As many may already know, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, made communism his main target of attack during the recent commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the nation's independence.

Coincidentally, from Lima, Peru's newly elected president, Keiko Fujimori, openly attacked communism, calling it the greatest evil for nations, without mentioning at all that the groups fighting against it have been the cause of this. In short, another weapon for the right wing, sponsored by the Colorado Party president.

All of this clashes with the speech by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani—labeled a communist by Trump—who, on the occasion of Independence Day, reflected on the different perceptions regarding values, freedoms, and immigration in the United States.

During his speech, he emphasized that in "the richest country in history, children go to bed hungry, while the world's first billionaire—Elon Musk—is eager to earn even more." “We see monopolies dominating every industry and oligarchs buying elections,” he continued, before criticizing the anti-immigrant policies implemented by the Trump Administration: “We see masked agents terrorizing our streets, eating the food prepared by our undocumented neighbors, before taking them away in unmarked vans.”

In this context, he evoked the words of one of the country’s Founding Fathers, Thomas Paine, who saw the U.S. as a refuge “for the persecuted who love civic and religious liberty.” However, today, “too many of our leaders do not believe in a vision of this nation as a haven for the persecuted, but rather as one that persecutes those who seek asylum,” he lamented.

All of this is reflected in the rising poverty rates in the United States.

Regardless of the fact that an undetermined number of people live on the streets, begging and suffering from drug-related health issues, especially in the country's major cities, it’s estimated that the number of people living in poverty outside of this shameful and extreme situation amounts to 42 million. This figure is higher than the official 2024 figure—the first year of Trump's second term—which placed it at 35.9 million, an official poverty rate of 10.6%.

Under the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM), which incorporates taxes, government assistance, work expenses, and medical costs, the rate rises to 12.9%. This difference is not a technical detail: it completely changes the way we understand the problem.

The American publishing platform Quinto Frente, which claims to be independent, illustrates this point: “Imagine a single mother working part-time, paying rent in an expensive city, and each month having to choose between gas, food, and a doctor’s visit. This picture is not a statistical exception; it’s the kind of situation American poverty often masks when only annual income before taxes is considered, without adjusting for housing, healthcare, or social assistance.”

Practical assessment: the official figure is useful for comparing trends, but it doesn’t always reflect the true cost of living, housing, healthcare, and transportation. Poverty varies significantly depending on housing, employment, household composition, and access to social support.

In the United States, the Census Bureau uses the official poverty measure to determine who falls below a monetary threshold that varies according to family size and composition. This threshold doesn’t change by region, although it’s adjusted for inflation. The official methodology uses monetary income before taxes and does not include capital gains or non-monetary benefits such as public housing, Medicaid, or food stamps.

The Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) corrects for some of this bias. It includes federal and state taxes, labor costs, and medical expenses, and also adjusts for geographic variations in housing costs. This is why the SPM is often higher than the official poverty measure: not because it “exaggerates,” but because it more closely reflects the real cost of living in different housing and healthcare markets. This is a reasonable inference based on its methodological design.

CONCENTRATION

Poverty is not evenly distributed. In the 2024 data, poverty in states and metropolitan areas continued to show uneven geography. Among the 25 most populous metropolitan areas, Washington, D.C., and Minneapolis registered 8.3%, Denver 8.5%, and Boston and Seattle 8.8%; at the high end were Houston with 14.4% and Detroit with 14.1%.

At the state level, the 2024 Census Bureau report indicated that poverty decreased in 13 states and Puerto Rico, increased in North Dakota and the District of Columbia, and remained largely unchanged in 36 states. For subnational analysis, the Bureau recommends three-year averages for statistical reliability; under this approach, Utah was among the states with the lowest official poverty rate (6.6%) and Louisiana among the highest (19.4%), while California was among the highest in the Southern Pacific (17.7%).

This pattern is important for journalists and policymakers: poverty in the United States is a national phenomenon, but its territorial manifestations are local. The map changes according to the housing market, wage levels, cost of living, and demographic structure of each state or metropolitan area.

THOSE MOST AFFECTED

Age inequality remains evident. In the 2023 American Community Survey (ACS), the child poverty rate was 16.0%, compared to 12.5% for the total population; among people 65 and older, the rate was 11.3%. In other words, children remain the most vulnerable group, although older adults also show persistent vulnerability.

In the 2024 national report, the Census Bureau noted that the official rate decreased for white, Asian, and Hispanic people, while the child poverty rate increased for people 65 and older and for Black people. This divergence matters because it reveals that an improvement in the official metric does not always translate into an equivalent improvement when real household costs and support are factored in.

There’s also a strong regional bias. In 2023, more than three-quarters of Southern states had child poverty rates of 17% or higher, while in the Northeast and West, most states fell into the lower categories. New Mexico, Louisiana, and Mississippi appeared at the high end of child poverty; New Hampshire, North Dakota, Vermont, and Utah at the low end.

WORK ISN'T EVERYTHING

Work and sufficient income are not the same thing. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the working poor rate among people in the workforce for 27 weeks or more was 3.8%. Among those who typically worked full-time, it was 2.4%, while among part-time workers it rose to 9.4%. Having a job reduces the risk of poverty, but it doesn't eliminate it.

The technical logic behind this reality also lies in measurement: official poverty measures look at pre-tax monetary income, without fully valuing non-monetary benefits or the burden of costs such as housing and healthcare. The Social Poverty Model (SPM), on the other hand, does incorporate these elements. This means that a person can work and still fall short when rent, transportation, childcare, or medical expenses devour their disposable income.
The same salary doesn't buy the same things in Houston, Boston, or San Francisco. This design confirms that housing is a central variable for measuring real poverty.

The SPM also incorporates medical expenses and employment-related costs; therefore, it captures the stresses that the official measure leaves out. Furthermore, a family of four does not face the same threshold as a single person, and certainly not the same cost of raising children.

In short, poverty in the United States is not just a lack of employment. It’s, above all, a combination of insufficient income, excessively high costs, and public support that sometimes compensates and sometimes falls short. In a word: American poverty is as much a problem of income as it is of cost, but we must not overlook the influence of social inequality, the appetite of those who have much and want more at the expense of the most vulnerable, without communism having anything to do with it.

This occurs in the richest and most powerful nation on the planet, with a huge budget for the arms industry, but where education and healthcare are expensive and industrial magnates take advantage of this.

Translated by Amilkal Labañino / CubaSí Translation Staff