How can you tell if Americans are "poor"?

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Like most of us I watch quite a bit of US drama and box sets but remain baffled about the characters based on things like the house they live in etc...

Can American audiences tell that someone is poor or rich (or in between) based on things such as house size, style of house and other things that are part of TV series?

I know (well think I do so not assuming - please correct if wrong!) that middle and working class may mean different things to UK - but can US viewers pick up more based on cultural norms and things that may need explaining to non-American audiences?

An example is I watched some episodes of True Detective and thought the house was lovely and spacious but everything else in the plot pointed to the fact that this was a "poor rundown neighbourhood with substance issues etc..."

Are there any rules of thumb? Do American audiences get confused my things like this when watching UK or European dramas?

I remember reading an interesting article about town planning in wealthy v poor neighbourhoods in the US. Fewer trees are planted in poorer neighbourhoods making them noticeably hotter in the summer months. The lack of trees also meant the air was more polluted.

Not only that, but food deserts

I love watching TikTok videos about HOAs. Their reach and power is boggling to me. If I ever find myself living in the US I will sure as heck avoid being under control of one of these associations. It would be enough to turn me into a full blown Libertarian.

yes. seems immoral that poorer communities might not have access to a basic supermarket selling fruit and veg. no wonder obesity is at such an extreme level when all you have ready access to is fast food.

I live in a community with an HOA, but ours is pretty reasonable, all things considered. The difficulty comes when power hungry people get on the boards of HOAs and try to run them as little fiefdoms. There are quite a few YouTube videos about overzealous HOAs. In my state, we do have some protections against overreaching.

I’m in the UK and can sympathise, we’ve been on the end of some pretty power hungry committees/parish councils who run the best kept village competitions, and this is only for a month or so in the Summer, so can’t imagine it year round !
Think of Midsummer murder type villages (without the dead bodies obvs) 🤩

Umm..no, actually. The astonishing ignorance of many (most) Americans-wretched school system—about the rest of the world is shocking. Most do not have passports and would prefer to visit Epcot than leave USA. Most do not read newspapers and get any news from echo chambers like FOX. Have you ever read a local paper in the US? Any foreign news is in a short paragraph on page 26. Which
Complete absence of critical sensibilities. They are gullible and vote against their own interests: Trump, e.g.; they do not have a clue about how a welfare state would benefit them, and distrust it. Qanon is far more widespread than you can imagine. And the puritanical Christianity pervasive reinforces these beliefs- remember, it was settled by British puritan fanatics who were too extreme for Britain!

Re comment about VANCE having married an Indian woman: first, she is American. Not Indian. Not only are you racialising her, but in the USA people of South Asian descent generally are NOT discriminated against the way they are in the UK. Nor are they seen as lower on the social hierarchy ladder as they are in the UK.
partly because the numbers are so much lower, partly because there is NOT the colonial history, and partly because they generally are in white collar professions

I think you have overstated this more than a trifle. As for the passport thing, it's possible to travel within the United States to experience vastly different cultures. As for voting, are you aware of who won the popular vote in the last two presidential elections?

You've considerably over egged the souffle there.

Among your factual gaffes is the phrase "wretched school system" - there is no single school system in the US. Each individual school district is a stand-alone body.

Thanks, I live in Chicago.

When you think "poor" as a British person, the image of an inner city area or blighted housing estate may spring to mind, but in the US, the poor can often be rural dwellers.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lowest-income_counties_in_the_United_States
These lists do not include the counties where New York, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles or other cities are located, as far as I can see. You can locate these counties and check them against the NYT electoral precinct map I posted to see their political leanings. Eastern Kentucky in particular will show you that the really, truly poor tend to vote GOP.

Cities and their suburbs are the richest parts of the country, and the largest proportion of university educated and professional people lives in them. Bigger cities in particular tend to be run by Democrats, with politicians of the Democratic party dominating city government and local offices. The days of the old Democratic machines are gone, but people in bigger cities still tend to identify strongly with Democrat policies, and per capita and family incomes tend to be higher even for the poor living in metro areas.

Agree.

You can clearly see the old Cotton Belt in the South in the NYT map, and a good part of the blue vote in cities comes from African Americans.

My family are south Asian and many have lived in the states for many years

My dad and families experience is that it has stepped up and they are classed as brown people, when there was less racism towards Latinos there was less towards them too that’s changed

my dad now receives less racism here (which he was so pleasantly surprised at) than in the states

Almost every American you see on TV has straight white teeth. It’s the British that have a world wide reputation for having terrible teeth - the Simpson’s featured “The Big Book of British Smiles” in the episode where Lisa didn’t want to get braces.

The dryer is set to low temp. The power comes from one of several nuclear power stations in the state. Or it could come from the thousands of acres of wind farms.

Your conditions for outdoor drying mean that outdoor drying isn't the practical choice for millions of Americans -
Outdoor space
Weather
Able bodied
Time outside of work to indulge in kidding yourself you're saving the planet

The collective impact of all the words typed and posted on the internet is considerable, yet here we are...

Weather doesn't have to be perfect for outdoor drying. It does need to be better than the kind of weather I experience where I live. We get frigid winters, pollen from trees, grass, and ragweed, not forgetting mould, in spring, summer, and early autumn. We get torrential downpours in summer. My local weather app shows daily allergens and also air quality. I don't want to carry more particles back into my home with my laundry than I put it out with, and thanks to the dryer I don't have to.

You clearly have no experience of anything but a temperate climate. What I live in is humid continental. It's more than a little frustrating to find someone arguing that what the good people of the UK do with their washing should be copied by people living in completely different circumstances (while others on the thread cast aspersions on the alleged American lack of understanding of the rest of the world, no less...)

Plenty of people do walk short distances - as I have said. The idea that nobody in America does, or that those who walk are considered oddities is one generated by overactive imaginations.

However, there are genuine impediments to walking that you might understand better if you were to visit the US. I've mentioned them - extremes of weather, wild animals, and dangerous urban environments.

IME a working class house in the US is more spacious and better appointed then the average UK house. I lived in an apartment in an old converted victorian house in a neighbourhood with massive old trees and a view of the bay. It looked lovely and in this UK a similar looking neighbourhood would be really pricey - think some parts of London. In fact it was super sketchy and very rough - people could not believe I actually lived there and I saw a lot of things I would prefer not to have seen.

More signs that American TV and film characters are supposed to be poor:

The pole that holds up their mailbox is crooked.

Their dog is tied outside their house or trailer with a rope, not a dog leash.

Their house, if they have a house, has peeling wood siding.

The women have long, lank hair.

A bunch of stray cats roam around the yard of their house or trailer.

The men wear undershirts/vests with no shirts, or with unbuttoned shirts.

A woman has children with three or more men, and most or all of the men are absent.

Line drying is not practicable if you are a single parent with a full time job. Unless you can be sure the day will remain fine there is no point in getting up at 5am to hang it out, plus cloth nappies ended up hard as a board on very hot days. One needs more changes of clothing if the laundry is left to the weekend and it is so depressing having to manoeuvre round drying laundry in a cramped living space during wet weather.
Now I’m old I’m physically unable to hang out my washing. Hurrah for driers .

Also, along with my earlier response to this post, there are vast swathes of Chicago where blue-collar workers live, and they are not crime-ridden hell holes. I live about 15 mins on foot from an extreme example of a downtrodden area, and would neither walk nor drive there.

Even so, the train I take downtown goes through that neighborhood along with other deprived areas, but people who are clearly going to or coming from work get on and off at all the stops - the people you see hanging out on the streets are not the whole story even in an impoverished or crime-ridden area.

Republicans love to reference Chicago as all that's violent and scary about urban USA. But it's not even in the top 10 most dangerous cities!

I thought Chicago was great when I visited. The winters might be a bit much for me though.

I love Chicago. Great city. Great people.

Reading Demon Copperhead was a real eye-opener about the poor US rust-belt areas where the coal and steel mining jobs have gone and local people are often dirt poor with no jobs.
As always location and opportunity/lack of are an indicator of poor/middle/wealthy.

Dopesick is a good shout. The people in that are obviously poor, drab clothes, dirty looking. Still hard to compare to the UK as we don’t have the same sort of relationship with prescription drugs.

I am really shocked to learn that it is unseemly to hang the washing out in USA. I only use the dryer when forced due to the weather (which is a lot unfortunately). I’m constantly checking the weather apps to best plan my washes!

I’m not talking about media- I actually avoid most US tv and films as they don’t interest me and just annoy me (with some exceptions)

I’m talking about my experience of working for a USA company for 35 years and visiting multiple sites and locations multiple times a year, talking to my USA colleagues multiple times a day on line and. knowing some of my colleagues in USA for over 25 years. I don’t know how many USA people I spent time with over the years, including weekends being “entertained” and sometimes in their homes with their families if I was staying a longer time, but it’d be in the region of a hundreds not 10s.

yes, my experience was of mid west and Georgia mainly - right wing heartlands. And bible bashing heartland which also doesn’t help with the fairly unchristian lack of compassion for the struggling.

so I repeat, I never heard anyone criticise the culture and expectation and societal norms of USA. Particular governments, yep. Knocking other people , oh yes. But they don’t knock themselves as a country in way brits do. They learn that from a young age in terms of deference to their constitution and flag. That is a fundamental difference- American culture is their constitution . We don’t in uk have a written constitution , we don’t take oaths of allegiance ..though conservative have a good try with the citizenship tests, 🙄 but most of us would resist adamantly if a government tried to get that into schools. Were happy to knock KC and monarchy and take piss out of it when it deserve piss being taken. We have, in short, no culture of allegiance to our constitution or monarchy.

so no, if you read my post properly youd have read it was based on personal experience.

Poor Americans can't afford dental care.