Yes, in India ~50% of the population doesn't have regular access to clean water or a sewage system. Yes, I'd rather be poor in the US than poor in India. But I maintain that the state of poverty in the US (and other western countries) is a far bigger failure than the state of poverty in any developing country.
Also, I can't help but link to this great post whenever talking about poverty:
Food insecurity in the US is meaningless. The definition is so broad it encompasses all sorts of ridiculous situations.
Consider a morbidly obese person who eats 6 cheeseburgers/day. At dinner time on the 30'th day of the month (payday is the 1'st of next month) they run out of money, and are only able to purchase 4 cheeseburgers that day. By the definition of the USDA, this person is food insecure.
Comparing poverty in the US to poverty in India is a misnomer - poor people in the US are actually richer than the rich (top 5%) in India. I say this based on both personal experience and statistics: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/the-haves-and-t...
Roughly 10% of americans were food-insecure at some point in a year (2)
(1) http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/12poverty.shtml
(2) http://webarchives.cdlib.org/sw1s17tt5t/http://ers.usda.gov/...
Yes, in India ~50% of the population doesn't have regular access to clean water or a sewage system. Yes, I'd rather be poor in the US than poor in India. But I maintain that the state of poverty in the US (and other western countries) is a far bigger failure than the state of poverty in any developing country.
Also, I can't help but link to this great post whenever talking about poverty:
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2005/09/03/being-poor/
the mac and cheese one makes me tear up every time I read it.