A new study from the United Way claims that 43% of American households are in a status called “asset limited, income constrained, employed” (ALICE), which denotes employed people who can’t afford housing, food, childcare, healthcare, transportation, and a cellphone – the basics of modern living.

Umair Haque (previously) connects this to the idea of America as the world’s first poor rich country, a country that is awash in wealth, yet so unequal that nearly half its residents sink deeper into debt every month – and most Americans die in debt.

As Haque says, if you work hard all your life and die with no assets, no savings, and debt, that’s not employment, it’s serfdom. America’s former middle class have now hit the limits of their ability to survive with stagnating wages by taking on debt secured by their meager assets – the family home, pensions and so on. Now, Americans are both kinds of poor: asset-poor and wage-poor. Americans aren’t poor because they don’t work hard enough: they’re poor no matter how hard they work.

And unlike poor people in countries like Pakistan or Nigeria, American poor people live in a country where things like childcare, medicine, rent and food are very, very expensive. American poor people are poorer than the poor people in poor countries.