I think your comment strikes at an issue that everyone feels but is hard to articulate - there's true poverty (Appalachia, say) and then there's "working-class poor" which you can try to define but nearly everyone puts themselves into it. Perhaps a better term is "paycheck to paycheck" - by almost any measure, anyone gainfully employed in the USA is rich beyond the world's wildest dreams - but telling a family making $40k a year that they make more than 90% of the world doesn't help.

"by almost any measure, anyone gainfully employed in the USA is rich beyond the world's wildest dreams"

I'm not sure your mental model holds. A lot of Europe has higher standards of living than the USA. And a lot of Asian countries have made huge strides in the last few decades. Also consider the difference between Mississippi and Massachusetts. I wouldn't say that anyone gainfully employed in Mississippi is "rich beyond the world's wildest dreams".