I’m with you on that. The notion that the bottom 10% of our society is always “poor” is a fallacy. The “poor” in that strata in the US today live better than royalty did a couple hundred years ago.
Want to shock a socialist? Tell them that in many ways in 1900, the working poor in the tenements of Manchester England, or NY, NY lived better in some ways than Boyars (minor Russian Noblemen). The Boyar seldom had running water, almost all of the tenements had cold running water and many (most?) had hot and cold running water. The tenement dweller may have had as many changes of clothes as some of the Boyars (the poorer ones), possibly less than 10 in both cases. The Tenement dweller would have had better access to fresh meat, even if they could not have afforded to take advantage of it every day. Note the Tenement dweller would have been working for an extremely exploitative industrialist.