Margy Waller has a good article in Alternet on poverty measurements today. I don't have any specific comment on it. More generally, though, I think something that's missing from the debate over poverty measurements is the fundamental ambiguity of the things being measured. A poverty measure aspires to objectivity, but it's inherently subjective because conservatives and liberals don't agree on the meaning of the underlying values. Liberals tend to see opportunity as a middle class lifestyle and a concern for others, conservatives see it as making it to the top. Conservatives tend to see security as preserving what you have (and denying it to the undeserving), liberals see it as depending on one another when you lose what you have, including health, ability to work, housing, or even basic subsistence.

It's incumbent on liberals to put in some effort defining what they mean when they say things like opportunity and security and distinguishing it from the conservative understanding. Otherwise, too many people will default to interpreting any poverty measurement through a conservative lens.