Poverty - Sometimes the Problem, Sometimes a Symptom and Sometime Not an Issue

This whole issue about poverty has lead me to some deep thinking.  What exactly is poverty?  I find it rather odd that poverty seems to be solely defined in economic terms.  The whole thing starts with a materialistic mindset and measures how plugged into consumerism someone is compared to others.  Seems as though when the media is talking about poverty, they are really talking about those who are losing the rat race.

This raises the question, is it bad to be losing the rat race?  I was clearly losing the rat race while putting myself through college but I had some of the best times of my life.  Sure having enough money to eat three meals a day would have been nice but clearly it wasn't essential to my well being.  Looking at other parts of the world we can find entire communities that would classified as poverty stricken.  Do these people necessarily feel deprived?  What is their quality of life?  Are they happy?

I guess my issue with poverty is that it says more about the person collecting the data than it does about the population.  It doesn't identify people who are victims since some in poverty view themselves as rich.  Not being in poverty doesn't really mean anything either.  We as a country have not be able to address poverty because poverty isn't the problem.  Poverty is purely a measure of wealth and we should all know by now that wealth has very little correlation to anything other than having the ability to buy more "stuff".

What we really need to look at is the quality of life.  This includes basic needs such as food and shelter but also touches on the intangibles.  It includes internal values as well as interactions with others.  Poverty might be a useful gauge but only when used along side a full complement of gauges on a dashboard.  Here some gauges I think we need to focus on.

• 1 in 10 Americans is on antidepressants
• 36% of adult Americans are obese
• U.S. Suicide Rate 11.8 per 100,000 a year
• Over 2,000,000 people are incarcerated in the United States