It all depends on what the definition of “poor” is...
Here’s the thing. If you are living in a house that you paid $300k for, and it’s currently valued at $240k....you are locked into a mess. You probably are paying your entire paycheck for the mortgage, which you cannot refinance or work up a new deal, or sell the house because of being underwater. So you pay your monthly salary toward the house and utility bill.
You are exiting off your wife’s paycheck, which you use to pay for two cars, insurance, food, and various essentials of life. To be honest, you are pretty much living on the margins of life and have the poster of “poverty” above your head. You aren’t middle-class anymore because one entire paycheck is paying for a stupid mortgage that you really can’t afford but you were stupid enough to convince yourself you could.
So a whole segment of society is falling off the middle-class table....onto the poverty table. You’d laugh about this and say that a family hauling in $60k after taxes ought to be well beyond poverty, but after you deduct stupid economic decisions....they are on the margins of poverty.
The definition of “poor” isn’t all what you think it is. There are some guys who retired back in 2002 with a million-dollar IRA and a paid-up house....went through the economic stumble of 2008/2009, and today....have to live off their social security check and a greatly decreased input from their IRA which amounts to an extra $800 a month, and hope that things don’t collapse again. Their private golf membership is gone....the second car is gone....and their one vacation a year is a week visiting their daughter in Florida.
Poverty as defined by the left is when someone has more money than someone else...less those in Washington who don't count as part of the equation.