The Poverty Line is an invention of the United States Department of Agriculture. It does not apply to Germany, obviously. Germany does not have anybody below the Poverty Line, because there is no such thing as a German Poverty Line.
It would be interesting to compare the economic condition of the American poor with the German poor, but nobody bothers to do that. They just use our government-generated statistics to create sound bites to reinforce their own ignorance.
As for the brutal widening of the gap between rich and poor, what does that have to do with the plight of the poor? The fact of the matter is that the US poor are better off, by every conceivable measure, year after year. Their income, standard of living, and employment prospects continue to improve, while Germany and the rest of Europe stagnates.
People who complain about the gap between the rich and the poor are really complaining that the rich are too rich. Well, if being too rich is a problem, it is a problem I would like to have. Truth be told, good economic conditions make some folks very rich, but they make everybody better off. Whining about the gap between the extremes of rich and poor is just a poor attempt to find a negative in what is an altogether positive thing.
But it should not surprise us when ignorant Europeans parrot these idiotic talking points. They have been a staple of the US Democrat Party for the last 25 years. If all you did was listen to Democrat politicians and watch American television, you could easily get this mistaken impression.
Excellent thoughts
The Germans, like the French, have a special kind of poor--the Muslims. They can't be bougth off with social beneefits and increasingly they won't assimilate. If Turkey is admitted to the EU, Katy bar the door!