I recently read an article by Attrishu Bordoloi called "On Poverty: Raising the Threshold" that piqued my curiosity. He wrote that the World Bank "benchmark" for poverty was $2.15 per day, and recommended $7 a day. I wondered what part of the world he (and they) were thinking of; it certainly wasn't the United States of America that I've come to know. You couldn't live here legally for anything near that, at any rate. Bordoloi points out in his article this complication: life in civilization has been made artificially expensive, and this trend is increasing. As much as we try to improve the standard of living, we make it even harder to do what we need to do to get our needs met collectively, and the requirements imposed by those in control increase in tandem. Technology is created, but it needs to be bought, set up, and made functional, and, all too soon, used for multifarious purposes just to stay inside the law. From here on, at any rate, I will provide the gruesome details.

Many of us are able to live in buildings that keep us warm or cool, as needed, and dry, and protect us from any but the most enterprising burglars. But not everyone has the money to do so, and to live in other arrangements is generally against the law. As for food, most grocery stores still accept cash, but credit cards and debit cards are becoming the rule. Of course, credit cards require a certain minimum annual income, much more than $7. Then there are utilities, a survival necessity in most U.S. climates, but to pay for them, you not only need a bank account, an online means for accessing your account online, which is associated with your bank. Then you need a means for paying income and property taxes. And of course, unless you live near a big city downtown, you will need a car and associated insurance, and used ones are unreliable; you will also have to compete vigorously for opportunities to renew your driver's license, even if your record has been clean for the past 30 years. And it's become necessary, not just to have a computer, but a smart phone. Many businesses feel free to change their schedules frequently, since they can just contact you on your smart phone. So this comes to maybe $50,000 a year? And this does not account for medical or legal expenses; the former might involve lavish medical insurance premiums or you will be in danger of being in debt the rest of your life. Of course, in an age with passwords and serial numbers, online theft is a constant threat, as keeping track of these gets harder and harder and criminal hackers keep upping their game. In fact, some people are losing their homes, not simply because they lack a security system but because thieves have obtained access to the documents that prove ownership. And it wasn't always that way, and hadn't had to be!

One of the major engines driving poverty is also a recent one: the city tech center. A major tech corporation puts its headquarters or major operation in a city, bringing in tens of thousands of highly paid tech workers and their families. This drives prices up, including those of the many new homes, not necessarily houses, having to be constructed. As a result, those who rent might soon find their housing unaffordable. Many of these people will be local government workers, as well as owners and employees of small businesses which do not necessarily provide services appealing to the rich. This means that services will become ever more meager, whether these people become homeless locally or move to other municipalities.

Recently, because of a Congressional funding logjam, we learned that 42 million Americans are on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as Food Stamps, and are in danger of losing coverage. Yet the U.S. is considered to be a fabulously rich country.

Bad Economics

Our continuing, and worsening, problem with unaffordable medical care is caused, rather than solved, by ever-increasing government spending. The ACA was a program described as "insurance" but in fact is a subsidy. As government spent more on coverage, medical service prices soared, causing medical insurance premiums to rise in tandem, according to a principle known for decades. This problem was worsened by "temporary" COVID subsidies, causing medical care prices, and therefore ACA plan insurance premiums, to soar even more. Some people argue that we don't know what medical care prices really are, because of the lack of transparency on the part of the medical care industry which we have gotten used to living with. But there is really no good reason to believe that these prices have been stable.

Here is a simple analogy: imagine a system in which the government copes with a widespread kidnapping problem by providing the families of kidnapping victims with the money to pay the ransom demanded by the kidnappers. For a while, it works, with some inevitable misery on the part of the victims. But the kidnapping is repeated, with a demand for higher ransoms. The government responds by increasing ransom benefits for the victims' families. Finally, so much kidnapping takes place and the government spends so much on these benefits that the economy collapses.

How special groups were held back, over and over again

The other day, I watched a video of Marilyn Monroe singing "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend", and it took on new meaning. Jewelry must have been very helpful during those harsh days when women couldn't legally get credit. Indeed, one of my distant cousins, who had a good job working for a department store many years ago, maintained a large collection of jewelry in a safe to protect her financial security. Gold is looking better and better as more people compete for shrinking resources and prices soar. But where will we keep our cash, especially when it's no longer accepted? Gold and jewelry aren't very liquid, and, when cash is no longer a payment option, how can they be "cashed" in?

So often we're reminded that women weren't allowed to "take out credit" as late as the '80s. Only men could have credit cards until Ruth Bader Ginsburg saved the day. Well, back in the '70s, I didn't give it a moment's thought: I had an S&L account, since it paid higher interest than banks did, and used money orders to pay my rent. Every two weeks, we were handed paychecks, and I deposited mine in the S&L. After a while, I took out CDs and, later on, a high-interest real estate deed. Eventually I invested. I didn't feel handicapped -- until credit cards became de rigeur! It became more and more difficult to use cash. Now, perhaps because of the widely believed contagion threat of cash during the COVID pandemic, cash might be banned altogether, plunging a whole segment of the population into poverty. That, of course, makes jewelry, the old financial standby of women, less liquid than ever! The morale of the story: just because you think you've attained equal rights today doesn't mean you can't lose them tomorrow!