Poor?

James Joyner takes on the word    “Poor”

Julian Sanchez takes issue with the use of the words “underresourced” and “underprivileged” as euphemism for “poor,” arguing that the former is ungrammatical and the latter incoherent.

He’s right, I think, that “poor” is both descriptive and inoffensive. Arguably, though, some substantial percentage of Americans living in “poverty” are in fact merely “underprivileged” in precisely the way Julian objects to the use of the word:

Underprivileged makes no sense because a “privilege” is a special favor or advantage. It is, by definition, not the sort of thing everyone is supposed to have. You can wish to live in a society where nobody is poor, but it’s just incoherent to wish for a society in which “everybody is privileged,” though the “under” implies that this would be desirable.

We live in a society in which case it is not only possible but commonplace to be simultaneously fat and poor. Almost any “poor” American would be considered “privileged” indeed by a poor African.

True. In the end, the only reason I can see for switching it from “Poor” to “underresourced” and “underprivileged” is that the latter are far easier to tag as ‘victims”.

Victimization, of course, being a central theme of those promoting the welfare state, these days.

Addendum: (David L)   As the term poor is commonly accepted, the lack of access to the essential commodities of life, the poor simply do not exist in the United States.   Plainly speeking, we have no poor.

How would you describe a person in this situation:

[H]as a car, air conditioning, a refrigerator, a stove, a clothes washer and dryer, and a microwave. He has two color televisions, cable or satellite TV reception, a VCR or DVD player, and a stereo. He is able to obtain medical care. His home is in good repair and is not overcrowded. By his own report, his family is not hungry and he had sufficient funds in the past year to meet his family’s essential needs.

The federal goverment describes this as poor.  The problem is that poverty is the lack of access to the necessary commodities of life.  The Census Bureau only measures the lack of access to cash.