{"id":20123,"date":"2025-12-31T14:13:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T22:13:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/?p=20123"},"modified":"2025-12-31T19:08:52","modified_gmt":"2026-01-01T03:08:52","slug":"doomerism-and-the-definition-of-poverty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/2025\/12\/31\/doomerism-and-the-definition-of-poverty\/","title":{"rendered":"Doomerism: And the definition of &#8220;poverty&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Doomerists loved this claim of Michael Green that you need around $140,000 per year in income to not live in &#8220;poverty&#8221;!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>&#8220;But what if it were really $140,000? Late last month, the investor and Substack writer Michael Green&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.yesigiveafig.com\/p\/part-1-my-life-is-a-lie\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">advanced this attention-grabbing claim<\/a>, which implies that a majority of Americans are living in poverty today.&#8221; &#8230;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Under modest examination, Green\u2019s empirical claims fall apart. But they bespeak a troubling trend among the commentariat\u2014and even some scholars\u2014of exaggerating the extent of poverty in America. Social-justice discourse, whether about environmentalism, racism, sexism, or poverty, has a tendency to advance maximalist claims as a sign of maximal concern. The intention is usually to express solidarity with the oppressed. But collapsing the distinction between the actual poor and the lower-middle class obscures more than it helps. And talking about poverty as intractable or unfixable is a kind of demotivational speaking.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.msn.com\/en-us\/money\/markets\/americans-can-t-believe-how-rich-they-are\/ar-AA1Sxotw\">Americans can\u2019t believe how rich they are<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Doomers love the idea that if you earn less than about $140k\/year, you live in poverty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,355,15,357,359,24,25,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cherry-picking","category-content-mill-click-bait","category-culture-of-perpetual-outrage","category-daily-doomer","category-everything-is-awful","category-in-practice","category-internet-meme","category-logical-fallacy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20123"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20123\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20149,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20123\/revisions\/20149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}