"Growth has been good for decades, so why do we still have 10% of people who are poorer than the remaining 90% of the people?<p>Debating policy based on a chart showing one clean* variable -- growth -- and one that a faceless bureaucracy sets by fiat every year is not a brilliant idea.<p>As ever, Adam Smith, writing in 1776, had the right idea. Here is how he defined poverty: “By [poverty] I understand, not only the [lack of] commodities which are indispensably necessary for the support of life, but whatever the custom of the country renders it indecent for creditable people, even of the lowest order, to be without. A linen shirt, for example, is, strictly speaking, not a necessary of life. . .But in the present times, through the greater part of Europe, a creditable day-labourer would be ashamed to appear in public without a linen shirt. . .Custom, in the same manner, has rendered leather shoes a necessary of life in England. The poorest creditable person of either sex would be ashamed to appear in public without them. . .Under necessaries, therefore, I comprehend, not only those things which nature, but those things which the established rules of decency have rendered necessary to the lowest rank of people.”<p>* The growth variable isn't clean, either. Much of the alleged growth is in transfers, government, and credit.