Just How Poor Are the U.S.'s Poor?

Dorthea Lange's 1936 poverty study still broadly applies.

A new study released by the Brookings Institution gives us an ugly inside view--not the government slant and not the Republican perspective--on poverty in the U.S. At the very bottom, it's much worse than we thought, worse even than the poverty in some Third World nations.

The study, by Luke Shaefer and Kathryn Edin, shows that millions of Americans live on less than $2 a day. The study places the United States in the same reference as countries receiving our foreign aid because they are so poor. Meanwhile, at the other end of the spectrum where the Koch brothers control our government ...