Mar 15 JDN 2461115

What is poverty? It seems like a simple question, one we should all already know the answer to; but it turns out to be surprisingly complicated.

In practice, we mainly define some amount of income or consumption that is considered a “poverty line”, and declare that everyone below that line is in poverty, while everyone above it is not.

This post is about why that doesn’t work.

The most obvious question is of course: How do we draw that line? Some absolute level, or relative to income in the rest of society? Different places do it differently.

But I have come to realize that there is actually a deeper reason why there will never be a satisfying choice of “poverty line”:

There is no specific amount of income that could ever decide whether someone is in poverty.

It’s not a question of purchasing power. prices, or inflation. It’s not something you can adjust for statistically. It’s a fundamental error in defining the concept of poverty.

The problem is this:

Human needs are not fungible.

This Less Wrong post on “Anoxistan” really opened my eyes to that: No amount of money can make up for the fact that you’re missing something you need, be it a roof over your head, food on your table, clean water to drink, or medical care—or, as in the parable, air to breathe.

The best definition of poverty, then, is something like this:

Poverty is having to struggle to meet basic human material needs.

(I specify “material” needs, because someone who is alone and unloved has unmet human needs, but it is not the responsibility of even a utopian fully automated luxury communist society to provide for those needs. They may very well be miserable, but it does not make them poor.)

Maybe—maybe—in a well-functioning market economy, we can sort of muddle through by making a list of what everyone needs, finding the prices for all those goods and services, adding that up, and declaring that the poverty line. (This is often what we actually do, in fact.) The notion would then be that, as long as you have at least that amount of money, you can probably buy all the things you need.

But this rapidly breaks down if you aren’t facing the same prices as what were used to make that aggregation—which you almost never are, because nobody is the average American living in the average American city. And it also misses the fact that security is a human need, and simply having the necessary income for now is not at all the same thing as knowing that you’ll continue to have the necessary income in the future.

One Libertarian commentator asked me: “Would you really switch places with Rockefeller if you could?”

I had to think about it: I’d be losing a lot of things, for sure. No Internet, no cell phone, no computer, no video games. The quality of my clothes might actually be worse (though my wardrobe would surely be larger). Finding vegetarian food I enjoy might actually be more of a challenge, though I could surely import it from anywhere. Worst of all, I would lose access to many medical treatments I currently depend upon: Treatment of migraines in the late 19^th century was considerably worse, and treatment of depression was essentially nonexistent.

Since this is about wealth, I think we can ignore the fact that I’d be moving into a terrifyingly racist, misogynistic and homophobic society. That itself might actually be the reason I wouldn’t really want to make the switch. But you can simultaneously believe that the late 19^th century was a worse time than today for everyone who wasn’t a White cisgender heterosexual man, and also that Rockefeller was much richer than you’ll ever be.

But what would I gain? Power, though I have very little interest in that. Opportunities for philanthropy, which I do care about, but they’d benefit other people more than myself. Real estate—I don’t even own my own home, and Rockefeller owned multiple mansions, including, famously, the Casements in Florida.

But above all, I would gain security. Owning an oil company would allow me to live comfortably for the rest of my life, and most likely also allow my heirs to live comfortably for their entire lives, without me ever needing to work another day. I could still take jobs if I wanted them, but no employer would ever have any power over me. If I was unhappy at a job, I could just leave. If I wanted to spend a month, or a year, or a decade, without working at all, I could just do that. That is what it means to be rich. That is what Rockfeller had that I don’t think I will ever have.

The difference between being rich and being poor is security.

As long as anyone is struggling to make ends meet, poverty exists.

As long as anyone is afraid to lose their job, poverty exists.

As long as anyone is choosing not to have children because they don’t think they can afford them, poverty exists.

As long as bosses can abuse their employees and get away with it, poverty exists.

And in fact, it begins to look like poverty in the United States has not been decreasing over the last two generations, even as our per-capita GDP and median income have continued to rise and our population below “the poverty line” have fallen. (Indeed, that particular measure of “unable to afford children” has very clearly greatly increased, and is a very bad sign for our society’s future.)

This is how our economy is failing. It has given us lots more stuff, and made some things available to all that were once only available to the rich; but it has not freed us from the constant struggle to meet our basic needs, even though there are clearly plenty of resources available to do that.