JOSEPH SALERNO: Poverty Just Ain’t What It Used To Be. “A newly released report by the U.S. Census Bureau indicates that most Americans  living below the bureaucratically designated “poverty line” enjoy most modern conveniences.  For example more than 80 percent of U.S. households below the poverty line have a: refrigerator (97.8%); stove  (96.6%); television (96.1%); microwave oven (93.1%); air conditioner (83.4%); VCR/DVD player (83.2%); and cell phone (80.9%).  In addition, more than half of  households beneath the poverty level also have a:  clothes washer (68.7%); clothes dryer (65.3%);  computer (58.2%); and landline telephone (54.9).  Now, when we use these figures as a standard of comparison, most middle-class Americans families in, say, 1960, were living well below the poverty line.  But this comparison obscures the important point that capitalism long ago solved the problem of poverty in a meaningful sense and in doing so radically transformed the very concept of poverty.”