Show notes
There was a no good, quite bad article by Michael Green that went viral. The condensed version was entitled ‘The Valley of Death: Why $100,000 Is the New Poverty,’ and a follow-up here. His actual claim in that post, which was what caught fire, was that the poverty line should be $140,000, and even that this number is him ‘being conservative.’ Obviously that is not remotely true, given that: America is the richest large country in history by a wide margin. $140,000 is at or above median household income. You can observe trivially that a majority of Americans are not in poverty. Today's post covers this narrow question as background, including Green's response. If you’ve already had your fill of that, including ‘well, yes, obviously, how are we bothering with all this, I know it went viral but someone was being Wrong On The Internet’ then you are not wrong. You can safely skip this post. It's fine. I’m writing this as a lead-in to broader future discussions of the underlying questions: How hard life actually is right now in various ways, in various senses. [...] ---Outline:(01:51) None Of This Makes Any Sense(03:40) Let's Debunk The Whole Calculation Up Front(07:52) The Debunking Chorus(12:12) Okay It's Not $140k But The Vibes Mean Something(13:34) Needing Two Incomes Has A High Cost(17:31) I Lied...(21:41) ...But That's Not Important Right Now(21:55) Poverty Trap(24:48) Poverty Trap Versus Poverty Line(28:04) Double or Nothing The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration. --- First published: December 16th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/8TWLyvjA6Qsb62dAJ/the-usd140-000-question --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.