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Jayson_Virissimo comments on A signaling theory of class x politics interaction - Less Wrong
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By absolute number this is true. See this graph. Note that this data only goes back to 1959. Prior to that there was no federal definition of poverty. So it seems at least fair to say that as far back as the federal government has been measuring it there are by this metric more poor Americans than ever before. The graph does show that as a percentage measure this isn't the highest.
That graph measures inequality of income, not poverty.
Huh? That graph is measuring numbers and percentages of people who don't meet the poverty threshold. That's defined by an estimate that they don't have enough income to meet basic needs such as food and shelter.
the poverty threshold is a much worse metric than looking directly at various parameters for living standards.
I agree, but poverty and efforts for its alleviation aren't really about material concerns. Everyone having say food, shelter from the elements and basic healthcare can be made to work. But poverty as in relative poverty is unavoidable.
Why?
Can you expand on this? The poverty threshold in the US is designed to incorporate parameters for living standards regarding food and other essentials. How would you do things differently? It does have some problems certainly, like not taking into account differing costs of living in different locations, but as a rough measure for this purpose it seems fine.
After further investigation I retract the "much worse" comment. It is a little more precise than I previously thought.
Oh, my mistake. I thought it was measuring "relative poverty" like the EU does.