It's a stream of a BBC documentary (you can't watch it on the BBC site because you're outside of the UK).
The poverty levels are the same... but that's not the same as quality of life.
Poverty as the way your talking about is "relative poverty" which is ranked within a country. If you have a more socialistic way of spreading the wealth... your going to score higher on a "poverty" ranking. The fact that the US and UK are so close more highlights the differences.
Also these people live well better then what Nintendomination was talking about. Due to things such as food banks as mentioend. The video is pretty sensationalistic honestly.
For example... that house... lots of tracks of land have sold for a dollar even before the economic criss.
The Gini coeefcient barely rose under bush... at all. Which is the distribution of wealth.
George W. Bush was the best president in regards to keeping the gap between the rich and poor down since WW2.
Like seriously... this is just a poorly done documentry.
This documentary is talking about thousands upon thousands of Americans, NintendoMan is just one Brit.
Look how relative poverty is calculated. It's the Gini coeeficent. Which is calculated within country. So once again. your wrong... like I said. States with higher sociliasm will score higher in such measures.
You often need to look at indexes such as "Consumer Goods ownership". to get a good idea as well. Just along with quartile after tax salary and the prices of stuff... and just how people live.
Something else you can get for a dollar by the way in the US? A buisness.
