qualifies as "social insurance", but normally it doesn't) the costs of that aren't counted in that person's income.

No, it’s in spite of US spending more in taxes on healthcare than what some developed countries use to cover their entire population.

You’re both saying the same thing

That is a "yes even though" not a no

The poverty rate is not high. Actual hunger in the US is so low that they had to pick a new metric "food insecurity" to work on.

Maybe travel a bit and see what actual poverty is.

Sure, when your options are "eat Jack in the Box's 99¢ two tacos deal or starve" you will eat the tacos.

Can't wait until you people are justifying soylent green in a couple decades.

How about access to electricity, clean water, modern medicine.

Even our poor people have cars.

We all benefit and even our pets have a higher quality of life than most people in the third world.

> How about access to electricity, clean water, modern medicine.

> Even our poor people have cars.

The luckier ones, sure, but there are plenty of people in the US that have none of that.