Thanks for sharing that. I've had similar experiences.

I grew up in Seattle, went to school in Philly, and just spent a year traveling through 14 countries in Asia (incl 6mo in India). The poverty on the streets of my hometown when I returned was absolutely shocking. And I found the poverty in Philadelphia to seem so much more crushing than what I saw in far poorer areas, like Indian slums or Laotian villages (I'm really struggling to deconstruct exactly why I had this feeling).

I think part of the reason for that contrast is that at least from my POV (being raised in poverty early on and only getting out of that that situation when my parents found work at Raytheon Beechcraft) is that poor people in the US will try to buy a the appearance of not being poor but never really save anything for things that really matter like healthcare and education. It's not that poor people can't save for it, but that it seems that US society puts an emphasis appearances rather than on the actual condition of one's economic standing. So, I've seen friends of mine (similarly poor or lower-middle-class) own nice clothes but have zip in terms of savings or things that could make their lives easier (ex. a well maintained car).

I want to emphasize that this isn't an attempt to convict people in those economic situations as bad, but that as a society we're really superficial in terms of taking care of poverty itself. Having a house, a car, and etc doesn't mean you can't be poor or have no economic safety net to even maintain that standard of living which my parents still don't (even at 57 years of age). What makes this worse is the fact that some people snub anyone that is perceptibly "poor". It's something that irks me because I've known very bright and capable people of the same economic standing as I started with getting rejected from job opportunities and even social occasions purely based on their economic standing. Then people wonder why poor people stay poor.

I have a very good friend that lives in one of Romania's largest cities. She regularly shows me photos of her city, and her surroundings, and I know what the economic prospects are of the people that live there. My opinion is the exact opposite of yours. I can't imagine the despair, the poverty, the lack of potential, that nations such as Bulgaria (median income of about $300-$400 / month) or Romania face. She just watched her grandmother die, with 'free' healthcare, because the doctors were so horrible they couldn't even begin to figure out what was wrong with her, and the local hospital had no MRI or CT machines - as she got worse, they wanted to take her to another hospital in another city, but the family - which has an average income in Romania - had no car to make the trips. So the grandmother died, at about 67 years old, while the family never even found out what she died of. Must be that universal healthcare I hear so much about that everyone but Americans have.

I think you're completely off base, and obviously so. Americans have among the highest disposable incomes on earth, falling household to income debt levels, and a jobs picture that has been improving non-stop for five years. Americans also have among the highest median household net wealth levels of any nation, and the best universities by far. Bulgaria? That claim almost comes across more as propaganda, when you understand that even Romanians look down upon the poverty in Bulgaria.

I personally grew up in one of the poorest parts of America, Appalachia. My experience is the exact opposite of what you describe. Where I lived there were no homeless; wages were half the national average, and we had great public schools, with some of the best rated teachers in the state; everyone had a home, and a car; a nearly zero murder rate; the standard of living was on par with the US median because the cost of living was very low; unemployment was higher, and people lived relatively simple lives when it comes to materialism. This is all mostly still true there today. Compared to the childhood of real poverty my Romanian friend endured growing up there in the 1990s, I grew up in paradise. Where I grew up, the poor there today have access to medical care and routine medical tech via medicaid, which the median household in her Romanian city can't get access to without going to Bucharest.

But don't take my word for it -

OECD better life index:

http://cdn.dejanseo.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/better...

And

http://media.economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/fu...

You could also run a dozen other economic metrics like long-term unemployed, unemployment rate, median income, median household net worth, household debt to income, health outcomes from medical care, access to the latest medical technology and drugs. You could compare classic markers for materialism for the poverty line and what it's defined by in say the US vs Bulgaria. The US does extremely well in most comparisons. There are perhaps eight countries on earth that produce better quality of life outcomes than the US, and for the top 75% maybe only five countries do better.