(via Townhall) Two startling stories that paint a radically different view of how lower income and Poverty looks in America today.    First, A World Connected has a series of FASCINATING interviews with NYC cabbies who describe their stories and how / when they came to America.   Lotsa Desi's are interviewed but I found this story the most amazing:

Tony from Columbia Tony has driven a cab for 26 years in New York. During that time, he has raised two children and bought his own home. He put his children, who now have three children of their own, through college. He's proud of them and grateful for the opportunities that freedom has given him.

Second, Human Events Online has a fascinating portrait of the typical "poor" family in America today:

The bulk of the "poor" live in material conditions that would have been judged as comfortable or well-off just a few generations ago. Today, the expenditures per person of the lowest income one-fifth (or quintile) of households equal those of the median American household in the early 1970s, after adjusting for inflation.

...Forty-six per cent of all poor households actually own their own homes. The average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau is a three-bedroom house with one and a half baths, a garage and porch or patio.

...Seventy-six per cent of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, 30 years ago only 36% of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning

...The average poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens and other cities throughout Europe. (Note: These comparisons are to the average citizens in foreign countries not to those classified as poor.)

...Nearly three-quarters of poor households own a car; 30% own two or more cars.

...As a group the poor are far from being chronically undernourished. The average consumption of protein, vitamins and minerals is virtually the same for poor and middle-class children, and in most cases is well above recommended norms. Poor children actually consume more meat than do higher-income children and have average protein intakes 100% above recommended levels.

Poverty as a statistcal construct in a sense will always exist.   AND, I'm definitely not advocating that we dismantle welfare or foodstamps or anything like that - I do believe in some level of state support for the underprivileged.   However, I think data like this is indicative that our rapacious, victimizing, tyrannical capitalist system has one critical attribute - it works!  Even for the victim. 

This is clearly not the view many of my SF brethren have of this wonderful economic system - they mindnumbingly repeat statistics & beat their chests in defense of The Poor in an attempt to upend the entire system......  But little do they realize that functionaries they chastise like Wal-Mart, Globalization (e.g. trade liberalization with China and India), and Financial wizardry (e.g. low cost credit, mortgages) have been FAR more relevant factors in the transformation of Poor lifestyles over the past 30 yrs than any government program they could concieve.

---

UPDATE: Fantastic post by Kevin @ Truck& Barter with more data about income mobility and income growth rates. Put simply (and somewhat misleadingly), the Poor are getting richer - in absolute terms - faster than the rich.

---