You cannot compare apples and oranges - it doesn't work. You cannot take a western standardized measure and apply it to another country where infrastructure costs, climate, technology, health, education, housing, military etc are all rolled into one and put it up against another country where half of those things do not exist - because of a government unwillingness or inability to progress in the same way.
The poverty rate is set inside the country, because that is what the country has determined people should be able to exist on. In many cases, this is an unrealistic figure because it does not include the cost of food, transportation or utilities but it is still the figure that is determined statistically. The same figure cannot be applied equally to the same measure in another country that may not have the same measure of application.
It would be easier to compare say rental costs, food costs, medicine, education, transportation etc. If the poverty level in the USA is set at approximately $14.500.00 for a couple, and that couple for example is living in an 800 sq foot trailer in California it is very easy to see that said couple is not living on $114.00 a day. Average rent is about $800.00 a month plus utilities for about a minimum of $1,000. a month. That leaves the couple about $2500.00 for the rest of the year to live on - or about $200.00 a month or about $50.00 per week.
Federal minimum wage is $7.50 and out of that wage, taxes are taken which go into a pool of taxes which in turn a portion is diverted into impoverished countries for medical or other aid.
There is therefore, no way to realistically compare except to say that there are many people in the USA who have gone to bed hungry and cold. There are many seniors and poor who eat sparsely. There are many who close off rooms in their homes during winter because they cannot afford the heating costs. Many cut back on medicine or go without because they cannot afford what they need. Tonight, thousands will sit in the dark because the power has been cut off and thousands more will receive eviction or foreclosure notices for housing they cannot afford. Hundreds more will be moving out of the tents the cities are evicting them from and moving into another tent somewhere else, while somewhere another hundred thousand fathers are putting blankets over their kids sleeping in the back seat of the car - their new home.
Standards set in the 'western' world were set because it was believed this was a standard of quality of life in that 'western' world - when we have disintegrated into a level where we believe our people must feel poverty as determined in the 'underprivileged' countries, it says a lot for how low our standards have dropped and to what we may start to find acceptable. sammieswife.
