Affordability vs. the Poverty Line
Optimist Economy
Kathryn Anne Edwards and Robin Rauzi
4.9 • 829 Ratings
🗓️ 3 February 2026
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
An essay went viral by claiming that $140,000 is what a family of four needs to just get by — a number higher than what 70% of American households earn. Conservative economists called it idiotic. Kathryn dismissed it and got a nasty DM. What’s the real controversy? It’s not that the poverty line is misleading. It's that we have no measure for our current affordability crisis. And the American mindset has been so warped by decades of bad economic policy that we think the only way to get help is to prove that we’re poor.
END NOTES:
- The essay in question: Part 1: My Life Is a Lie - by Michael W. Green,
- What economists thought: Viral essay says $140,000 should be the new poverty line - The Washington Post ; Cato: The $140,000 ‘Poverty Line’ Is Laughably Wrong, So Why Does It Feel Right? ; AEI: How Not to Redefine Poverty
- How U.S. poverty measures actually work: Two Ways the U.S. Census Bureau Measures Poverty to Capture Clearer Picture of Poverty in America
- Kathryn on Money with Katie (at min. 35)
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Maybe you already know about naked short selling. |
| 0:03.0 | Maybe you've personally shorted stocks yourself, but do you know about the time short sellers ruined a Super Bowl, basically? |
| 0:10.2 | For me, I was a little late, but red flags went up like, what is going on? |
| 0:14.3 | This is really scary. |
| 0:16.2 | At Planet Money, we get the story behind the money to explain how money works. |
| 0:22.7 | Listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. We had a lot of technical difficulties this time. This was so hard. It was so hard |
| 0:31.3 | and we didn't even do it. Oh, man. Oh, man. Hello and welcome to Hello. |
| 0:42.3 | Hello and welcome to Optimist Economy. |
| 0:44.0 | I'm Catherine Ann Edwards, Economist. |
| 0:45.4 | I'm Robin Rousey, editor. |
| 0:48.1 | On this show, we believe the U.S. economy can be better, |
| 0:51.1 | and we talk about how to get there, one problem and solution at a time. |
| 1:00.2 | Today on Optimist Economy, we're going to talk about an essay that made the rounds while we were on hiatus, suggesting that the new, quote-unquote, poverty line is $140,000. |
| 1:06.4 | Catherine has thoughts. |
| 1:07.2 | Spoiler, it's not. It's not. Just FY. F.Y. It's not. But we'll talk about why. |
| 1:11.7 | At the top of our show, a couple of announcements. Big announcement, which is I'm in Houston with Catherine, but after much travails, we're in two separate rooms trying to record this podcast. Fam, we wanted to be in the same room talking to each other. Couldn't do it. It did not work. on many levels. It didn't work. And luckily, we didn't do it because I think at some point |
| 1:29.7 | one of us would have died when we tripped over all the other. It did not work on many levels. It didn't work. And luckily, we didn't do it because I think at |
| 1:29.3 | some point one of us would have died when we tripped over all the cords. So this is a safer, |
| 1:35.4 | better way to podcast is to have a conversation when you're actually like 25 feet away in the next |
| 1:42.8 | room over. This is better. The future is now. |
| 1:46.3 | This feels more natural. It does feel more natural. So instead, we're just going to get |
| 1:52.0 | beers after the show together and not record it. Exactly. But you can trust it's happening this |
... |
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