American ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley recently expressed outrage over a report calling attention to the desolate conditions of her glorious homeland:

“It is patently ridiculous for the United Nations to examine poverty in America,” Haley wrote to Senator Bernie Sanders in response to his call to uphold international human rights treaty obligations regarding the alleviation of poverty.

The U.N. report in question “highlights the contrast between the few Americans with immense wealth and the more than 40 million people living in poverty, including millions living in what the report describes as ‘Third World conditions of absolute poverty.’”

Senator Sanders responded by clarifying his belief that “it is totally appropriate for the U.N. Special Rapporteur to focus on poverty in the United States.” As the senator further explained, “poverty in America […] takes place in the richest county in the history of the world and at a time when wealth and income inequality is worse than at any time since the 1920s.”

Sanders certainly makes a powerful point when discussing American poverty by juxtaposing this widespread tragedy with the extreme wealth accumulation that exists simultaneously. But it is also important to recognize the limits of our conventional standards for defining poverty.

The official poverty line was established during President Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty” in the 1960s, and this measure has never been updated to reflect our current economic realities. When medical expenses, child care, college tuition, increasing housing costs, and other common expenditures are taken into account, about half the U.S. population is now struggling to survive.