Adam Smith pointed out that a linen shirt is not a necessity. However, if you live in a society where not being able to afford a linen shirt is taken as a sign of poverty, then if you cannot afford a linen shirt then in that society you can - possibly will be - regarded as poor.

Furniture poverty: the price of moving in to an empty house

We will admit this is a new one on us but there’s an interesting point here:

“Household appliances are not luxuries – they are essentials;”

An example used is a washing machine. Which is a fairly new definition of necessity. The washing machine itself - as opposed to the copper tub and mangles - is less than a century old as anything like a common appliance. As Hans Rosling liked to point out. It’s also possible to point to the post-WWII boom in launderettes and their gradual disappearance in more recent times as evidence in the same direction. The idea that a washing machine is an essential - and we do not doubt that given where we are now that this is true - is very modern.

All of which can and should be taken as a measure of how much richer we are. There’s that ever growing list of things that are now taken to be essentials - fuel poverty today includes the normal middle class lifestyle of the 1970s, certainly that of the 1960s - which people are defined as being poor for being without. That very list itself is proof of how much richer we all are than our forbears.

We can indeed continue to shout about how awful it is that some still do not have these now essentials. But it is worth the occasional nod in the direction of the opposite, a little consideration of how rich we are to consider these those essentials.