This is interesting.

Your example of the poverty line made me think about companies. If we can make a parallel, who would consider Uber or Amazon to be in a bad position ? I don't know what's the % of people shorting Amazon, but I'm confident it's low. VC seems to trust Uber with the expected return they will provide down the road.

If a machine learning engineer completing his PHD and doing an internship at x car company, with 50k debts, is considered below the poverty line even if his expected net worth (is that even a thing?) in 3, 5 or 10 years is huge, this indicates that we have to find a better way to look at this problem.

The time frame is definitely important. Chronic poverty should be where the resources go to understand and solve the problem.

Didn't got much time to think about economic issues lately, but I've thought about the relations between competitiveness in a global world, the social and economical balance of work, GDP and unemployment.

Basically, more freedom for companies will impact positively competitiveness while decreasing social balance/gains (think protection of the employees, holidays, safe-nets, retirements). This should also improve employment and GDP due to increased fluidity.

The question is, where does the balance becomes sustainable ? Should we opt-in for a 10% unemployment rate and very good social security which can help you plan your life (think France), or for a 5% unemployment rate with way more random things along the road (think USA) ?