Comment by dheera

Medicare is a different thing, the government should be providing medical care for everyone to begin with, regardless of what they make.

My definition is if you need to borrow money to put a roof over your head, at the minimum renting, you're in poverty. There are huge chunks of the US population borrowing money to pay for rent.

If your locality doesn't provide adequate public transit, then a car is a necessity, and the onus is now on the locality's economy to make sure everyone can access that; if your locality doesn't pay high enough to afford that car without borrowing money, then yes, you're in poverty. Alternatively, the locality can choose to provide adequate, safe public transit, and the bar of poverty would change.

Most of the US doesn't think this way because they're delusional and have been conditioned to feed the financial system and pay for things with money they don't have.