Be sure to thank God again today that you were born in America! Far too few are so lucky! In the good ole US of A we have a standard of living that’s just amazing, and we take it for granted far, far too often!

Even the average Joe Citizen lives in a manner that would be considered wealthy by the standards of just about any other randomly selected nation on earth. In fact, I’m pretty sure there isn’t another country anywhere who’s average citizen lives in a manner exceptionally or even notably more luxurious than our Average Joe. Most, in fact, strive to achieve our level of comfort! America is an extremely comfortable country!

The current official poverty threshold in the US of A is about $10,000 for single people, $14,000 for couples, about $20,000 for a family of four. For a family of three, such as mine (me, hubby and my step-son, of whom he is the domicile parent) it’s about $17,600 or so. My hubby has a pretty good job with the state and he actually makes slightly less than that. Which means we are, by the standards our government uses, officially impoverished.

And that’s all the time. Every day of every year, until probably the hubby’s next raise, we’re impoverished Americans.

We own four air conditioners (running all four pretty much all the time), have hot water at our beck and call, four televisions with satellite t.v. on all, expend more than $200 a month on various luxuries and entertainments, own a Playstation, a refridgerator, electric stove, freezer (which we constantly stock with hundreds of pounds of red meat), dishwasher and two automobiles (though, admittedly, one isn’t working right now). We vacation as often as two or three times a year, pretty much whenever it occurs to us to do so. We have two computers in the home and constant access to the interwebz. We actually leave the country to vacation about one out of every five vacations or so and leave the state pretty much the rest of the time. We own somewhere around $10,000 worth of furniture and various household stuff. And about $5,000 worth of various firearms, many of them just for hobby shooting and not for hunting or even home defense. I have medical bills that, until very recently, sucked up as much as $4,000 a year. And my hubby’s retarded older brother lives with us and we take care of him as well.

All that and we’re impoverished.

God bless America! Thank you, Lord, that I was born in a country where even the poor lives like fat cats!