A $140,000/Year Poverty Line? I: Stewarding & Utilizing Resources

Four factors making even rich people live poorly and hence feel poor in our immensely rich modern economy: a sense of precarity, a lack of centeredness, failures of stewardship, and an absence of mindfulness; all things that keep us from living wisely and well in our Attention Info-Bio Tech Economy. No, you are not poor if your household income is less than $140,000. But no matter how high your income is, you can make yourself live poorly. And it is surprisingly easy to do…

It continues to be the case that, every time something from the Free Press <http://thefp.com> brushes past my awareness, it almost invariably turns out to be deeply, stupidly, and even ignorantly wrong.

This time, it is Mike Green. And so we have clean-up on aisle #5 from Noah Smith:

Noah Smith: The “$140,000 poverty line” is very silly <https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-140000-poverty-line-is-very-silly>: ‘Mike Green <https://www.thefp.com/p/why-do-americans-feel-poor-because>… claimed… making less than $140,000 is poor…. There’s a much bigger market for the idea that $140,000 is poor than there is for the idea that $400,000 is middle-class. But… Green… is wrong…. He means that people can’t afford what he calls a “participation ticket”….

[But] if… even the basics of a “participation ticket” got further out of reach every year, then why are Americans flying to foreign countries, and going out to eat… working fewer hours and taking more leisure every year [with]… bigger houses, better MRIs, fancier food ingredients, and nicer cars, and also “luxuries” like foreign travel and restaurant meals. The “participation ticket”… is… to… a level of material luxury never before experienced by any middle class in any nation at any point in the history of the world…

And, related, crossing my screen the same day, we have John Scalzi:

John Scalzi: Poor Little Rich People <https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/11/28/poor-little-rich-people/>: ‘People making $500,000 a year… [yet] still frequently living paycheck to paycheck… vastly economically closer to someone in abject poverty than they are to… billionaire[s]…. If you are in the 1%… you’re comparing your lifestyle to other people in the 1%… people who have ten or a hundred times more income…. The temptation of the “lower rung rich” to financially overextend themselves to keep up appearances is real… [as] companies catering to [the] rich… know… customers don’t want to be seen counting their coins… shopping at Erewhon, not Aldi….

“Well, Scalzi, you’re

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